this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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I’m disappointed that you are offering a low-quality source like the Financial Times for these serious accusations, and the shoddy reporting is apparent in the article itself:
Which officals? Which current and retired civil servants? And why is the only source for this ‘a US-based campaigner for Chinese Muslim rights’? The lack of corroboration should be worrying. Relying on pseudonymous sources is usually not good reporting, either, as they have as many credentials as a common rumourer.
The conclusion is also confusing:
So, wait, Beijing wants to destroy Islam by… reforming it? I guess that that could be possible in some way, but the article does not explain how.
That being said, I don’t want to dismiss every claim in this article at face value, like restricting religion to adults (which, honestly, might be for the best), but if I believed that Beijing was trying to eradicate Islam then I would be dissatisfied with this article’s quality.
Although this does make me wonder if there are Chinese Muslims consenting to or even ordering these reformations. Perhaps @yogthos@lemmy.ml or @davel@lemmy.ml could inform me on this if they would be so gracious.
Look at the pictures. Literally look at them. Source does not matter.
Go look up any Youtube video and see how the article matches how the mosques look. Why did they all go from classic Islamic architecture to Han temples?
There are also videos of Uyghurs protesting this https://youtu.be/Z7nVLuOM1D8
Yes, the source very much does matter because sources can distort the truth, lie by omission, and create a narrative that's completely at odds with reality. Contrast this with reporting from an actual Muslim country https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2018/09/25/xinjiang-what-a-wonderful-place.html
Even western media reports on occasion that Xinjiang imams defend China against U.S. criticism
https://web.archive.org/web/20210513115748/https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/on-eid-xinjiang-imams-defend-china-against-u-s-criticism-1.5425967
And of course, all the Muslim majority countries have been supporting China against western allegations
Here's another report from Italy of all places https://idi-international.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/New-Report.pdf
Here's what a reporter from Pakistan who actually visited Xinjiang had to say https://dailytimes.com.pk/723317/exposing-the-occidents-baseless-lies-about-xinjiang/
Here are some very different videos of Uyghurs for you https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbOIKUddMBtp0_xEFqn4zey48kkgJq5w
The political angle around the narrative around Xinjiang is very transparent. For example, here's George Bush's chief of staff openly saying that US wants to destabilize the region. An ex-CIA operative details US operations radicalizing and training terrorists in the region in this book. Here's an excerpt:
US has been stoking terrorism in the region while they've been running a propaganda campaign against China in the west. In fact, US even classified Uyghur separatists as a terrorist group at one point https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-was-at-war-uyghur-terrorists-now-claims-etim-doesnt-exist/276916/
Here's an interview with a son of imam killed in Xinjiang https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-19/Son-of-imam-assassinated-in-Kashgar-s-2014-mosque-attack-speaks-out-RqNiyrcRuo/index.html
The west brainwashing people into extremism is an all time classic. ISIS is a Western creation primarily pushed through UAE and Saudi. Many Uyghurs are drawn into the sect. This is well known.
What China did however was a general Muslim crackdown. And this is not new. State Atheism is a CCP classic.
Your articles did not answer the simple question: why do all the Mosques suddenly look like Han temples? Please do not address any other point except the mosque exterior change.
Your evidence of a general Muslim crackdown is exterior cosmetic changes to some mosques which were cherry-picked by western media?
So atheist China is making religious temples look like other religious temples? Pick a lane.
I think that this theory comes from the West’s Han supremacy narrative (projection, much?). But again, even NATOpedia has counterexamples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_China.
I can't read Chinese but is this translation not accurate?
https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/islamsinifcationplan/
Muslims living in China disagree with you as many testimonies in the videos I linked show. And all the Muslim countries disagree with you as well as do Muslims who have traveled to Xinjiang from these countries.
There are over 24,400 mosques in China, and pretty sure vast majority of them do not in fact look like Han temples. I don't know what the actual reason for change in the look of the mosques FT chose to parade is, but there isn't even a serious suggestion that it's representative of any sort of a general trend. It's incredibly disappointing that somebody would accept very obvious propaganda completely uncritically.
Even the Kaaba didn't look the same as it did when it was first constructed thousands of years ago:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1895886/saudi-arabia
And yet, we don't see the U.S. running the same line on it as it does for China's mosques.. Wouldn't it already be weird that the West would care about one group of Muslims but terrorize, demonize and berate every other? I wonder if their strategic location to the Belt and Road Initiative has anything to do with it, wink wink.
it's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jea5wBu2glA
I'm not familiar with a "Han" religion, i always though China was not an ethnoreligious state. Also it took you just once sentence to move from the "Han" religion being pushed by state to the "state atheism", can you stop for a second and reflect what prompted this nonsense after Yogthos dropped all the sources for you?
Han Buddhism has turned from religion to culture. Unless you believe that the dragon parades are done out of faith instead of culture. It is the main architectural style of Chinese history.
It is like Christmas in America. Most people celebrating it don't even believe in Christianity. It's just become a tradition
Read also the Chinese governments explanation:
https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/islamsinifcationplan/
So, not only you didn't reflected but also doubling down claiming... "cultural buddhism" from "state atheist" country? Maybe look at ancient Chinese architecture, it was already developing that style long before buddhism arrived in China. Not to mention architecture as a proof of cultural invasion is weak as hell, i guess i am not a Pole anymore because a lot of our churches are build in either Italian or Franco-German style. Oh, and you also show typical orientalism by conflating religion with entire culture. Also Uyghurs weren't even muslim for most of their history, they were buddhist longer than muslim, and before that they were manichean and before that shamanist.
This is going to blow your mind https://www.ncregister.com/cna/famous-atheist-richard-dawkins-says-he-considers-himself-a-cultural-christian
The guy who i since long ago not considered atheist but an seeking agnostic with western chauvinist characteristics suddenly clicked up to religion that is theological base of western chauvinism?
Mind status: not even slightly rustled.
That's guy literally made Atheism his personality. If you don't consider that Atheist I'm not sure what is.
No, he might said he is atheist, and probably he even believed it himself, but did you even read any of his books? He loudly denounced this or that god, but everything was just oozing with the essence of agnostic seeking new spiritual opium. At the point he defended evolution theory with truly neophyte zeal (i'm saying about how he presented it) so when he clicked back to his old opium, just with the meaningless "cultural" addition, it wasn't surprising at all.
Giving maintenance and expanding mosques is a human rights violation now? I guess the Mexican government been genociding catholics, not one of the churches in my city looks like it did fifteen years ago.
People were happy about it too, brainwashed as they are.
Did they change the churches into Mayan temples?
Also notice how I did not use the word genocide.
No, but I'm sure if FT was trying to sell a war with the US they'd find a way to imply the new colors are cultural genocide or whatever.
I didn't know Muslims had to have monolithic, generic buildings to the specifications of what westerners think a Mosque looks like. Were churches supposed to look gothic forever? Was making them baroque a human rights violation on christian Belgians?
I stg y'all are scraping the bottom of the barrel, twisting yourselves in knots to try to make the case that China is in any way remotely close to the many actual genocides the US and Europe have done and continue to do. It's pure projection and it only facilitates the next US/European atrocity, as it did in Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc.
The redesigned mosques remind me of the Kaifeng synagogue, which is quite unlike any synagogue that I have ever seen. If you told me that it was a Confucian or Taoist monastery, I would have believed you.
This is the same reasoning NATO lovers use to discredit anything from TheGrayzone etc.
Who does the reporting is irrelevant. Nor who pays them. What matters is whether the evidence checks out.
It's a literal Chinese 5 year plan by the CCP. Chinese law. https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/islamsinifcationplan
Maybe you should read the FT article instead of only looking at the site link.
I did look at the FT article, and found the exact same drivel I find whenever I read State Department rags. Quoting US based gusanos as the only purveyors of truth on the foreign enemy, followed by a nothing burger that they build up into literally 1984.
Again, all the FT article does is present a handful of renewed mosques among the thousands that exist in China and quote some guys that pinky swear it's the first step in a campaign to "forcibly integrate" people that have been part of China for longer than there's been a USA. What is factually presented in the article? That mosques have been renovated. They even say that the inside of these mosques remain identical and the Q'uran is still as prominent as ever within the halls.
Notice it's always white Europeans and gusano expats whining and moaning about it, Muslim majority countries are commending this. But do tell China how to do inclusion the right way, I'm sure Muslims in France, Sweden, the UK and Germany must be over the moon at how well the Eur*s treat them.
And what exactly is the issue with working with religious scholars to harmonize religion with the law? I wish they'd have done that in the states 200 years ago instead of getting rabid christofascists who justify slavery, genocide and child abuse with the bible in the name of religious freedom (while also demonizing Islam). Westerners don't have a leg to stand on, mind your own countries first.
Spare me the details of who conveniently condemns what. I'm looking at the simple facts here.
They have all been renovated to suddenly look like Han temples and there are videos of Uyghurs protesting it? And there is a Chinese initiative stipulating it? Looks clear cut to me unless you can show me a reason for these mass architectural changes. And so far nobody is able to explain these changes to me.
France has been doing that since the second the moment they started colonizing Africa. The Liberal classic "Liberte Egalite Egalite but equality means everyone has to act exactly like the French".
But to clarify, is your point that China is doing it but you think it's cool, or is China not doing it?
My point is that mosques being remodeled constitutes a sign of human rights violations in and of itself is such a ridiculous stretch even by western standards that you can't help but laugh at whomever says it with a straight face. To compare it with what the french did is stopping just short of genocide apologia. The french did a whole lot more than remodel some buildings, they completely imposed a foreign religion, taught European supremacist history and civics and, oh, just kind of sort of stole every resource they could at gunpoint and under threat of torture.
I get that sinophobia is the flavor of the decade and the yellow peril is guilty until proven innocent a hundred times over for westerners, but until you find legitimate proof of human rights violations, you should restrain from making such accusations.
This is not me quoting Radio Free USAID on made up facts and numbers. It is concrete evidence of cultural ereasure and a prime example of how much control the government is exerting over mosques.
Sure France is and was worse and people can easily point to Israel for actual genocide on Muslims. That does not absolve China of their own very clearly laid out 5year plan which is very open about the forced assimilation of Muslims which too is cutting into their ideology.
You can't blame everything on Sinophobia when I am presenting clear evidence. That is Islamophobic. Or does having a building with a dome would make Muslims terrorists?
Clear evidence of some mosques being remodelled and party efforts to work with religious leaders to curb the influence of jihadism (which the CIA loves to exploit). Everything else is yellow peril nonsense.