Islam gonna islam. Sunni muslim "reformist" movements and social conflict go together hand in hand. This is something people misunderstand via Christianity, assuming the domination of liberalism in the post Christian West is the result of "reform" rather than what it truly was

surrender by Christianity. In actuaity, religious reformist movements went the other way, rather than liberalism, they sought sectarian purity and a reaffirmation of faith. Islam in such a phase for the past century, mass literacy and mass media speading along it's propagation.

"Reformist" Islam today, as seens in trends Muslim majority communities in Southeast Asia and increasingly within China means a standardization of public religious values and observance along a specific pattern, Saudization. That is, to be a good muslim, local traditions and

idiosyncratic elements of native adaptation to Islam must surrender and give way to the normative values of global Islam. This can be seen physically in the proliferation of not just veiling, but a particular style of foreign middle eastern hijab that now dominates across Asia.

More than just the physical manifestations, the drive for "purity" manifests itself within the community itself, as the more naturally observant begin to police their own families and neighbors for "Saudized" displays of religious ritual. "Its not how [true] Muslims practice"

becomes the operative phrase in shifting community norms. Since Islam is a semitic totalitarianizing ideology in which no aspects of human life are beyond the realm of Islam, everything in society must shift according to the new reform movement and thus become more Islamic.

As I had previously written, Sunni Islam, is particularly apt to this sort of trend because of the decentralization of it's leadership and lack hierarchy. Akin to how when Protestantism schismed away from Papal authority resulted in immediate proliferation of radical and even

apocalyptic Christian sects. Not allowed to out-rightous the Ayatollah in Shiism, so there are hard limits in place to arrest this trend of reformist Islam pushing the Overton window so that ever more conservative trends becoming mainstream.

Normally this pattern of "Islamic" reform would be of simple academic interest were it not for the presence of growing Muslim minorities everywhere through immigration and natural demographic growth. The drive for religious purity/piety amidst reformist Muslims doesn't stop

at Muslims, non-muslims even if the majority must be subject to the religious taboos and observances of the faithful. Another fun feature not bug of semitic totalizing bandit religions.

Their pretense for this sort of social domination is that everyone has to respect minority "rights" when they are numerically small. When they are numerically large, it is because Islam is the one true faith and you are an infidel. Suffice it to say, this type of performative

aggression projected against outgroups doesn't endear Muslims to their non-Muslim neighbors. The most extreje demonstration being the bloody terrorist attack as seen recently in Sri Lanka by very wealthy and not persecuted Muslims I might add.

China is unfortunately no outlier to this, as the liberalization of the 1980's led to the "opening" up of Chinese Islam to global (Saudized) Islam. In addition, the religious affairs board came to be dominated by what the Party now calls "two-faced" individuals who rather than

policing their religious communities according to party dictates instead subverted party control by shielding religious observers from state enforcement, i.e. Islamic apologetics professing loyalty when they are anything but loyal.

https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/e-journal/articles/caffrey.pdf is an interesting study of Islamic reformist dynamics in remote village in Yunnan. It's fairly brief, but in summary, a small band of Muslim refugees fleeing sectarian violence, which they started, in the wake of the Dungan rebellions.

The rebellion was also the result of an early wave of Islamic reformism by foreign trained mullahs in late 19th century China that started with inter-muslim infighting and spilled out into jihad. Refugees landed in a valley shared by Han and Tibetan neighboring villages.

Everything was toasty for more than a century and everyone was go along get along. Muslim and neighboring villagers even set up a joint community ritual altar. Islamic reformism arrives in the 21st century via larger Shadian township. Muslims begin acting like jerks to their

erstwhile peaceful neighbors. Some Muslims look askance at the newfound belligerent attitudes, but are too cowed by their communities to say anything. Joint community altar torn down by Muslims, because pagan, and communitiy peace goes to shit.

The trend has come to a head now in Xinjiang as the religious affairs board was in essence disbanded and control handed over to the Communist Party United Front Works department, which has lead to the interesting fact that the apparatchick in charge of "Muslim" affairs is now

no longer even a Muslim but an ethnic Mongol. Also of course the neccessary if insufficient re-education camps which are the state's counterattack against "Reformist" Islam's totalizing influence by using the state's totalizing power against it.

If observant Muhammedans can through the course of years and decades gradually shift the Overton window through policing their own communities through censure, approbation, and occasional social violence, then the Chinese state can do the same in reverse

though in a much much faster method via direct application of organized coercive force upon the population. The kind of stuff Muslims used to do when they actually still had the military capacity to do so.