Is China using terrorism as an excuse to attack Islam?

Telegraph:

China was accused by human rights groups yesterday of a "crushing campaign of religious repression" against minority Muslims living in the country's west.

Beijing is using terrorism as an excuse to "smother Islam" among the Uighur people of Xinjiang, its largest province, according to a report by Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China.

They used secret Communist Party documents to show how rules for religious observance are so vague that suspects can be arrested for almost any reason.

Activities effectively banned include teaching children religion, even privately, singing traditional songs at school, marking religious festivals in state institutions and publishing anything about Islam that does not "uphold the Marxist point of view of religion".

As a result almost half of those jailed without trial in the area's labour camps are there for religious reasons.

Xinjiang is China's largest province, forcibly reunited with the rest of the country following the Communist takeover after breaking free of Beijing early last century.

The authorities have fought opposition from the eight million Uighurs by encouraging migration by ethnic Han Chinese, as part of an economic development drive.

Uighurs are now in a minority, with Urumqi, the biggest city, overwhelmingly Han. In Kashgar, on the Silk Road, the Han proportion may be more than a third and the traditional houses, mosques and bazaars are being "modernised" with concrete.

The report said Beijing claims to face Islamists linked to al-Qa'eda, to "equate any expression of dissatisfaction with Beijing's policies with separatism".

"At its most extreme peaceful activists practising their religion in ways that the party and government deem unacceptable are arrested, tortured and at times executed," the report added.

Several Uighurs are being held at Guantanamo Bay, but US officials think it unlikely that Xinjiang faces a major Islamist terror threat.

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