After ‘Sinicization’ of Islam in Xinjiang, China is closing and destroying mosques in other Muslim areas: report

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Spanning the Yellow River in northwestern China, the city of Wuzhong sits at the centre of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Named for the Muslim ethnic group that still makes up a third of the area’s population, Ningxia is known for its many mosques, which include some of the oldest in China.

That is changing. According to a new report by Human Rights Watch, in recent years, authorities in Ningxia and neighbouring Gansu have “decommissioned, closed down, demolished, and converted mosques for secular use.”

Ningxia once had more than 4,000 mosques, but around a third of these have been closed in recent years, according to separate research done by academics Hannah Theaker, of the University of Plymouth, and the University of Manchester’s David Stroup. This follows a pattern seen in Xinjiang, where a broader crackdown against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups involved major restrictions on the practice of Islam, with thousands of mosques and shrines razed.

“It’s all part of a systematic effort to curb the practice of Islam in China,” said HRW Asia Director Elaine Pearson. “What we’ve seen in Xinjiang is really ground zero for that, the most extreme end, but now we’re seeing some of the practices and policies applied there play out in other provinces.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

Officially an atheist state, China has five recognized religions – Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam – all of which it strictly regulates. Beginning in the reform period of the 1980s, restrictions on religion gradually loosened, with many nonofficial groups able to operate and a flowering of denominations. But this has reversed under President Xi Jinping, who in 2016 called for the “Sinicization” of religion, amid a wider backlash against foreign influence in China. A subsequent government white paper said religions in China must “be subordinate to and serve the overall interests of the nation.”

A secret document promulgated in 2018 – and later leaked to reporters – appears to contain the first reference to “mosque consolidation.” It calls for local governments to “strengthen the standardized management of the construction, renovation and expansion of Islamic religious venues,” stating that “in the western region” – a part of the country that covers Xinjiang as well as Ningxia and Gansu – “in principle, people should not construct or establish” new places of worship. While there can be exceptions, the document states that “there should be more [mosque] demolitions than constructions.”

The small community of Liaoqiao, southeast of Wuzhong, is characteristic of the “mosque consolidation” campaign. The majority Muslim area once had six mosques, but satellite imagery shows that since 2020, three have been partially destroyed, while the others have been stripped of their Islamic architectural features, such as minarets and round domes.

Prof. Stroup said the “de-Islamification of public space outside of Xinjiang” was based on the same rhetoric and political logic. In 2022, the United Nations human-rights office said China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, citing among other abuses widespread restrictions “on the exercise of freedom of religion with respect to Islamic religious practice,” and the destruction of mosques.

In government pronouncements and state media reports, Chinese officials have justified mosque consolidation on the grounds of reducing the “economic burden” on Muslim populations. Some mosques appear to have been closed as part of wider schemes to relocate and centralize villages in remote parts of the country.

In May, thousands of Hui Muslims surrounded a mosque in southwestern China’s Yunnan province, in a last ditch attempt to protect its historic minarets and dome. Video showed local residents clashing with police outside the mosque, which dates back to the 13th century. According to U.S.-based Hui activist Ma Ju, and Bitter Winter, a publication which focuses on religion in China, renovation of the mosque stopped after international media coverage, but has since resumed. The Globe and Mail cannot independently verify their reports.

While Muslims have come under particular scrutiny in China since 2017, when there were a series of terrorist attacks connected to Xinjiang that Beijing blamed on Islamic extremism, the authorities have also targeted other religions, particularly Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism.

Hundreds of churches in southern China have had crosses removed on the grounds of “safety,” and the authorities have also stepped up crackdowns against house churches, small Christian groups operating outside the government-run system. In Tibet, religious practice has long been tightly controlled and treated with suspicion, with images of the Dalai Lama – who Beijing regards as a separatist – banned and monasteries known for political activity demolished.

“While Islamic communities have no doubt been the most visible examples of this kind of Sinicization, the rhetoric and practice of the campaign is not limited to Islam,” Prof. Stroup told The Globe.

In its report, HRW urged the international community to press China to live up to its own constitutional protections for religious freedom, and in particular called out Islamic countries for their silence on this issue.

“I do think it’s been quite shocking to see the lack of outrage from Muslim governments, which are quite rightly critical of what is happening now in Palestine and have also come to the defence of the Rohingya in the past,” Ms. Pearson said. “What we want to do is really open the eyes of Muslim-majority countries to what is happening in China.”