My Edinburgh Review piece on the riots in Xinjiang has been picked up by Eurozine, a site that brings together social and political articles from various magazines and journals.

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-08-12-holdstock-en.html

At the end of the piece I wrote that there have been ‘few [recent] reported incidents of protest, violent or otherwise’.

This is no longer the case:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/11/terrorism.china

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080812/ap_on_re_as/china_violence

As far I can tell, it is unclear who is committing these acts. Whilst they are probably motivated by separatism, the extent to which (if any) they are Islamist, remains to be determined.