For a terrorist group that touts itself as the defender of oppressed Muslims the world over, Islamic State (or Isis) has been remarkably quiet about the situation facing the Uygurs in China’s Xinjiang region. On the face of things, the plight of Xinjiang’s 11 million Uygurs would seem an obvious rallying cry for Isis. Another possibility, said Nodirbek Soliev, a Senior Analyst at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in RSIS, was that Isis saw China as less threatening because it had not been involved in military operations against it in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.