Thread: Group says China demolishes mosque for not supporting Olympics

That sounds good. Religion shouldn't be something a child is forced into. Let them make their own decision when they're old enough.

That's actually a very good idea. Of course it would only ever work in a place like China, if you do it anywhere else expect the place to turn into Iraq.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

Sir, I know of no such decree. Maybe you're referring to the public education system but that does not interfere with the home life and religious life.

Colonel,

I too was surprised to learn that children are not allowed to visit mosques, more so since the Moslems are very serious about their Friday congregation. This is so incongruous that I cannot forget it.

This I also read in another article.

Sir,

I'm trying to cross-verify the article you've posted. My thanks for bringing it to my attention.

The whole article

This article was published by F18News on: 15 September 2004
XINJIANG: Imams and mosque education under state control
By Igor Rotar, Forum 18 News Service <http://www.forum18.org>
The imam of the central mosque in the town of Turpan, north east of China's Xinjiang region, admitted to Forum 18 News Service in
early September that the Chinese authorities name all imams to local mosques. Imams also have to attend regular meetings of the
national religious committees at their town administration, where they are told what they can do and are ordered to preach peace
and condemn terrorism in their sermons. Local adult Muslims, mainly ethnic Uighurs, can learn about their faith only in certain
mosques where the imam has gained special approval, while children are banned. "The authorities instruct us to tell parents that
their children must complete their education before they can start to attend mosque," the imam reported, though Forum 18 observed
some children in Turpan's mosques at Friday prayers.
Although the local Uighur Muslim population is not as devout as in the south-west of China's Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region,
Forum 18 News Service found in early September in the town of Turpan in Xinjiang's north-east that local Muslims (most of them
Uighurs) are as harshly controlled by the Chinese authorities as in the south-west. The town of 65,000 people is situated in the
Turpan Depression. At 150 metres (500 feet) below sea level, the depression is the lowest place in China, though the highest
temperatures in the country have been recorded here.
The imam-hatyb of Turpan's central Janubikuk mosque, Sirojdin Abdurakhim, admitted to Forum 18 that all the imams are
appointed by the authorities. The imam-hatybs also have to attend regular meetings of the national religious committees (which are
responsible for work with religious believers) at the town administration. "At the committee we are told what mistakes are allowable
at a mosque," he told Forum 18 in Turpan on 10 September. "We are ordered to preach the concept of peace to believers and to
explain to them what harm is done to Muslims by the terrorists who operate in the name of our religion."
Although, unlike in the south-western city of Kashgar, Forum 18 did not find any posters in mosques banning young people under
the age of 18 from attending, Abdurakhim admitted to Forum 18 that children are not allowed to attend mosques. "The authorities
instruct us to tell parents that their children must complete their education before they can start to attend mosque," he told Forum 18.
However, this order is not observed too rigorously and Forum 18 observed several children in Turpan's mosques.
Abdurakhim also admitted that children are not allowed to study Islam. Even adults may only study the faith in mosques where the
imam-hatybs have received specific authorisation from the authorities, though Forum 18 did see posters in a number of mosques
stating that instruction in Islam was permitted in them.
Separatist tendencies are far less developed among Turpan's Uighurs than among fellow-Uighurs in Kashgar and in other cities of
south-western Xinjiang such as Hotan. Speaking to Forum 18, local Uighurs themselves ascribed their relative loyalty to Beijing
mainly to the fact that Turpan is much closer to central China than are the cities of south-western Xinjiang and that it therefore fell
under Beijing's influence earlier.
Nevertheless, Turpan's Uighurs, like their fellow-Uighurs in the south-west, prefer to pursue a policy of voluntary "apartheid"
towards the Chinese. Local Uighur men hardly ever marry Chinese women. They also refuse to eat in Chinese-owned restaurants
because the food is not prepared in accordance with Muslim law. At the same time, Uighurs in the Turpan area are far less devout
than those in the south-west. Even during Friday prayers Forum 18 counted no more than 50 believers at Turpan's Janubikuk
mosque. In south-western Xinjiang, around 30 per cent of married women wear the Islamic veil, but Forum 18 saw no woman with
her face covered in Turpan.
It is worth noting that, as local Muslims told Forum 18, between 1983 and 1996 underage children were not prevented from
attending mosque or from studying Islam. Forum 18's sources maintained that during this period, Muslims faced almost no
restrictions from the authorities. It is possible that Beijing has stepped up its policy against Muslims because the Chinese authorities
have concluded that religion is clearly an underlying cause of Uighur separatist sentiment.
For more background information see Forum 18's Xinjiang religious freedom survey at
Forum 18 Search/Archive
Forum 18 Search/Archive Copyright Forum18 News Service 2004 Page 1/2

From Boston Globe

Muslim voices rising in China

Controls on Islam spur resentment among a restive minority

By Jehangir S. Pocha, Globe Correspondent | November 19, 2006

HETIAN, China -- On a recent Friday, the holy day of Islam, crowds swelled inside the antique Jame mosque, the largest in this ancient town in Xinjiang Province in the far west of China, home to the nation's small but restive Muslim minority.

The turbaned and bearded clerics who preached to the gathered faithful had all been vetted for their political beliefs by local Chinese authorities, who determine what sermons they can give, what version of the Koran they may use, and where and how religious gatherings can be held.

The Chinese government forces all Muslims in China to adhere to a state-controlled version of their religion, and banners placed around town warn locals not to stray from the official faith. The imams are not even allowed to issue the call to prayer using a public address system.

The Chinese government has tightened its constraints on the Uighur ethnic minority in western China amid official fears of a rise in militant Islam. The Chinese are acutely aware of the growing strategic importance of Xinjiang in Central Asia and the large oil and natural gas reserves under its soil.

In turn, resentment among the Uighurs toward perceived repression by the Chinese has intensified. And increasingly, the Uighurs are speaking out and demanding autonomy, thanks in part to the emergence of articulate Uighur voices at home and in exile.

Though Xinjiang is ostensibly an autonomous province, Wang Lequan, the local Communist Party secretary, who is Chinese, has publicly called for Uighurs (pronounced Wee'-gurs) to learn more Mandarin and adopt more Chinese customs.

To dissuade Uighur youths from inheriting their traditional Islamic culture, the government has banned children from entering mosques, studying Islam, or celebrating Islamic holidays.

During the month of Ramadan, when devout Muslims fast through the day, schools take special care to ensure that all their students eat, a local school principal said.

The fear and state control under which Uighurs live in Xinjiang was apparent when some foreign journalists, who are generally not allowed into the province, were taken on a tour by Chinese officials last month. The journalists were carefully monitored, but when they did manage to go out alone, most Uighurs were too scared to talk about the antipathy they bear toward China.

A man who identified himself only as Abdel rubbed his clean-shaven chin anxiously as the four Uighur Muslim friends finished their dinner of goat soup and noodles.

"The government doesn't allow young people here to grow beards," he said as the sun set. "If you do, they will send you to the forced labor camps. This is a communist country and it is scared of Muslims. Our Uighur ethnic group is suppressed the most."

Abdel asked not to be fully identified out of fear of reprisal from local authorities. But his is just one of the angry whispers filtering through the crumbling buildings and twisted alleys of Xinjiang's Uighur cities and villages.

Resentment against Beijing has been building here since 1949, when Mao Zedong annexed the independent nation of East Turkestan and began to assimilate it into mainland China. To do this Beijing imposed strictures on Islam and sought to dilute the culture of the local Uighurs, a Central Asian people with a Turkic-Persian culture.

Abdel fidgeted uncomfortably throughout the few minutes he talked to the journalists, saying the biggest problem Uighurs face is that of social and economic exclusion.

"The truth is, where you see money there will be Han, where there is poverty you will see us Uighurs," Abdel said. Han is an ethnic group that makes up the majority of China .

Some Chinese officials say they are baffled by the criticism China receives for its policy on Xinjiang, where the nation's relatively small Muslim population of about 8 million is concentrated.

"On the one hand the world complains that Pakistan doesn't do enough to control its madrassas, and on the other they complain when China does not allow them," said one official, referring to Muslim religious schools. The official asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the press. "We believe Islam can be an unbalancing force so we need to control it."

Though Uighurs have traditionally followed a moderate blend of Sunni Islam and Sufi mysticism strongly influenced by local folklore and rural traditions, a rising Islamic mood is palpable in Xinjiang. More and more women are wearing veils, residents say, and mosques are packed on Fridays.

Mostly this is due to a rising interest in religion that is common across much of China, where people are reacting to the intense atheism of the Maoist years. But in Xinjiang, rising Islamic sentiment has also taken on a political hue, with many separatists demanding the re-creation of an independent East Turkestan on religious grounds. Some of these separatists have conducted armed attacks against Chinese targets, and Chinese officials say they are also behind most of the public protests that have rocked Xinjiang in recent years.

After the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Chinese authorities have used the global war on terrorism to crack down on suspected separatists. Plainclothes policemen routinely roam the rustic mosques and bustling markets of Uighur towns. Human rights groups and local residents say anyone thought to be acting suspiciously is hustled away and often punished without a fair trial.

Though Chinese actions in Xinjiang have been very similar to its actions in neighboring Tibet, whose Buddhist culture has been systematically undermined by Beijing, the situation in this remote western province has received much less global attention.

That is changing, thanks to the emergence of a new generation of articulate Uighur leaders and to growing support for Uighur separatists from Islamists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries -- part of the global upsurge in pan-Islamism.

Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur exile living in Washington, D.C., who reportedly had been considered a leading candidate for this year's Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights work in Xinjiang, says the world is taking notice of the Uighurs' suffering from what they see as Chinese colonization.

"The Chinese have denied us basic rights and freedoms -- that's why we now want them out of our land," Kadeer said in a telephone interview. "A lot of doors are being opened to me [in Washington] so I am able to raise the issue of the Uighur people at very high levels."

In the streets of Hetian, it is easy to see how different Xinjiang is from most of the rest of China. The skyline is crowded not with traditional Chinese sloping roofs but with Islamic domes and spires. Most of the older buildings have elegant Turko-Persian style balconies decorated with floral filigree work, and men wearing doppas -- small four- or five-cornered brimless embroidered hats -- sit on benches in the street smoking water pipes and eating grilled skewers of meat.

But Chinese officials insist Xinjiang was historically part of China until the Soviet Union briefly helped separatists create East Turkestan in the 1930s.

Part of the reason China is tightening its grip on Xinjiang is its growing strategic importance. The province has been found to be rich in oil. It also borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and has become an essential launching pad for China's geopolitical interests in these areas, where the United States is also jockeying for influence.

Beijing is also worried that the disintegration of the Soviet Union and emergence of the independent "Stans" could motivate Uighurs to re-create East Turkestan.

Faced with the might of the Chinese state, many Uighurs fear their unique Persian-Turkic culture, which also includes its own language, will soon fade into history.

Ahmet, a 16-year-old student in Kashgar, a city near Xinjiang's southern border with Pakistan that is a hotbed of insurgent activity, said the solution his parents are holding out is simple.

"They tell me to marry a Han girl," he said. "That way we can get some chances. Otherwise, as Uighurs, life is very hard."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
Muslim voices rising in China - The Boston Globe

Sir,

On 3rd read, that sounded like a make work project for some local commissar trying to ass kiss his superiors.

Statement by
The Acting Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, Stanford University
Dr. Jacqueline Armijo
to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
July 24, 2003


....Although Muslims throughout China face a variety of challenges and are the subject of a wide range of discriminatory actions, the situation for the indigenous peoples of Xinjiang is unprecedented in its severity, surpassing even the repressive policies facing the Tibetans. Muslims that hold official positions, including faculty at the universities are forbidden to carry out any religious activity in public. They are not allowed to attend mosque, fast during Ramadan, or in any other way respect their religious traditions in public. There are signs on mosques refusing entry to anyone under 18 years of age. Islamic education outside the one officially controlled school is forbidden......

Testimony of Dr. Jacqueline Armijo

If that is not enough to support what I wrote, then I wonder what is.

One wonders who should give the respect now. Though I still don't understand this respect pizazz.

It is time people educate themselves before accusing others of not knowing as to what they write!

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

Sir,

On 3rd read, that sounded like a make work project for some local commissar trying to ass kiss his superiors.

I wouldn't know that.

All I know I have read about it and so I wrote what I wrote.

All I know is that I have posted three different posts one from Norway, second from a US newspaper and the third is the testimony of The Acting Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, Stanford University, Dr. Jacqueline Armijo to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

Obviously all couldn't be wrong, more so since they are from diverse sources.

If they are all wrong, then one should not trust the written word from any source.

Also, it means that if we are not to believe the written word, we will have to be God and be present for every event in every part of the world. The very idea or suggestion is ridiculous!

I can assure you that I normally refrain from commenting if I do not have some background knowledge or if I have not read of what I am writing or not have seen it in the media or not have experience of it.