Imams forced to dance in the street in China
The
government of China has reportedly forced Muslim imams to dance in the
street in a move which is seen as yet another crackdown on religious
freedoms.
According to a report published World
Bulletin on Monday, the incident took place in Xinjiang district which
is inhabited mostly by the Muslims.
The imams were also forced to swear to
an oath that they will not teach religion to children as well telling
them that prayer is harmful to the soul.
The newspaper citing reports by the
statement media reportd that the imams were also forced to chant out
slogans such as ‘peace of the country gives peace to the soul”.
In the meantime, the public servants are forced to brandish the slogan that “our income comes from the CKP not from Allah”.
Female teachers were instructed to teach
children to stay away from religious education and made to swear an
oath that they will keep children away from religion, the report added.
According to reports, around 13.4 million Muslims are residing in Xinjiang which has a population of around 22 million.
The province has witnessed a wave of
deadly clashes that Beijing often describes as Islamic terrorism where
Beijing launched a so-called “people’s war on terror” in May.
The operation was launched in the wake of a market bombing in Urumqi in which 31 people were killed.
However, the experts believe that
violence in the province is often caused due to ethnic tensions boiling
over between the two groups.
Xinjiang is home to the Uighurs, a
largely Muslim, Turkic-speaking group as well as a growing number of Han
Chinese migrants who have poured into the region which borders
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.
In the meantime, human rights groups
accuse the government of systematically violating the Uighurs’ right to
freedom of worship and say the Communist Party’s hard-line policies on
religion are only serving to further radicalise Muslim youth.
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