China bans use of anti-Islam words on social media

“Islamophobic” terms used by Chinese internet users to stigmatise Muslims have been blocked by authorities to prevent bias against Islam, official media reported yesterday.

“The Islamophobic terms invented by Chinese Internet users to stigmatise Muslims have been blocked by authorities on Chinese social media despite criticism from the netizens that such a ban overtly favourable to Muslim minorities,” state-run Global Times reported.

As a result of the ban, searches for “green religion” and “peaceful religion”, often used by Internet users to refer to Islam and to circumvent censorship of inappropriate online speech, showed no results on China’s Weibo microblog on Wednesday, the report said.

Posts containing the phrases cannot be posted for “violations of Weibo’s complaints related rules.” Insults against Islam are also blocked in Weibo’s search engine, it said.

“Discontent and fears of Muslims have been on the rise on China’s Internet in recent years. Complainers target Chinese authorities’ affirmative discrimination policies toward ethnic minorities, especially Muslim groups,” the report said.

“It’s necessary to timely remove radical phrases that discriminate against Islam and are biased against Muslims to prevent worsening online hatred towards the group. Those phrases severely undermine religious harmony and ethnic unity,” said Xiong Kunxin, a professor at Beijing’s Minzu University of China in Beijing. (outlookindia.com)