Chinese media, CCP leaders, and apologists have been recycling the official number of mosques to convince you that Uyghurs and Kazakhs can freely express piety. This number is meaningless. Here are the facts (from Chinese sources):
Minors, college students, and anyone who is employed by the government cannot attend mosque. Period. It is stated explicitly outside many mosques (my photo from Pichan which says no minors can enter).
Schools devote classroom time to instruct students not to believe in religion and not to enter mosques.
Individuals employed by the state often have to take oaths never to participate in religious activities.
Mosque activities--who enters, what is being said, who dons sällä, etc.--are monitored with both centralized, high-tech surveillance equipment and cadres.
Mosques are being destroyed/re-purposed. By 2016, some work teams noted “adjusted numbers” (i.e. destroyed) of local mosques. In this village the number of mosques was “adjusted” from 10 to 4 because of new “concentrated” residential living.
In October 2019, a Han tourist in southern Uyghur communities noted that mosques were no longer allowed to hold communal worship and the number of mosques were declining annually.
The CCP is also secularizing important life cycle rituals, what official call the “four activities”. Officials must attend all sacred rites (based on Chinese sources). chinafile.com/reporting-opin….
Uyghurs are also changing their names and the names of their children because they are too "religious" (even variants of the Prophet. Pictures from Xinjiang Daily Online.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.