The FT’s investigation is the first to document the scale and spread of the policy.
A report by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) published earlier this month found a number of altered mosques in the northern regions of Ningxia and Gansu. HRW says that the changes contravene the freedom of religion enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A 2020 report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute also documented the destruction and renovation of mosques in Xinjiang, finding two-thirds were changed, mostly since 2017. The FT investigation examined the same mosques and found more had been altered since.
“Respecting and protecting religious freedom is one of the fundamental policies that the Chinese government has upheld over the long term,” said China’s foreign ministry when asked for comment. “[We] take seriously the protection and renovation of mosques and other sites of religious activities, and safeguard the normal religious requirements and activities of worshippers.”
Beyond Xinjiang
China is home to an estimated 20mn Muslims. While the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are probably the best known, more than half belong to the Hui ethnic group — often referred to as “Chinese” Muslims.
James Leibold, an expert on China’s ethnic policies at La Trobe University in Australia, characterises the Hui, in the eyes of the Chinese state, as the “good Muslims”, who “speak the Chinese language, abide by core elements of its culture, and thus can be trusted”.
Hui Muslims live across the span of China, and have been afforded relatively broad religious freedoms, particularly compared with Muslims from Turkic groups, such as the Uyghurs. Chinese authorities have implemented restrictions on Islam in Xinjiang to varying degrees over the past two decades, starting with surveillance and limits on worship. Over time, the Uyghurs have been subject to mass detentions in purpose-built camps, intensive surveillance and restrictions on travel — measures the United Nations says may amount to “crimes against humanity”.
Beijing argues its policies in Xinjiang are necessary to combat terrorism, create unity and foster economic development. The promotion of shared cultural values has also been used to justify the stripping of features deemed non-Chinese from mosques across the rest of the country.
“The taking-down of mosque domes is the most visible aspect of the policy of sinicisation, which is targeting a full-scale rearticulation of the relationship between Party and religion,” says Hannah Theaker, a historian of Islam in China at the UK’s University of Plymouth. She is is building a database tracking the implementation of the sinicisation policy, through which the government attempts to assimilate groups and religions regarded as non-Chinese into what it considers Chinese culture.
Many Hui Muslims fear this means their religious freedoms will now also be eroded. For worshippers such as Ding, the policy is about more than architecture.
“We’ve all deduced that this isn’t just about a dome,” he says. “They want to Han-ify all Muslims, to remove Islam from life . . . To stop prayer, stop religious study. To change our culture, our way of living.”
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