I don't malign anyone who considers China their motherland above all else, including their religion. No loyalty to Bodh Gaya, Mecca or the Vatican can be above that. If someone is more loyal to the Dalai Lama than China they can f*ck off and die.
And you saw the quotes from the official spokesperson from the Chinese government, they used the word "Jihad" repeatedly when describing the Xinjiang attacks.
The East Turkestan Islamic Movement itself uses religion as their motivation in their official statements. Their entire goal is to set up an Islamic state.
Now tell me why would the Chinese government say and widely report these things? Even though they have the power to do otherwise. Is it a conspiracy?
Watch it.
Actually the CCP's history currciculum is responsible for innoculating Uyghurs with separatists propaganda.
The Soviets created the Uyghur ethnic group from Turkic Muslims in the Tarim Basin in 1921 at Tashkent and wrote nationalist histories of the Uyghur people in order to promote separatism among the Uyghurs so they could absorb Xinjiang as a Soviet republic and take it from China. Previously the Uyghurs were just known as Turkis.
Before that there was no separatism in Xinjiang. All conflict came from the outside (Uzbeks from Kokand raided Kashgar several times). The Qing dynasty used mullahs and feudal Begs to rule the population and they applied religious law upon the Turkic Muslims while the Qing held political power. The warlord Yang Zengzin continued the policy of using mullahs and inoculating them with religion in order to
prevent separatism. In fact Yang warned the Turkic muslims that the Soviets were godless Russians who would mislead them and their women, and he promoted mullahs and traditional islamic education while cracking down on pan turkism and pro russians. It worked very well.
It was reformist, modernist Jadidist Pan Turkists who promoted separatism and wanted to reform Islam in central asia.
Anyway, the communist party today adopted the Soviet created category of "Uyghur" and is teaching Soviet created nationalist Uyghur history to Uyghur children in Xinjiang. Uyghur children in Xinjiang learn history created by Soviet propagandists and identify themselves with a label created by the Soviets to promote separatism. The CCP adopted this Soviet crap wholesale after they won the civil war.
The Communists Uyghur separatists who were backed by the Soviet Union like Ehmetjan Qasim, and who created the Soviet puppet East Turkestan Republic during the Ili Rebellion are regarded as "proletarian heroes" in the current history written by the CCP since they fought against the KMT during the Chinese Civil War. Ehmetjan Qasim's forces massacres thousands of ethnic han in Dzungharia. The Second East Turkestan Republic and their Soviet allies also broadcasted vile anti Han messages, encouraging Uyghurs to slaughter Han.
I'm not kidding, go look up how Ehmetjan Qasim, the Ili Rebellion and the Second East Turkestan Republic are viewd by the CCP history books. They are hailed as communist revolutionaries against the KMT LOL. This is the BS that the CCP teaches to Uyghur children.
Before the 1950s Xinjiang was just called Xinjiang. Everyone knew that Dzungharia used to belong to buddhist Dzunghars and Tarim Basin to the Uyghur. And guess what the CCP did. They slapped the name "Uyghur autonomous region" on the whole province and made Uyghur language official all over it, including Dzungharia where Uyghurs aren't native. Now Uyghur kids are taught they are native to Dzungharia and no wonder they (misleadingly) think they are being swamped by Han migrants.
I believe the dumb@ss history curriculum, Soviet ethnic classification and renaming of the entire province have alot to do with contributing towards separatist sentiments.