Hui Muslims: China seeking to eradicate Islam

Green-domed mosques still dominate the skyline of China’s “Little Mecca”, but they have undergone a profound change — no longer do boys flit through their stone courtyards en route to classes and prayers.

Green-domed mosques still dominate the skyline of China’s “Little Mecca”, but they have undergone a profound change — no longer do boys flit through their stone courtyards en route to classes and prayers.

In what locals told AFP they fear is a deliberate move to eradicate Islam, the atheist ruling Communist Party has banned minors under 16 from religious activity or study in Linxia, a deeply Islamic region in western China that had offered a haven of comparative religious freedom for the ethnic Hui Muslims there. 

China governs Xinjiang, another majority Muslim region in its far west, with an iron fist to weed out what it calls “religious extremism” and “separatism” in the wake of deadly unrest, throwing ethnic Uighurs into shadowy re-education camps without due process for minor infractions such as owning a Quran or even growing a beard.

The Hui number nearly 10 million, half of the country’s Muslim population, according to 2012 government statistics. 

In Linxia, they have historically been well integrated with the ethnic Han majority, able to openly express their devotion and center their lives around their faith. 

Women in headscarves dish out boiled lamb in mirror-paneled halal eateries while streams of white-hatted men meander into mosques for afternoon prayers, passing shops hawking rugs, incense and “eight treasure tea,” a local speciality including dates and dried chrysanthemum buds. 

But in January, local officials signed a decree pledging to ensure that no individual or organization would “support, permit, organize or guide minors towards entering mosques for Quranic study or religious activities”, or push them towards religious beliefs.