Paramahansa Yogananda said, “ Before you act, you have freedom, but after you act, the effect of that action will follow you whether you want it to or not. That is the law of Karma.” Irrespective of whether it is an individual or a community, what we do, we call for. What some Islamic extremists are doing across the globe is being done in China with them. All the violence and bloodshed they are doing in different geographies, has single-handedly boomeranged on them in China. It feels very bad to see innocent people suffer and go through torture. But because of some devils, many sinless people have to face the brunt. The law of karma does not spare anyone.
The 88-page study, which was released by the Centre for Uyghur Studies (CUS) on April 28, 2023, focused on the Chinese government’s policies in East Turkestan, also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, and described the scope of the Communist Party of China’s global campaign against Islam and the repression it caused of Uyghur Muslims. The “Islamophobia in China and Attitudes of Muslim Countries” paper cites various instances of China’s campaign against Islam. It also discusses how Muslim countries have kept silent while China treats Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan, which is under Chinese occupation, or in the Xinjiang province.
From the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 till the present, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has conducted systematic and historical endeavours to “sinicize” Islam and Muslims. Additionally, the study describes the various dimensions of China’s confrontation with Islam in East Turkistan throughout the past seven decades, most recently beginning in 2017. It also examines China’s deception strategies in the Islamic world and the various propaganda techniques the Chinese government use to prevent Muslims from openly condemning how China treats them because of their faith. The report’s final chapter discusses the OIC’s neglect of the Uyghurs and how Muslim-majority countries see the Uyghur Genocide. A Turkish-Muslim ethnic group known as the Uyghurs lives in Xinjiang, the largest and most Western administrative area of China. It is bordered by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and India. The Uighur population and the Chinese government have long been at odds in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
The research report emphasises how Islam has always been seen in China as a foreign religion that originated outside. Consequently, there has been a perception of Muslims as being foreign and archaic. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949, according to the report, and during the previous 70 years of CCP control, hatred towards Muslims in the country has only become worse. According to the survey, China has extraordinarily high levels of anti-Islamic sentiment. The problem was made worse by how Muslims and Islam were portrayed in China’s official media.
The “Global War on Terror,” which was proclaimed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, has also contributed to the favourable and acceptable international environment for anti-Islamic sentiment in China. The PRC’s animosity towards Muslims has risen since Xi Jinping assumed office. The CCP’s work conference on religious affairs in 2016 in particular was a turning point in the country’s particular hostility to Islam. Chinese authorities have started a nationwide campaign of repression against many religions, particularly those that are viewed as foreign (like Islam and Christianity). The acts performed by Chinese authorities against Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan or Xinjiang, according to the think tank’s research paper, have been the most extreme manifestation of animosity towards Islam in China. Under the pretext of “re-education and rehabilitation,” the Chinese government has imprisoned millions of Muslims, and thousands of mosques have been destroyed in East Turkestan. According to the study, Chinese officials compare Islam to an “infectious disease” and Uyghur Muslims to “infected people,” underscoring the necessity of eradicating the faith.
According to the research, Muslims in China have faced prejudice as a result of the Chinese government’s overt and covert backing of situations in which people who wear the hijab are made fun of, denied access to public places like hospitals and hotels, and even denied jobs. Muslims are vehemently opposed to classifying food as either halal or haram. Islamic dress and traditions are challenged and avoided by Chinese society because they are regarded as foreign. This study also shows how discrimination against Muslims in China—particularly towards the Uyghur people of East Turkestan—has evolved into a national policy. The academics’ analysis details the Chinese government’s ongoing efforts to eradicate Islam ever since it first appeared in the Xinjiang area. It highlights the various anti-Islam campaigns carried out over the years by the Communist Party of China under the leadership of Xi Jinping, including a total ban on religious education, harsh repression of religious scholars, burning of the Quran, destroying mosques and cemeteries, changing prayers and zikr, forbidding the hijab, eliminating Islamic customs, forbidding learning Arabic, and erasing the Muslim identity of Uyghur children.
Islam preaching is prohibited, according to the article, meaning East Turkestanian Muslims are unable to study and pass down their faith. Muslim children are required to be taught communist ideology and Chinese culture at state schools after East Turkistan was occupied in 1966. Chinese communists force the closure of Islamic schools (Madarsa), remove Islam from the educational system, and demand that Muslim youngsters learn atheism and communist dogma. Uyghurs who were studying abroad in countries with a majority of Muslims, including Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, were imprisoned after the CCP came to power in 2014, and those who were still there were ordered to leave. Additionally, they forbade Uyghur parents from teaching their children Islamic traditions like the Namaz and the Quran and stationed state agents inside Uyghur households to constantly watch on them. With the aid of the Egyptian government, the Chinese government forcefully deported a sizable number of Uyghur students from Al-Azhar University to China in 2017.
Suppression of Maulavis: In Xinjiang, religious scholars receive the harshest treatment at the hands of the Chinese communist dictatorship since the administration regards Islamic practices as crimes and religious leaders as criminals. The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) data reviewed in the report indicates that since 2014, up to 1,000 imams have been jailed because of their ties to Islamic doctrine. Most of those who were detained received sentences of 15–20 years or perhaps life in jail. It further states that the targeting of Islamic intellectuals has significantly increased since 2017. In 2017, a large number of Uyghur clerics and imams were seized, jailed, or transported to internment camps. Those who weren’t in jail were made to perform in front of the public while singing and dancing in support of the communist party.
Burning of the Quran: The study draws attention to yet another tactic used by the CCP government in its conflict with Islam, namely, the burning of religious texts, including the Quran. According to the research, since 2014, this practice has grown. People who did not voluntarily turn up religious materials to the police during China’s recent campaign against Islam in East Turkestan were sentenced to harsh punishments when they were discovered. Muslims in East Turkestan were occasionally forced to discard the Quran by throwing it into rivers out of fear. In China, all Islamic educational materials and textbooks have been forbidden since 2017. All the religious books and materials were collected and set on fire. Those in possession of such things were imprisoned or taken to prisons or concentration camps.
Destruction of cemeteries and mosques: In addition to repressing imams, Chinese authorities also demolished or altered mosques. The policy was at its severe between 1966 and 1976, during the “Cultural Revolution.” The process of tearing down mosques started again in 2017. A significant number of mosques in East Turkestan were demolished by the Chinese government under Ji Xingping’s “Mosque Rectification Programme.”Additionally, several mosques have been converted into eateries, pig farms, etc. The mosques that are still in existence are only used for propaganda and touristic purposes; it is not permitted to enter them to worship there. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) barred Uyghur Muslims from worshipping Allah and replaced the wording in their prayers and Zikr (remembering God) scripts with those that praise Xi Jinping and the CCP. Zikr, or prayers, were changed to venerate Ji Xingping. Chinese authorities have begun measures that insult Islam and Muslims in addition to requiring Imams to dance and perform socialist songs. Since 2017, Xinjiang’s streets have been covered in anti-Islamic signs and chants. These acts are all too frequently carried out in jails and concentration camps. The guards at the camp and prison force the Muslim inmates to praise and thank Xi Jinping and the communist party before and after meals. Those who object to this face punishment and food deprivation. Inmates are pressured to disparage the Prophet and condemn Islam.
Banning Hijab: Chinese oppression of Uyghur Muslims has been known for a long time. Earlier the Chinese police had established a dress code for Uyghur women, under which Muslim women are not allowed to wear long dresses. In 2020, photos appeared on social media showing police cutting the dresses of Uyghur women for being “too long”. Han men are reportedly sharing a bed with Uyghur Muslim women in China whose male family members, frequently husbands, are detained in “re-education camps” by a decree by the Chinese government. In 2017, all Hijabi Uyghur women were sent to prisons and concentration camps. According to the “Qaraqash List,” a document that was obtained from the Chinese government, many Uyghur women were detained in concentration camps in the county of Qaraqash because they chose to wear the hijab.
Prohibited from practising Islam: Since 2014, the Chinese government has outlawed all forms of religion under the guise of “fighting religious extremism and terrorism.”Islamic weddings, burials, naming rites, and Quranic recitations for the deceased, for instance, have all been made illegal. Chinese authorities have banned the study and teaching of Arabic because it is considered “religious extremism” following the 2014 crackdown. Those who had previously done so had been imprisoned. The study of Arabic is currently outright forbidden in East Turkestan. There is not a single Arabic language school in the Xinjiang province, except the government-run “Xinjiang Islamic Institute” (which was only retained because the Chinese government needed to train imams devoted to the CPP and spread their message towards the Islamic world).
Muslim identities of Uyghur children being obliterated The full erasure of the Muslim identity of Uyghur children is one of the most anti-Islamic practices carried out by the Chinese communist regime as part of the battle against Islam in East Turkestan. The government places Uyghur parents in prison or labour camps, forcing their children into state orphanages and boarding schools. These orphanages completely conform to communist doctrine when raising children, making them Han Chinese. Even the Uyghur names of the kids are modified. The Chinese government encourages ‘assimilation’ through forced marriages between Han people and Uyghur Muslims: A study on the steps the Chinese government has taken to encourage interethnic marriage between Han Chinese ethnic groups and Uyghur Muslims was released by the Uyghur Human Rights Project on November 16, 2022. The paper emphasises that the Chinese government uses both coercive and incentive-based tactics.
Since 2017, China has limited or outright forbidden ethnic practices and Islamic religious rites among the primarily Muslim Uyghurs to combat “religious extremism.” The Chinese government pushes Uyghur Muslims to consume pork as “free food” Sayragul Sautbay, a physician and educator, disclosed in a new book published in 2020 how Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang are compelled to consume pork. It is noteworthy that because pork has been classified as a Haram food, it is outright forbidden in Islam. Even outside the detention facilities, according to Sautbay, Muslims were forced to consume pork. She reported that when several of the pupils in a school in Altay, northern Xinjiang, refused to be forced fed pork, soldiers were rushed in to take control of the situation. According to the educator, kindergarteners are given pork as part of a “free food” programme.
The Chinese government had used spies to make sure that the Uyghur Muslims were not fasting throughout Ramadan, according to a story that surfaced last month. The report cited a police officer from an area near Turpan, or Tulufan in Chinese, in the eastern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, who claimed that the spies, known by Chinese officials as “ears,” are recruited from regular residents, police officers, and members of neighbourhood committees. Radio Free Asia was informed by the policeman that “we have many secret agents.” China began arbitrarily detaining Uyghurs in education camps in 2017 and forbade them from fasting during Ramadan as part of broader efforts to disparage Uyghur culture, language, and religion. In addition to forbidding them from fasting throughout Ramadan, Hina began arbitrarily imprisoning Uyghurs in education camps in 2017.
The majority of Uyghurs were also prohibited by Chinese authorities from worshipping at Eid-Ul-Fitr in mosques or even at home. Despite such “atrocities,” China’s continuous dictatorial practises, which mostly afflict the Uyghurs, have not resulted in any consequences. The Islamic world has kept a stiff lip towards China while having submitted to Chinese whims.
While all deserve s dignified life and freedom to live the way they wish, life is a boomerang. The Uyghurs should get relief from the torture that they are going through but that probably might be possible only when the Islamic extremists across the globe stop torturing and converting innocent people who do not belong to their community. Nature has its way of evening up every act. Good or Bad.
