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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

My impression is that most Muslims don’t real care about Muslims from other ethnic groups. Pakistan and Bangladesh, for example, are happy to suck up to China for the business opportunities. Similarly, the gulf states took few Syrian refugees during the recent crises: https://www.lejournalinternational.fr/Syrian-refugees-why-wo.... More generally, Arabs regard non-Arab Muslims as barely human—e.g. holding Bangladeshis and Pakistanis in near slavery conditions: https://sports.yahoo.com/qatar-world-cup-unpaid-workers-slav...

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My impression is that most people do not really care about other groups... unless it indirectly talks about something they are sensible, or they can clearly identify with the victims.

For example people (and media) in France don't care about violence between groups in Africa. We quite never heard about the Congo Wars, about Ethiopia, about the Lord's Resistance Army... But heard a lot about Jihadist movements in Africa or Muslim Nigerians killing Christians, because it resonate with our "experience", and resonate with the world view of some people (Islam vs Christianity).(note that France have a good history of supporting dodgy groups and activities in Africa).

Muslim are like us all.

I don't think this is true. Right now there are millions of Ukrainian refugees in Europe being welcomed with open arms, after millions upon million of muslim refugees have already entered the continent.

I wonder if the Ukrainians have something in common with the rest of Europe, that makes them more sympathetic…

> with the rest of Europe,

as you say, proximity. I went to school with people from Ukraine, I went to uni with people from Ukraine, I work with people in Ukraine right now. It's happening in weekend-holiday range from me. Makes it a lot less abstract.

>My impression is that most Muslims don’t real care about Muslims from other ethnic groups.

It's the same reason most "Muslims" don't "care" about Al Qaeda and ISIS. Many Muslim populations, just like the Chinese, are negatively affected by Uighur terrorist and extremist groups.

"Southeast Asia is witnessing evolving security risks from Chinese Uyghurs' involvement in military activities in the region."

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26351495.pdf

Yet more muslims have died fighting AQ and ISIS than any other religious group. Weird right?

>more muslims have died fighting AQ and ISIS than any other religious group

I think we are making the same point.

Some of the largest muslim countries (Indonesia, Pakistan) don't have sympathy for many Chinese Uyghur groups because once they leave China, they train with ISIS/Al Qaeda then plan and commit terrorist acts around Asia.

Many believe the Chinese are doing them a favor with their detention and deradicalization programs.

How can we be making the same point? Yours rests on the statement "It's the same reason most "Muslims" don't "care" about Al Qaeda and ISIS." which is objectively untrue.

Low sympathy due to a few Uyghur terrorists has nothing to do with it. There is no international political solidarity among Muslims based on faith, Palestine has proven that. That's just business and realpolitik.

As for their treatment, who cares what beliefs/excuses the Chinese people have/give? Oppressors always have some BS reason for what they'll support.

>There is no international political solidarity among Muslims based on faith, Palestine has proven that.

That statement may be true among some of the political class but it sure isn't true among the general population.

Muslims generally also dislike terrorist groups like Al Qeada, ISIS, Al Shabaab, etc. If the Chinese started locking up those groups, most muslims wouldn't "care" either.

Muslim, and I've never heard this logic at all.

It's really more about hypocrisy and self-interest.

I really discourage people from taking the above post as an accurate representation of Muslim views.

Agree to this. Living in a muslim majority country. Personally direct experience 2 suicide bombing. Around one block from my office. This radical Muslim hold the whole country as a hostage. Yesterday they just have a public rally supporting terrorist.

My impression is that most Muslims don’t real care about Muslims from other ethnic groups

You can't write comments like this on HN. Choose better words. You're way off your game here.

I think you’re reading in a subtext that isn’t there. Most people care mainly about what’s happening to their own nationality or ethnic group. Islam doesn’t create a unifying bond that overrides that in the same way Christianity doesn’t. It’s like how Americans don’t care especially about whats happening in France based on shared Christian identity.

Yes, we're asked, repeatedly and specifically, to avoid generalizing about large groups of people --- nationalities, religions, &c. I get that you may have a vantage on this that we don't have, but you still have to be careful about how you communicate it. Some things are tricky to communicate in a forum like this; some things may be so tricky that they aren't worth communicating. I don't know. I just did a double take at the first sentence of your last comment, thought to myself "how would I react if anyone but Rayiner had written this", and told you so. That's all.

> I get that you may have a vantage on this that we don't have, but you still have to be careful about how you communicate it

As a South Asian with a virtually identical vantage point, I can assure you that rayiner has been repeatedly painting a false picture of south Asians in general and south asian muslims in particular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism#Gender_essentiali...

This is about Gender but it applies to people applying this on ethnic groups as well.

The xenophobia in these comments is amazing.

"Muslims don't care about Muslims"

Yes Muslims are just completely different types of human. Who knew!

Making an observation about a group of people is not "xenophobia". Quite the opposite in fact.

If you read the comment more closely, it's not "muslims don't care about muslims", it's, "arabs don't care about southeast asians", which... well, there's a ton of evidence for this unfortunately.

Neither form of that kind of sweeping generalization is ok on HN with piles of moderator commentary about it.

Easily solved by just adding Some* in front of everything, then ;)

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