Yet the paradox of prayer symbolizes the imminent perils of being Muslim in Xinjiang today. The more Uyghur Muslims are unwilling to relinquish their spiritual identity and disavow Islam, the likelier they are to be taken away and kept far from everybody they love and everything they know.

FICTION: The irony of piety increasing persecution could seed a character study of a devout Uyghur whose faith both sustains and endangers them.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 575