Beijing’s sinister campaign sows fear among Muslims
It is sunset and the faithful are being called to prayer in one of the largest mosques in the northern Chinese province of Ningxia – but here there is no wailing muezzin’s call, just the sound of a tiny congregation shuffling in quietly off the street.
By the time prayers begin, there are only about 40 pairs of shoes in the entrance hall of the Nanguan mosque that once accommodated hundreds of worshippers from China’s Hui Muslim minority. This year its congregation has shrunk sharply.
One reason for the empty prayer mats is a ban by the Chinese government on all Communist Party members from attending daily prayers at mosques. The call to prayer that once echoed morning and night over the region’s capital, Yinchuan, is banned too.
And as a constant reminder of where loyalties must lie, a Chinese flag flutters in the courtyard, an obligatory requirement for all China’s mosques since May. ‘‘We are very scared,’’ one local imam tells The Daily Telegraph, requesting anonymity, as he says that the Chinese state is now reaching into the lives of Muslims like never before.
And ‘‘scared’’ is exactly what China wants. Xi Jinping, the country’s increasingly autocratic president, has vowed to ‘‘Sinicise’’ religion by stamping out what the officially atheist ruling Communist Party considers a worrying trend of Islamisation.
The state’s fears originate in the far western province of Xinjiang, where violent antigovernment attacks have led to a crackdown and the internment of a million Uighurs, despite worldwide condemnation.
Detainees caught up in the cultural eradication programme recount stories of political indoctrination, psychological abuse and physical torture. All are subject to intense surveillance in what has become a police state, heightened with modern tools such as facial recognition and DNA collection.
The suppression in Ningxia, 2000 kilometres to the east, is more subtle but sinister none the less, borrowing directly from the Xinjiang playbook.
Ningxia authorities recently signed a co-operation agreement so their officials learn from the latter’s policies.
This frightens the Hui – the largest of China’s 10 Muslim minority groups at 10.5 million – which believes that internment camps and further repression may soon be on the way.
‘‘We are aware of all this, and are watching what happens; it does worry us,’’ adds the imam. ‘‘We hope what’s happening there [in Xinjiang] doesn’t happen to us here.’’
The suppression of Islam in Ningxia is nowhere close to Xinjiang levels, but in Yinchuan the early signs of a cultural eradication programme are clearly visible. Arabic signs are scratched out in the streets, copies of the Koran have disappeared from bookshop shelves and the onionshaped domes have been removed from buildings all across the city.
The Chinese state, a massive provider of jobs, has the levers to impose its will – for example, by banning government workers from wearing white prayer caps to work.
The effect is a rising climate of fear.
In the local market one woman said police had raided her store, ordering her to cut out Arabic labels from inside the prayer hats on the shelves.
Fearing more trouble, she also turned the few decorative plates in the display window inward so the Arabic script cannot be seen from outside. It is an introversion visible throughout this minority community, which can trace its roots back to the ancient Silk Road traders of central Asia.
– Telegraph Group