In China, Muslims told to sell alcohol

Officials seek to undermine Islam in restive region

BEIJING — Chinese authorities have ordered Muslim shopkeepers and restaurant owners in a village in its troubled Xinjiang region to sell alcohol and cigarettes, and promote them in “eye-catching displays,” in an attempt to undermine Islam’s hold on local residents, Radio Free Asia reported.

Establishments failed to comply threatened with closed and their with prosecution.

Facing widespread discontent over its repressive rule in the mainly Muslim province of Xinjiang, and mounting violence in the past two years, China has launched a series of “strike hard” campaigns to weaken the hold of Islam in the western region.

Government employees and children have been barred from attending mosques or observing the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In many places, women have been barred from wearing face-covering veils, and men discouraged from growing long beards.

In the village of Aktash in southern Xinjiang, Communist Party official Adil Sulayman said that many local shopkeepers had stopped selling alcohol and cigarettes from 2012 “because they fear public scorn,” while many locals had decided to abstain from drinking and smoking.

The Quran calls the use of “intoxicants” sinful, while some Muslim religious leaders have also forbidden smoking.

Sulayman said authorities in Xinjiang viewed ethnic Uighurs who did not smoke as adhering to “a form of religious extremism” and had issued the order to counter growing religious sentiment that he said was “affecting stability.”

“We have a campaign to weaken religion here, and this is part of that campaign,” he told RFA, the Washington-based news service.

The notice ordered all restaurants and supermarkets in Aktash to sell five different brands of alcohol and cigarettes and display them prominently.

“Anybody who neglects this notice and fails to act will see their shops sealed off, their businesses suspended, and legal action pursued against them,” the notice said.

Radio Free Asia, which provides some of the only coverage of events in Xinjiang to escape Chinese government controls, said Hotan prefecture, where Aktash is located, had become “a hotbed of violent stabbing and shooting incidents between ethnic Uighurs and Chinese security forces.”

China says Uighur militants based abroad are using the Internet to inspire local Muslims to take up violent jihad against the state.

Critics say China’s long repression of Uighur rights has pushed a minority toward a violent form of Islam. Clumsy attempts to promote alcohol or forbid beards and veils may prove counterproductive, they warn. that were being owners