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The Muslim Hui people have assimilated harmoniously with the Han majority, while Uighurs in the west have not.
Last Modified: 12 Oct 2012 08:40
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Hui women with a baby cross a street in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region [Al Jazeera]
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Yinchuan, China - The
Muslim Hui are an anomaly in China, an ethnic minority granted
significant autonomy and allowed to devoutly follow their religion in a
region where Islam thrives.
The
ancient Silk Road trade route cut through what is today the Ningxia Hui
Autonomous Region, luring Muslim traders from afar. Descendants of Arab
and Persian merchants travelled here in the 7th century and many
settled, planting the roots of Islam in the heart of China. About half the country’s 20 million Muslims are from the Hui ethnic group.
Muslims
were persecuted in Ningxia during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in
the 1960s and ‘70s, but today Islam flourishes. More than 400 mosques
dot the region, and Islamic schools have produced some 7,000 imams - or
Islamic clerics known locally as ahongs.
While
Muslim Uighurs of Turkic descent in the far west face harsh religious
restrictions and repression, the Hui have been afforded much more
political and religious freedom by Beijing. Observers say it is their
friendly historical relations with the ethnic majority Han that is the
difference.
“The different cultures have merged in this place harmoniously,” says Ma Zhang Wen, the imam of Xinhua Mosque.
Ma, 38, has been an imam for the last 15 years in Yinchuan, Ningxia’s capital, about 1,300 kilometres northwest of Beijing.
“The
government gives people a religion-training program to develop Islam.
The Han respect us, and we respect them, too,” Ma says.
Economic revival
According to official data, there are 6.3 million people in Ningxia, and 2.2 million are Hui.
The
impoverished region faced hard times but has seen a revival in recent
years. Islam has helped rejuvenate the economy, and Ningxia has
developed economic ties to Arab and Muslim countries.
Ningxia's halal food industry, for example, is worth about $700m a year, according to government statistics.
The region’s gross domestic product reached 206 billion yuan (US$33bn) in 2011, an annual increase of 12 per cent.
“Peoples’ lives in Ningxia are getting better and better. We don’t feel discrimination or inequality,” says the imam Ma.
The
government’s move to nurture the region’s economic growth has helped.
“The western development policy encourages us to develop the economy,
and we have witnessed a dramatic change,” he says.
Bao
Hongbiao, a researcher at the Ningxia Academy of Social Sciences, says
gearing products toward Islamic markets has paid off for Ningxia’s
Muslim community.
“Muslim
food and religious goods are showing fast growth, providing products to
other provinces and exporting them to Central Asia and other Muslim
regions,” says Bao.
Muslim Uighur repression
While
Hui Muslims enjoy freedom to practice their religion, Muslim Uighurs
face strict government repression in far-western Xinjiang province. Bao says while the Hui have happily assimilated with the majority Han, the Uighurs have not.
Part of the problem is language differences. While the Hui and Han both speak Mandarin, the Uighurs speak their own Turkic dialect and write in Arabic script.
Others say the Uighurs strong desire for autonomy explains the difference in treatment.
“Some Uighurs in Xinjiang are extremists and they want to separate from China,” says Bao. “In
the case of Ningxia's Hui people, they do not have conflicts with other
groups, and they live in harmony with Han and other Chinese people.”
But others highlight the government’s policy of offering incentives for Han Chinese to migrate west as a main cause of friction.
Alim
Seytoff, president of the Uyghur American Association, says the
government routinely blocks Uighurs from practicing Islam.The Han
population in Xinjiang has skyrocketed from 6.7 per cent in 1949 to 40 per cent in 2008, fueling ethnic tensions over resources and jobs.
“It
is meant as a message to the Uighur people telling them to abandon
their faith or face charges of extremism, even for simple expressions of
religious belief. All these measures do is further alienate Uighurs, if
that is possible,” says Seytoff.
Violence erupts
In
July 2009 riots erupted in Xinjiang's regional capital Urumqi, leaving
about 200 Han and Uighurs dead. China’s government cracked down - a
situation that continues to simmer to this day.
While
Beijing supports the Muslim religion in Ningxia, that is far from the
case in Xinjiang. Minors under the age of 18 are forbidden from
participating in Islamic practices, and thousands are detained every year for "illegal religious activity", according to a reportby Human Right Watch.
It
is strictly prohibited to celebrate religious holidays and study
religious texts at state institutions, including schools, said the 2005
report titled “Devastating Blows: Religious Repression of Uighurs in
Xinjiang”.
“For
Beijing, Xinjiang falls into the same broad category of political
concerns as Taiwan and Tibet,” the report says. “Demands for separation
and/or autonomy are seen in Beijing as a threat to the continued
viability of the Chinese state.”
During Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, notices were posted banning or discouraging fasting by Communist Party members, civil servants, students and teachers.
"Religious
extremism is closely related to violence and terrorism, and cracking
down on these is one of our top priorities," spokeswoman Hou Hanmin was
quoted as saying in the state-run Global Times newspaper.A
regional government spokeswoman denied that fasting was banned, saying
the notices only encouraged people to “eat properly for study and work”.
Amnesty International researcher Corinna-Barbara Francis says the situation continues to deteriorate “very badly” in Xinjiang.
“There is a much tighter level of control for all Uighurs, and the religious repression has intensified,” she says.
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Islam is the real positive change that you need to change for being a better person or a perfect human being, you can change yourself if you read QURAN, IF YOU DO THAT !! you will change this UMMAH, say I am not A Sunni or Shia, BUT I am just a MUSLIM. Be a walking QURAN among human-being AND GUIDE THEM TO THE RIGHT PATH.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
The harsh reality of China's Muslim divide
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