The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has several significant social and economic fault-lines, one of which is its handling of its ethnic minorities.
While in theory all these nationalities are a part of the PRC, in practice the Communist Party of China (CPC) has chosen the path of “Sinicization” under President XiJinping, of these minorities with a view to make them part of one Han China.
The Uyghur and Hui Muslims constitute the two major Islamic minorities in the PRC.
While world attention has been focused on the plight of the Uyghur in Xinjiang, it Is equally important to pay attention to the Hui Muslims in China, who have been termed as “Chinese Muslims” in the past.
However, recent developments in Yunnan witnessing a clash between the Hui Muslims and local authorities over the minarets and domes on a 13th century mosque signal a possible new confrontation, which could lead to the CPC taking a stand with the Hui similar to the Uyghur.
At the end of May 2023, thousands of ethnic minority Hui Muslims surrounded a mosque in south-western China in an attempt to prevent what they claimed was an attempt by authorities to remove its dome and minarets.
Social media showed crowds outside the 13th-century Najiaying Mosque in Nagu town in Yunnan Province. Scuffles broke out between the police and locals, who were hemmed in by hundreds of armed officers.
The alteration of a Mosque belonging to the Hui ethnic group comes amid a sweeping campaign unleashed by China’s leader Xi Jinping to “sinicize” religion.
The policy aims to purge religious faiths of foreign influence and align them more closely with traditional Chinese culture and with the rule of the officially atheist CPC.
Xi’s “Sinicization” campaign has finally come to Najiaying, a historic home of the Hui in the Yunnan Province and an important hub for Islamic culture.
On 28 May 2023, law enforcement authorities in Nagu township, issued a stern statement.
Without mentioning the protest or the Mosque, it said police were investigating a nincident that took place the previous day, which “seriously disrupted social order” and caused “vile social impact.”
Authorities also called on the “organizers and participants” of the incident to turn themselves in before 6 June and encouraged the public to report on each other, a very typical Chinese strategy.
In Nagu, Najiaying Mosque had been a key landmark and in recent years had expanded with a new domed roof, as well as, a number of minarets.
BBC reports that a 2020 court judgement had ruled the additions illegal, ordering them to bere moved. Recent police action to implement that order appears to have sparked the demonstrations.
Videos posted on social media and geo-located by CNN, show residents clashing with lines of police officers in riot gear, who blocked off the entrance to the Mosque and pushed back the crowd with shields and batons.
Residents shouted back in anger, with some hurling water bottles and bricks at the police. “This is our last bit of dignity,” a local witness told CNN. “It’s like coming to our house to demolish our home. We can’t allow that to happen.”
Thousands of Hui residents, including men and women, elderly, and children, had gathered around the Mosque, under the close watch of more than 1,000 police officers.
Eyewitnesses said that local authorities had driven cranes into the compound and were ready to demolish the new structures, adding that scaffolding had already been erected around the mosque for this purpose.
Tensions escalated around 1pm, with worshipers demanding that they be allowed to enter the Mosque for noon prayers.
The worshippers saw police officers hitting the crowd with batons, which prompted some residents to clash with police.
Ma Ju, a prominent Hui activist,who now lives in the United States, claims that about 30 people were arrested.
The hours-long standoff yielded a temporary win for the protesters, who streamed into the mosque as the police retreated, according to the witness and online videos.
Eventually, however, the police managed to gain an upper hand in the stand-off and cleared the site. In recent years, authorities have removed overtly Islamic architecture – destroying domes and tearing down minarets – from more than a thousand Hui mosques across the country, Hui activists say, with the Najiaying Mosque being one of the last holdouts.
This is not the first time that Hui Muslims have engaged in a tense standoff with authorities to protect a mosque. In 2018, thousands of Hui residents in Ningxia, in the country’s northwest, staged a protest for three days to prevent authorities from demolishing a newly constructed mosque.
The local government held off on the demolition, but later replaced the mosque’s domes and minarets with traditional Chinese-style pagodas.
The architectural overhaul of mosques has come with allegations of shrinking religious freedoms for the Hui, who live in scattered pockets throughout China from the northwest to the coastal cities in the east, including an officially designated “autonomous region,” Ningxia.
The Hui are one of 56 ethnic groups recognised by China and are predominantly Sunni Muslims and Yunnan is home to some 700,000 of about 11 million Hui Muslims in China.
The Hui are believed to be distant descendants of Arab and Persian traders, theHui have been well assimilated into broader Chinese society dominated by the ethnic Han majority. Most speak Mandarin, live alongside the Han, and in recent decades, had been given more space to practice their faith than other ethnic groups.
Hui activists say their ethnic group has become the latest target in the CPC’s crackdown on Islam, which began in the western region of Xinjiang against the Uyghur.
Activists claim authorities have stepped up efforts in recent years to restrict religious practices of Hui Muslims, including the closing of Islamic schools, Arabic classes and barring children from learning and practicing Islam.
The implementation of the “Sinicization” campaign has “had the effect of expunging communities of their connections to Hui culture, religion, and each other so thoroughly that some leaders view the erasure of a meaningful Huiidentity within another generation as being a likely possibility,” states a report submitted to a UN treaty body in January 2023 by the Chinese HumanRights Defenders and the Hope Umbrella International Foundation.
Over two hundred mosques in Yunnan have reportedly already lost their domes and minarets, adding to the more than a thousand mosques in the country’s northwest. Now, with yet another such protest had turned violent, the CPC is likely to takea tough stand on the Hui Muslim community.
An NPR analysis of September 2019vintage stated, “Since April 2018, Hui mosques have been forcibly renovated or shuttered, schools demolished, and religious community leaders imprisoned.
Hui, who have travelled internationally, are increasingly detained or sent to reeducation facilities in Xinjiang.” The conclusion drawn is that the CPC may fasten the pace of internments and subsequent arrests, placing Uyghur and Hui Muslims in the same basket.