China has incarcerated more than 2 million innocent Uyghurs, many of whom are Muslim, into a vast network of concentration camps.

You might think this would upset a political entity the stated raison d'etre of which is absolutist adherence to Islam. The Taliban, after all, proclaim their members to be pure student servants of Mohammed — individuals dedicated to upholding Islam on Earth.

However, considering the Islamic principle of the "Ummah" (the idea of a global community of Muslims unified in service of God's message), the Taliban appears to have forgotten it is Islamic.

Hence the Taliban's chirpy meeting with Chinese officials in Tianjin on Wednesday. The Taliban delegation met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and was led by its foreign representative Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. The visit was seemingly timed to aggravate the United States, following Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman's departure from Tianjin on Tuesday.

Rather than demand restitution for the Muslims that China has oppressed, the Taliban offered Beijing a salute. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Baradar said that "China has always been a reliable friend of the Afghan people and commended China’s just and positive role in Afghanistan’s peace and reconciliation process." The ministry added that the Taliban had pledged to "protect human rights, especially rights of women and children."

Now we see why Wang and Baradar got along so well.

When it comes to how the Taliban treats Afghan Muslim women and children and how Beijing treats Chinese Uyghur women and children, Wang and Baradar surely had an abundance of tips to share. Wang might have contrasted the Taliban's routing use of stoning to kill women with China's forcible sterilization of and rape prostitution against Uyghur women. Baradar might have compared the Taliban's whipping and use of children as explosive soldiers to China's kidnapping of children from their parents. Baradar and Wang must also have found kinship in their varied efforts to turn children into Islamic extremist/Communist Party drones.

You thought that Deobandi fundamentalists and communist secularists might not have much in common? Think again.