page_title: Uyghurs
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Uyghurs / Culture / Religion
caption_attribution_description: Español: Khotan (Hotan / Hetian) es una ciudad-oasis en la Región Autónoma Uigur de Xinjiang en la República Popular China. Mezquita.English: Khotan (Hotan / Hetian) is an oasis city in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Mosque.
context_page_description: The Uyghurs, alternately Uighurs, Uygurs, or Uigurs, are a Turkic-speaking minority ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are considered to be one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. The Uyghurs are recognized by the Chinese government only as a regional minority within a multicultural nation. The Chinese government rejects the notion of the Uyghurs being an indigenous group.
  The Uyghurs have traditionally inhabited a series of oases scattered across the Taklamakan Desert within the Tarim Basin. These oases have historically existed as independent states or were controlled by many civilizations including China, the Mongols, the Tibetans and various Turkic polities. The Uyghurs gradually started to become Islamized in the 10th century and most Uyghurs identified as Muslims by the 16th century. Islam has since played an important role in Uyghur culture and identity.
  An estimated 80% of Xinjiang's Uyghurs still live in the Tarim Basin.
context_section_description: The ancient Uyghurs believed in many local deities. These practices gave rise to Shamanism and Tengrism. Uighurs also practiced aspects of Zoroastrianism. The strong dichotomy between good and evil was often represented symbolically by fire and darkness. The Uyghur had fire altars like those that existed in regions of Iran, and they were also useful in daily life as a constant source of fire. The exact date that the Uigur people adapted Manichaeism as a state religion has been contested by many academics. However, the leading theory is that the Uighur King Moyou Qayan facilitated this process. In the year 762 or 763, he led an army of Uighur men to fight an uprising by Chinese people who identified with the Tang dynasty. The king encountered a few Manichean clerics and decided to take one back with him. This clerk, by the name of Ruixi, helped Moyou Qayan establish Manichaeism as the state religion for the Uighur people. This transition was relatively smooth because Manichaeism borrowed a lot of religious concepts from other religions during the era. The influence of many different religious systems fostered an environment where the Uighur people could pick and choose aspects of different faiths. Some ancient Uighurs also believed in Buddhism and Church of the East. People in the Western Tarim Basin region began their conversion to Islam early in the Kara-Khanid Khanate period.  Pre-Islamic practices continued to thrive under Muslim rule. For example, while the Quran dictated many rules on marriage and divorce, pre-Islamic principles, in this instance, Zoroastrianism, helped shape the laws of the land. This resulted in a new amalgamation where Islamic rules meshed with pre-Islamic religions of the region to create new laws. There had been Christian conversions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but these were suppressed by the First East Turkestan Republic government agents.  According to the national census, 1,142 Uyghurs in Kazakhstan were Christians in 2009. 
  Modern Uyghurs are primarily Muslim and they are the second-largest predominantly Muslim ethnicity in China after the Hui. The majority of modern Uyghurs are Sunnis, although additional conflicts exist between Sufi and non-Sufi religious orders. While modern Uyghurs consider Islam to be part of their identity, religious observance varies between different regions. In general, Muslims in the southern region, Kashgar in particular, are more conservative. For example, women wearing the veil (a piece of cloth covering the head completely) are more common in Kashgar than some other cities. The veil, however, has been banned in some cities since 2014 after it became more popular. There is also a general split between the Uyghurs and the Hui Muslims in Xinjiang and they normally worship in different mosques. The Chinese government discourages religious worship among the Uyghurs, and there is evidence of Uyghur mosques including historic ones being destroyed.
  In the early 21st century a new trend of Islam, Salafism, emerged in Xinjiang, mostly among the Turkic population including Uyghurs, although there are Hui Salafis. These Salafis tend to demonstrate pan-Islamism and abandoning nationalism in favor of a desired caliphate to rule Xinjiang in case of she became independent from China, although it can be misleading. Many Uyghur Salafis have allied themselves with the Turkistan Islamic Party in response to growing repression of Uyghurs by China.
caption: A Uyghur mosque in Khotan
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