Abdulhakim Idris is the Executive Director of the Center for Uyghur Studies, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank dedicated to research, education, and advocacy on Uyghur history, culture, religious freedom, and human rights. He is the author of “Menace: China’s Colonization of the Islamic World & Uyghur Genocide”, published in Arabic, English, Indonesian, and Turkish.
Idris was born in 1968 in Hotan, East Turkistan. He received his early education in Islamic studies and the Arabic language at traditional madrasas in Hotan before leaving his hometown in 1986 to pursue Islamic studies in Egypt. He studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the most prominent centers of Islamic learning in the world. After completing his studies in Egypt, he settled in Munich, Germany, in 1990, becoming one of the first Uyghurs to seek asylum in Europe. In Germany, he studied Industrial Management at the Deutsche Angestellten-Akademie (DAA) in Munich.
Idris has since emerged as a leading voice for the Uyghur people on the international stage. He has written extensively and participated in numerous conferences, panels, and advocacy initiatives across the United States, Europe, and the Islamic world, focusing on exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) repression of Uyghurs and mobilizing international support for Uyghur rights. In September 2021, he was summoned as an expert witness before the Uyghur Tribunal in London, which concluded that China had committed crimes against humanity and genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslim peoples. His work places particular emphasis on engaging the Islamic world and Muslim communities.
In addition to his advocacy and scholarship, Idris has played a foundational role in building Uyghur civil society organizations in the diaspora. He is one of the founding members of the East Turkistan Union in Europe, established in Germany in 1991 as the first Uyghur organization in Europe. He later co-founded the World Uyghur Youth Congress in 1996 and the East Turkistan National Congress in 1999, serving as Treasurer and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Youth Congress. In 2004, he was among the co-founders of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), where he served in multiple leadership roles between 2004 and 2021, including Treasurer, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee, Director of the Refugee Center, and Inspector General. After moving to the United States in 2009, he also served on the Board of Directors of the Uyghur American Association in Washington, D.C. In 2017, he and his wife, Rushan Abbas, co-founded the non-profit organization Campaign for Uyghurs.
Idris currently resides in Virginia. He speaks Arabic, English, German, Turkish, and Uyghur.