How extremism ruins believers’ lives with “Jihadi migration” lies

Islamic Extremism

23-year-old Tursun becomes excited when he recalls his experience of leaving home to attend high school in another part of China. He told the reporter that they ( him and five other students) went to school and it was “amazing” inside. Their dormitory was nicer than the ones for the local students.

Four of them shared one room. The tables, chairs and beds were all very clean. He was just one of six students from his area admitted to the school. However, Tursun fared poorly in the all-important College Entrance Examination. When he decided to go back home to repeat the last year of high school, a man appeared and changed his life for the worse.

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The man, named Mexmut, posed as a “religious teacher”. What Tursun didn’t know was that Mexmut was in fact a construction worker who hadn’t even completed primary school education. The man told Tursun that he shouldn’t go to a secular school.Those who did were of no use to society or to Islam. So, Tursun shouldn’t go to a college that wasn’t Muslim.

With time, Mexmut and his group revealed their real purpose that anyone who made contact with him but refused to join the Hijirat were not true Muslims. Aware of Mexmut’s real purpose, Tursun declared his intention to quit the group.

“They wanted me to go to Malaysia, then Turkey. From there to Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria to join the ‘Jihad’. I said I wouldn’t, and wouldn’t tell anyone about it. They pointed two swords at me. They said, “Now you know about our mission you can’t just walk away. Do as we say. Otherwise, we’ll dump your body somewhere you parents will never find it.”

Under threat, Tursun gave Mexmut the 30,000 Yuan his parents had given him for his college fees, cancelled his application for college and left the country.

While overseas, he was only allowed out at night and lived in a state of fear. He was put in charge of the group’s external liaison. Through his work, he learned a number of secrets that left him even more terrified.

“A man who traveled with me to Guangzhou from Urumqi was killed by a bomb dropped by a U.S. drone soon after arriving in Syria. He left behind a wife and children who now barely scrape by. I also heard about many people who just disappeared or were taken away.”

Tursun said he often dreamt of his mother crying and waiting for him outside his home. “In the dream she’d say, ‘Son, keep warm.’” In fact, it was when he was repatriated to China that Tursun’s parents knew for the first time that the son they’d been so proud of hadn’t ever been to college.

Data provided by Xinjiang police show that most of violent and terrorism-related criminal cases in the region are influenced by the concept of “Hijirat”, the so-called “Jihadi Migration”. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, religious extremism grew stronger and more prevalent in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Since 1996, separatists, religious extremists, and terrorists have been fleeing China.

In collusion with international terrorist organizations, they have falsified religious doctrine, fabricated cases of religious persecution, lied to their followers and encouraged “Jihad” or holy war.

Using terrorist bases outside China, they have trained violent terrorists and planned and executed violent criminal activities within the country.

Terrorist organizations based outside China have produced videos encouraging violence and terrorism. The religious extremism they advocate, including the “Jihad of Migration”, forms the ideological roots of their violent, terrorist activities.