[FallJimerks]

(Reuters) – Hundreds of Muslims in a northwestern China village trying to prevent the demolition of their mosque clashed with police, causing several deaths, Hong Kong media and residents said on Tuesday.

Fighting between police and members of the largely Muslim Hui ethnic group broke out on Friday in Ningxia region, adjacent to Inner Mongolia province, after authorities declared their newly built mosque illegal, the South China Morning Post said. Hundreds of residents in Taoshan village confronted police armed with teargas, truncheons and knives, the newspaper said.

A Taoshan resident told Reuters he was away at the time of the clash, but that his relatives in the town believed five people, including one of their relatives, had been killed. The resident, Jin Haitao, said villagers believed the dead included another two elderly woman, a young man and two people from nearby areas. Residents of nearby areas complained that telephone links with Taoshan had been cut, making it impossible to verify what had happened.

“They were just trying to hold a religious activity but the authorities would not allow it. They demolished the mosque and now they’ve covered over the ground, because there was so much blood on the ground,” Jin said.

A man who answered the telephone at a police station in the nearby town of Hexi said an incident had occurred with Hui protesters, but he gave no details. Calls to the public security bureau in nearby Tongxin county went unanswered.

Sporadic Unrest
A small business owner in Tongxin, three km (two miles) from the mosque site, told Reuters that the village had been sealed off.

“It’s ridiculous, I am a Muslim, and Muslims need a mosque. They are just ordinary people, coming together for religious purposes, not to overthrow Communist Party rule,” the man said.

China has experienced sporadic unrest among its Muslim minorities, most notably involving the Uighurs, a Turkic language-speaking people native to the country’s western Xinjiang region. There are about 10 million Hui in China, making them the country’s largest Muslim group. In many parts of China, the Hui have blended in with the predominant Han Chinese culture, all but abandoning Islam except for some traditions, such as circumcising male children and avoiding pork. But ethnic tension has led to some unrest. At least seven people were killed in the central province of Henan in 2004 after a car accident involving an ethnic Han Chinese and a Hui sparked rioting.

In 1993, a cartoon ridiculing Muslims led to police storming a mosque taken over by Hui in northwestern China. Uighurs in Xinjiang rioted against Han Chinese residents in 2009 and at least 197 people were killed, according to official estimates. China’s ruling Communist Party says it protects freedom of religion, but it maintains a tight grip on religious activities and allows only officially recognized religious institutions to operate

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80205S20120103

[invest7manager]

Some points regarding this news story:

1)Reuters has shown several times over to be an unreliable, pro-kufr, corporate controlled media entity.
It has systemically propagated untrue, unsubstantiated, hypersensationalized slant against Islam and Muslims in particular.

So as a matter of habit, I for one do NOT accept it as a valid or authentic source regarding anything about Muslims, Islam, world events, domestic affairs on pivotal issues.
Rather, it most be verified by authentic, and/or more reliable sources.

2)The Chinese government as run by the Chinese Communist Party has policies to suppress Islam, such as keeping all Muslim children from attending jumu`ah prayers, withholding them from Islamic classes in certain regions, etc.


Under the pretext of unification of national education, Islamic schools were closed and their students transferred to other schools which taught only Marxism and Maoism. Other outrages included the closing of over 29,000 mosques, the widespread torture of imams, and executions of over 360,000 Muslims. Aside from the physical annihilation, Muslims have been subjected to a constant attack on their Islamic identity especially during the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966-76). For instance, posters which appeared in Peking (later to be called Beijing) in 1966, openly called for the abolition of Islamic practices. Muslims were also barred from learning their written language which incorporated the Arabic script and was influenced by Arabic, Turkish and Farsi. This change was critical as it distanced Muslims from the Arabic language, the language of the Qur'an and their Islamic aspirations. During this era many Mosques were closed down and waqf properties were confiscated. (Yusuf Abdur Rahman)


As well, the govt attempts to suppress the total number of Muslims in China by solely identifying people according to ethnic groups and assigning a religious/ethnic practice to various groups. Thus, Uighurs are granted official recognition Islamic religious practices, but Han and Manchu Muslims are not.

Western media sources, the entire world order of political entities such as the UN and all pliant governments, therefore officially accept the Chinese government's authority to omit recognition of religious identity. As a result, the world media and govts are consigned to using a preCommunist survey of religious identity dating from the early 1900s CE, which recognized around 30 million Muslims in China.



population statistics of 1936, the then Kuomintang Republic of China had an estimated 48,104,240 Muslims. Below is a reference from about the Muslim population before Communist Revolution:

"There are in China 48,104,241 Mohammedan followers and 42,371 mosques, largely in Sinkiang, Chinghai, Manchuria, Kansu, Yunnan, Shensi, Hopei, and Honan. "Ferm, Vergilius (ed.). An Encyclopedia of Religion; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1976), pg. 145. [1st pub. in 1945 by Philosophical Library. 1976 reprint is unrevised.]


3)Basic geography and population growth shows increase of people identifying themselves as Muslim.Despite the Communist efforts to suppress Islam in China, the same should apply there. Thus, its reasonable to accept the claims of Han Muslims that there are somewhere between 100 to 200 million Muslims in China, the majority being of Han ethnicity.


Anecdotally, I happened to meet and get to know a Han Muslim from Beijing who's family had a lineage going back generations of being Muslim. He mentioned how such was well known within China, but the government suppresses it.


Thus, one cannot trust Reuters or Western and secular media to accurately report Muslim affairs. Their prejudices and ulterior agenda forms a slant of negative propaganda.

As for what actually happened regarding this event, I do not have further information.

and Allah knows best.

[feseEscaple]

(Reuters) – Hundreds of Muslims in a northwestern China village trying to prevent the demolition of their mosque clashed with police, causing several deaths, Hong Kong media and residents said on Tuesday.

Fighting between police and members of the largely Muslim Hui ethnic group broke out on Friday in Ningxia region, adjacent to Inner Mongolia province, after authorities declared their newly built mosque illegal, the South China Morning Post said. Hundreds of residents in Taoshan village confronted police armed with teargas, truncheons and knives, the newspaper said.

A Taoshan resident told Reuters he was away at the time of the clash, but that his relatives in the town believed five people, including one of their relatives, had been killed. The resident, Jin Haitao, said villagers believed the dead included another two elderly woman, a young man and two people from nearby areas. Residents of nearby areas complained that telephone links with Taoshan had been cut, making it impossible to verify what had happened.

“They were just trying to hold a religious activity but the authorities would not allow it. They demolished the mosque and now they’ve covered over the ground, because there was so much blood on the ground,” Jin said.

A man who answered the telephone at a police station in the nearby town of Hexi said an incident had occurred with Hui protesters, but he gave no details. Calls to the public security bureau in nearby Tongxin county went unanswered.

Sporadic Unrest
A small business owner in Tongxin, three km (two miles) from the mosque site, told Reuters that the village had been sealed off.

“It’s ridiculous, I am a Muslim, and Muslims need a mosque. They are just ordinary people, coming together for religious purposes, not to overthrow Communist Party rule,” the man said.

China has experienced sporadic unrest among its Muslim minorities, most notably involving the Uighurs, a Turkic language-speaking people native to the country’s western Xinjiang region. There are about 10 million Hui in China, making them the country’s largest Muslim group. In many parts of China, the Hui have blended in with the predominant Han Chinese culture, all but abandoning Islam except for some traditions, such as circumcising male children and avoiding pork. But ethnic tension has led to some unrest. At least seven people were killed in the central province of Henan in 2004 after a car accident involving an ethnic Han Chinese and a Hui sparked rioting.

In 1993, a cartoon ridiculing Muslims led to police storming a mosque taken over by Hui in northwestern China. Uighurs in Xinjiang rioted against Han Chinese residents in 2009 and at least 197 people were killed, according to official estimates. China’s ruling Communist Party says it protects freedom of religion, but it maintains a tight grip on religious activities and allows only officially recognized religious institutions to operate

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80205S20120103

so sad. may allah preseve us allah