Islam in China

"From an ethnic point of view, Islam in China is represented today by ten nationalities, which number about 18 million people." These include "Turkic or Turkic-Mongolian communities ( Bashkirs , Uighurs, Kazakhs , Tatars, Kyrgyz , Uzbeks, Dongxiang )," Tajiks in Xinjiang, as well as Muslims "Hui" (9 million people). Chinese Muslims are mostly Hanafi Sunnis ("only Tajiks are Shia - Ismailis ") ^[1] .

According to a sociological study conducted by the National Center for Survey Research of the School of Philosophy of the People’s University of China from 2013 to 2015 by interviewing 4,382 believers from 31 regions, Islam is the most common religion among Chinese youth. According to the study, 22.4% of Chinese under the age of 30 are Muslims. While Catholics make up 22%, Buddhists (54.6%) and Taoists (53.8%) prevail among people over 60 years old. Wei Dedong, associate professor of Buddhist studies and deputy dean of the School of Philosophy of China’s People’s University, said in an interview with the Global Times that the reason that the number of Muslim youth among the Chinese is higher than the number of Buddhists and Catholics is because “many followers of Islam are ethnic minorities, and in their women often have several children ” ^{[2] [3] [4]} .

Great Xi'an Mosque

Hui

Starting from the Yuan Dynasty , all Muslims in China began to be called "Hui." This word was applied to Uighurs , Arabs , Uzbeks , Tatars . In the middle of the 20th century, the word " hui " officially began to be used only for those Muslims who assimilated into the Chinese environment and speak Chinese, as well as their descendants from mixed marriages. The Chinese traditionally call Islam Hui-Jiao (“the teaching of Hui”), sometimes Isylan (Islamic) and Muslin (Muslim), Muslims prefer the term Qingzhen-Jiao (“purely true teaching”) ^[1] .

Hui advantage live in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region , as well as in compact large and small settlements of provinces such as Gansu , Hebei , Henan , Qinghai , Shandong , Yunnan . Hui "are China's largest national minority." They speak Chinese and use Chinese writing. At the same time, although a small part of them speaks Arabic and Persian . ^[1] .

Currently, Muslims in China are experiencing difficulties with worship, "which occurs under the control of the authorities and is associated with many restrictions." Also in China there is the problem of Muslim education. Starting from the 16th century, in order to preserve and develop the “religious education of the traditional sense ( Liao Jiao )”, Chinese schools of thought began to open in Madrasah . “The first edition of the Koran in Arabic was not published until 1862,” and the first translation of the Koran into Chinese was not published until 1927. Prior to this, in China, Koranic texts were distributed in manuscript form. “It is not surprising that in the second half of the XIX century there was a whole series of Muslim uprisings against the imperial power, but they were all brutally suppressed” ^[1] .

In the late 1960s, a wave of religious repression began, continuing until Deng Xiaoping's reforms in 1978. “In the 1990s, a revival of the Islamic community was observed: mosques were built and repaired, Islamic knowledge was disseminated, and religious texts were translated” ^[1] .

“There are about 40 thousand mosques in China.” Each mosque "theoretically has its own school", and "in some mosques, along with the schools of the Koran, there are also martial arts schools." Among schoolchildren, mostly boys are over 18 years old, “since, according to Chinese laws, you need to be a religion student” at least 18 years old. In northwestern China, some provincial schools allow students to be 16 years old ^[1] .

“A distinctive feature of Chinese Islam is women's mosques,” which are run by female imams ( Akhuns ). Especially a lot of them on the Central Plain ^[1] .

From 1983 to 1987, eight institutes of the Qur'an ( Isilan Jinsyueyuan ) with university status were opened in the country. They are "in the cities of Kunming , Beijing , Lanzhou , Xining , Shenyang , Zhengzhou , Yinchuan and Urumqi ." “After graduating from the Koran’s institute”, “graduates can become Ahuns” ^[1] .

In 1980, the Hajj was allowed and in 2010 “13 thousand Chinese Muslims committed it” ^[5] .

“An increase in the number of Muslim schools,” “the activities of certain religious movements,” and other factors “prompted the Chinese authorities to strengthen control over religious movements,” creating the “Committee on Islamic Education Affairs” in 2001. The committee "is considered a special commission at the national level and consists of 16 members", 10 of which are "from the Hui nationality." He “is also responsible for publishing translations and textbooks for teaching Islam” ^[1] .

After the unrest in Xinjiang, "a widespread religious education was again banned in 1996." Later it was being restored, but already “under the vigilant control of the” authorities. “In August 2002, in the cities of the South Tien Shan, the mosque opened only during the hours of prayer, which made any training impossible.” Only the Eid Kah Mosque in Kashgar was open for inspection by tourists ^[1] .

“In 2002, the imam in Xinjiang was allowed to teach only one or two students,” “while in other Chinese provinces the number of students in madrassas could be about a hundred. "In Xinjiang, the opening of Muslim schools is difficult." ^[1] .

In 2014, the Chinese authorities in connection with ensuring security, after the terrorist acts that occurred in April and May of the same year (which, according to Xinhua , was the Uyghur illegal armed group “ Islamic Movement of East Turkestan ” ^[6] ) in the administrative center of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Urumqi and entailed numerous victims have banned school and university students from banning the observance of the month of Ramadan . ^[7] According to the correspondent of the Indian editorial office of the online edition of the International Business Times Mugdha Vayyara June 2015 in the Uyghur region of Xinjiang on the websites of local authorities there were reports of a ban on Muslim officials to observe the mandatory post of the month of Ramadan ^[8] . The International Union of Muslim Scientists (IUMS) condemned the ban on fasting and called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to protect the rights of Muslims and warned the Chinese authorities that the news in the Islamic world about the persecution of Uyghurs could negatively affect the country's economy ^{[9] [10]} . The online publication IslamNews , citing Anadola, noted that the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed concern about this to the Chinese ambassador. ^[11] In turn, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Hua Chunin, denied the statement of the Turkish Foreign Ministry that there is a ban on ethnic Muslim Uighurs from practicing Islam and fasting in Ramadan. ^[12]

In March-April 2017, after the Assembly of People’s Representatives of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region adopted amendments to the anti-terrorism law, an officially approved list of names was published, the carriers of which are now forbidden to issue a birth certificate and register in the state social security system hukou (receiving educational and medical services). Such names as Jihad, Imam, Islam , Quran, Mecca, Saddam , Hajj and all names derived from the symbol of a crescent with a star were banned. The names of Muslim scholars, who are seen as "the promotion of terror and the cults of evil," are also unacceptable. Earlier, in order to counter violent extremism, Xinjiang’s authorities forbade women to wear burqa and men to grow large beards (seen as a clear sign of the Uyghur separatist ^[13] ), as well as to conduct religious marriages ( nicknames ) in the absence of officially recognized clergy and representatives of the Chinese Communist Party ^{[14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]} .

According to American non-governmental organizations, Chinese Human Rights Defenders and Equal Rights Initiative Between 2012 and 2017, a 306 percent increase in the number of criminal arrests was recorded in Xinjiang, accounting for 21 percent of the total national indicator, despite the fact that the region made up only 1.5 percent of the population. In their view, this increase was triggered by a government campaign called Hard Slam. In 2017, according to their data, 227,882 criminal arrests were made in Xinjiang ^[20] .

In May 2018, Andrian Zenz, a teacher of social studies at the European School of Culture and Theology at Korntal- Munchingen, in an article ^[21] for the Jamestown Foundation, claimed that Xinjiang's re-education camps contain from several hundred thousand to more than one million Muslims ^{[20] [ 22] [23] [24]} . Associate Professor of History, New Orleans University, Loyola and researcher at the American Council for the Study of Societies Rian Tum noted that

The upper limit of Xenz’s assessment is that the population of the Xinjiang re-education camp exceeds the maximum number of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps ( 714,211 in 1945, according to the book by Nikolaus Wahsman “History of Nazi concentration camps”), slightly exceeds the number of Japanese citizens interned by the United States during the Second World War, and approximately half the coverage of the Soviet Gulag system , in which there were about 2 million people. It remains unclear which of these cases will most closely resemble the massive Xinjiang internment infrastructure ^[25] .

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Thierry Kellner, a professor of politics at Brussels Free University, in an interview with the Associated Press, compared the situation in Xinjiang with the dystopia of George Orwell ^[26] .

France-Press correspondent Joelle Garroux in August 2018 claimed that all vehicle owners had to install GPS tracking devices ^[26] .

In turn, the Chinese authorities denied the allegations, saying that in Xinjiang they are conducting a “special campaign” aimed at combating “extremist and terrorist crimes,” and not some specific religious or ethnic groups. ^[27] .

• Bibikova O. P. Muslims in China // Asia and Africa today . - 1985. - No. 2 . - S. 60–61 .
• Zakharyin A. B. The evolution of Muslim education in China // Bulletin of Moscow University . Ser. 13, Oriental studies. - 2010. - No. 4 . - S. 56-69 . - ISSN 0320-8095 .