All versions of the Islamic holy book published prior to 2012 are seized.<\/p>\n
2017-05-25<\/p>\n
Authorities in northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region are confiscating all Qurans published more than five years ago due to \u201cextremist content,\u201d according to local officials, amid an ongoing campaign against \u201cillegal\u201d religious items owned by mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghur residents.<\/p>\n
Village chiefs from Barin township, in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture\u2019s Peyziwat (Jiashi) county, recently told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service that hundreds of the Islamic holy books printed before 2012 had been seized since authorities issued an order recalling them on Jan. 15.<\/p>\n
The Qurans were appropriated as part of the \u201cThree Illegals and One Item\u201d campaign underway in Xinjiang that bans \u201cillegal\u201d publicity materials, religious activities, and religious teaching, as well as items deemed by authorities to be tools of terrorism\u2014including knives, flammable objects, remote-controlled toys, and objects sporting symbols related to Islam, they said.<\/p>\n
Emet Imin, the party secretary of Barin\u2019s No. 1 village, told RFA that authorities had confiscated 500 books in the recent campaign sweep of households beginning in January, \u201cmost of which were Qurans published before 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can keep Qurans that were published after August 2012, according to an order from the top, but they are not allowed to keep any other versions,\u201d Imin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther versions should be recalled entirely, even if they were published by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Imin said that according to the order he received from his superiors, there were \u201cproblems\u201d in the earlier version of the Quran related to \u201csome signs of extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, we issued a notice on Jan. 15 urging residents to hand over older Qurans and warning them they would bear the consequences if banned versions were found in their homes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, most of them brought their Qurans to us. We gathered all [the books] at the village office and [earlier this month] we took them to the office of United Front Work Department,\u201d he added, referring to a Communist Party agency responsible for handling relations with China\u2019s non-party elite.<\/p>\n
Only materials signed off on by official religious organizations endorsed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party are considered legal to own and use for worship in China, and Imin did not explain how a state-sanctioned version of the Quran might have been deemed \u201cextremist\u201d by authorities. <\/p>\n
Imam Rishit, the party secretary of Barin\u2019s No. 2 village, said that while the recall was only issued for Qurans published prior to 2012, residents of his village turned in every version of the Quran they owned, \u201cmost likely to [do whatever they can to] stay out of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe collected 382 of them and they will be taken to the township government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe type of work we are doing right now is meant to discourage residents from reading older versions of the Quran by warning them that they will be contaminated by extremist ideas. Therefore, the Uyghurs have been bringing their Qurans to us\u2014even the ones they inherited from their grandparents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rishit said authorities in his village had also confiscated \u201cplates and decorative items with the inscriptions \u2018Muhammed\u2019 and \u2018Allah\u2019 on them\u201d during the sweep of homes since January.<\/p>\n
Anti-Islamic policies<\/strong><\/p>\n Overseas Uyghurs slammed the Quran ban as merely another bid by Chinese authorities to exert more control over the Xinjiang region by linking their ethnic group\u2019s cultural traditions to terrorism and promoting more government-friendly versions.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real objective of the Chinese government is to alienate Uyghur people from the true belief of Islam,\u201d said Turghunjan Alawudin, Religious Commission chairman of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group.<\/p>\n \u201cChina is attempting to justify its wholesale repression of the Uyghur people by distorting the teachings of the Holy Quran, Hadith [the sayings of the Prophet Muhammed] and Islamic theology passed down to us by our forefathers.\u201d<\/p>\n Alawudin said that Beijing is working to ensure that the \u201caccepted\u201d version of the Quran legitimizes its \u201crepressive policies\u201d in Xinjiang and teaches the Uyghur people to \u201csubmit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn Islam, we must follow Allah and the teachings of Muhammed, but the Chinese government is distorting the Quran by adding passages about submission to authorities so that Uyghurs will acquiesce to its illegitimate and dictatorial rule over our homeland,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cChina\u2019s goal is to use the new translated Quran to confuse the minds of believers and to serve its own political purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n Alawudin denounced any version of the Quran that had been translated from the original Arabic into the Uyghur language by \u201catheists or communists,\u201d saying only \u201clearned Islamic scholars and true believers\u201d are worthy of translating the holy book.<\/p>\n WUC spokesperson Dilxat Raxit echoed Alawudin\u2019s concerns over what constitutes a legitimate version of the Quran.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly independent Islamic researchers and highly-trained religious scholars\u2014not the atheistic Chinese government\u2014should have the authority to pronounce which version of the Quran is correct,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of changing the Quran\u2014the Holy Book of all Muslims\u2014China should change its anti-Islamic policies against the Uyghur people disguised as anti-extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n China regularly conducts \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.<\/p>\n While China blames some Uyghurs for “terrorist” attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.<\/p>\n Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma and Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" All versions of the Islamic holy book published prior to 2012 are seized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}