Introduction

Xinjiang has common borders with Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and with three of the Central Asian states that were part of the former USSR – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The early history of the Uyghurs reveals the influence of the religion and culture of Manichaeism, a descendant of Zoroastrianism, but was also influenced by Gnosticism, a syncretic belief followed in an assortment of schools that flourished in Jewish and Christian communities during the first and second centuries AD. An urban Uyghur intelligentsia has emerged which has in many ways evolved a modus vivendi with the Chinese state, and fully bilingual Uyghurs can be found in professional roles in Xinjiang and other parts of China. The controversy over the Uyghurs detained in Thailand re-opened the question of the relationship between the Uyghur insurgency and international Islamist or jihadist movements. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.