Are Muslims Taking A Stab At China?

Is China (referring to the Peoples Republic thereof) fending off a larger problem with its own Muslim population than they acknowledge?

There've been a few incidents of late that, taken together, make me wonder. Regular readers (meeting in a phone booth!) will note that I don't usually trust coincidences.

First, let's review the main story in the sequence:

A man has been arrested in connection with the deaths of eight boys stabbed as they slept in a dormitory, Chinese officials have said.

The suspect was captured thanks to a tip-off to police from his mother after he tried to commit suicide, Chinese media reported.

Four other children were wounded in the attack at a secondary school in the city of Ruzhou, in Henan province.

There has been a series of stabbings in Chinese schools in recent months.

That last line is important: There has been a series of stabbings...This one was "the sixth in four months," so it's hardly isolated.

So what else caught my attention? How about this report of massive clashes between Muslims & non-Muslims in the area

almost 150 people died in the violence, which began after a taxi driver from the Hui Muslim ethnic group struck and killed a girl from the majority Han Chinese community with his car, leading to fighting and burning of homes in the area.

According to local residents, martial law is in force in the area around Langchenggang township, as armed police prohibit people from coming in or out of the area.

"They're still here...There's martial law. We can't go out," a local resident told RFA's Mandarin service.

"There are still a lot of soldiers here," another villager said. "I can't guess how many."

Other residents were quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse that more than 10 Muslims from the Hui minority and more than 10 from the majority Han Chinese population died.

"Clashes have happened frequently before but this is the worst," he said. "The two groups used farm tools to fight each other," the man said.
[...]
The fighting intensified after riot police were drafted into the area to protect the initial trouble spot from thousands of reinforcements from among Hui communities elsewhere in the province.

Guess now'd be a good time to everything together, wouldn't it? Well, this is where it gets both interesting ... and, admittedly, a little speculative. From the same article quoted previously:

Worried by the violence, schools in the capital, Beijing, and other regions have begun employing professional guards to protect students, Xinhua reported.

You do not hire guards after a one-off attack. You hire guards when you know of an existing and continuing threat.

Who stabs? It's a very old way of killing, and a quick googling reveals that stabbing is common in certain circles:

Cases such as the murder of Egyptian writer Farag Fuda, the stabbing of Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, and the infamous apostasy ruling against Egyptian professor Nasr Hamid Abu-Zaid attest to the terror tactics		The Muslims ... then made her watch the murder of all four of her children, before raping and then stabbing her repeatedly to death...when the Muslims went to inform the Prophet, he said 'You have done a service to Allah
After Pearl's throat is cut, his head is severed and held aloft by a hand in front of the camera. The tape cuts to his murderers repeatedly stabbing his lifeless corpse.		A Muslim Jordanian man stabbed to death his pregnant sister because she married an Egyptian man against the family's wishes.

You are welcome to google "islam stabbing" yourself to see the results.

So there you have it: huge riots in the area, Muslim vs non-, involving thousands of people; a history of stabbing as a Muslim "mode of attack," (as Theo Van Gogh's relatives can attest); and a pattern of stabbings in Henan province indicating that the latest attack was not just an isolated incident by a lone wacko.

For a guy who doesn't trust concidences, I'm seeing a lot of them lately. What's up?