Den kinesiska folkrepubliken och East Turkestan Islamic Movement : En studie utav den kinesiska statens framställning av en religiös minoritetsgrupp

Since 9/11 terrorism has been much discussed both in international media and in an academic context. Countries like China have launched their own”war on terror”. The purpose of this essay will be to research how a nation like China can use terrorism and religion to motivate the marginalization of oppositional religious minorities. This will be done through a discourse analysis of YouTube videos produced in cooperation with the Chinese state that focuses on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The focus of the analysis will be on the discourses used by the Chinese state to define the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, religion and terrorism and how these discourses relate to William Cavanaugh´s theory of the myth of religious violence which states that a nation can use an envisaged link between religion and violence to legitimate its own existence, motivate its own use of violence and marginalize religious groups. The analysis show that the Chinese state marginalize the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the conflict in Xinjiang by focusing on terrorism and religious violence as the main cause to the conflict in Xinjiang.