Last major Arabic-style mosque in China loses its domes

[KingQamaR]

Sir, as far as China is concerned, transforming the dome into a Chinese style mosque is still essentially a mosque. Just changing the Arabic style to Chinese style. This is the difference between me and you. There are many countries in the world, and everyone has different perspectives. I will look at myself in the mirror. I don't want our own country to become Arab style

My friend, Islam should be free to compete in the China just like any other religions or ideas no matter how you feel on it . it might seem. Freedom and Liberty above all else. No coercion by anyone. That includes state sponsored doctrine here declaring what is good architecture and not!

 

[lightning f57]

This is troubling, China should allow religious freedoms and not repress them.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Sad to see they converted a beautiful Islamic architecture into local Chinese Kung Fu club from the first glance.

I don't see the logic in making these Mosques more "Chinese" considering their cities have NEW tall modern skyscrapers that look far more like Western skylines than anything having to do with old traditional Chinese architecture. Whatever excuse they are giving seems pretty weak against that.

 

[nibba]

i wish the chinese would just come out and admit they hate muslims instead of all this weak ass excuse making

 

[Menthol]

Scrolling through these comments gives you a disheartening sense of how many Muslims agree with this

Lol

But yes.

Is communist bad or democracy good?

Both have good side and bad side.

As I always say, ideology should not be taken religiously, but should be taken academically and scientifically.

Ideology should be evolved and perfected thru time.

Cold War destroyed ideology, destroyed the academic and scientific aspect of ideology, because to win, both side try to make the public to be fanatics, to believe one ideology blindly, religiously.

Btw, I'm not the fan of Mao communism, and I also disappointed with democracy of today too.

 

[Menthol]

Culture Revolution. Of course it will be difficult to erase any religions even after China impose it for some period of times as it is related to human belief system.

Cultural Revolution is the darkest period of modern China history.

But thanks goodness, from this period, Chinese people no longer believe in any ideology anymore. The political war is the stupidest thing ever.

How can Cultural Revolution be happened?

Simple, because the founding fathers are idiots.

More than half of century ago, when many colonies got their independent, European said that most of the new countries in the world will fail, will struggle, because most of the founding fathers lack of knowledge on how to build and run a country.

Farmers becomes the founding fathers.

It sounds great, I believe many people are happy about this... So idealistic.

But in reality, it's very scary.

Imagine in today era, a poor farmer becomes our president... I'm not going to elect him, because I know it will become a joke, just like Ukraine's Zelensky, a comedian, seriously.

Many of founding fathers were tourists, who ever visited Europe. Seriously tourists??

Or intellectuals, aka university graduates, I'm a university graduate too, I'm smarter than many founding fathers around the world, because I graduate in 21st century, in the era of computer, smartphone, and internet. But to run a country, I admit, I'm not capable. You will say it too. So imagine most of founding fathers around the world are just intellectuals like me. I'm a joke, so they are, even worse.

So does Mao Zedong.

As European predicted, he will struggle, and China will be troubled.

Not just China, but other countries too, in different scenarios, heavier or lighter, but all are struggling.

From the mismanagement, corruption, internal civil war, war against neighbor countries (that they can't afford)... All are sights of immaturity and stupidity... Don't know how to run a country... Let's alone to make it developed in a single generation, even after multiple generations, they are still under developing without a clear vision when will they become developed.

Democracy? To elect a farmer to become a president? Just look Argentina, all the leaders have a farmer like mentality. Beside of Argentina, no country is able to become a developed country, they are just luckier, but still unable to reach their goal. Like a runner, they don't fall, but they unable to run either to reach the finish line. Like a chef who cook Indomie, it's lucky they don't break the plate or the stove explode, but yet, the delicious Indomie never arrive, I don't know what these chefs are doing in the kitchen.

To save himself, then the farmer blames the people, blames the oppositions, blames everything.

 

[SaadH]

Domes are not Arabic style. None of the original mosques built in early islam had domes. These were inspired by romans/byzantine architecture once Turks became a dominant force in Islamic world.

 

[Menthol]

I don't see the logic in making these Mosques more "Chinese" considering their cities have NEW tall modern skyscrapers that look far more like Western skylines than anything having to do with old traditional Chinese architecture. Whatever excuse they are giving seems pretty weak against that.

Because years ago, China was fanatic with foreign architecture.

Can you imagine if in the modern time, a country that is not Europe build an European styled building?

Xi Jinping was complaining about this.

Me too.

If they want to build ancient or classic building, they should build in the local Chinese style.

 

[GoatsMilk]

i wish the chinese would just come out and admit they hate muslims instead of all this weak ass excuse making

Chinese are far too intelligent for that. From their perspective why not manipulate the stupidity and general cowardice of Islamic civilisation. They get to both occupy and destroy Muslims while using the rest of the Muslim world for their own personal interests.

They must be laughing at seeing all the global outage over Palestine, while they have been no better towards the Uighurs.

Russians are very similar in that manner too, while they occupy and oppress their Muslims, having also wiped out countless millions of muslims over the past few hundred years. Including siding with the west in many coalition wars against the Ottomans and others destroying Islamic power in its totality, they too get to play the hero of the Muslim.

The more you think it about the more ridiculous it seems, but it also exposes why Muslims are so weak. Simply no brains.

 

[bengalcdn]

i wish the chinese would just come out and admit they hate muslims instead of all this weak ass excuse making

RSS… I know it is your dream but China and Muslim countries have beneficial relations. No matter our differences, we both hate RSS like you more.

 

[MapleKing]

BTW, the dome/minaret architecture is Roman, not Arabic.

 

[warking2005]

Muslims when they realise the atheistic communist ideology dosnt like them:

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Because years ago, China was fanatic with foreign architecture.

Years ago?

As if they suddenly decided to put a halt to every construction project that doesn't have a traditional Chinese design?

 

[ety]

They must be laughing at seeing all the global outage over Palestine, while they have been no better towards the Uighurs.

Talk nonsense, brainwashed. Chinese don't owe you Muslims.

 

[Muji.Iqbal]

Experts say changes to Grand Mosque of Shadian mark completion of five-year sinification campaign

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The last major mosque in China to have retained Arabic-style features has lost its domes and had its minarets radically modified, marking what experts say is the completion of a government campaign to sinicise the country’s Muslim places of worship.

The Grand Mosque of Shadian, one of China’s biggest and grandest mosques, towers over the small town from which it takes its name in south-western Yunnan province.

Until at last year, the 21,000 square metre complex featured a large building topped with a tiled green dome, adorned with a crescent moon, flanked by four smaller domes and soaring minarets. Satellite imagery from 2022 shows the entrance pavilion decorated with a large crescent moon and star made from vivid black tiles.

Photographs, satellite imagery and witness accounts from this year show that the dome has been removed and replaced with a Han Chinese-style pagoda rooftop, and the minarets have been shortened and converted into pagoda towers. Only a faint trace of the crescent moon and star tiles that once marked the mosque’s front terrace is visible.

Yunnan’s other landmark mosque, Najiaying, less than 100 miles from Shadian, was also recently had its Islamic features removed in a renovation.

In 2018 the Chinese government published a five-year plan on the “sinification of Islam”. Part of the plan was to resist “foreign architectural styles” and to promote “Islamic architecture … that is full of Chinese characteristics”. A leaked Chinese Communist party memo shows that local authorities were instructed to “adhere to the principle of demolishing more and building less”.

Ruslan Yusupov, an anthropologist at Cornell University who spent two years in Shadian doing fieldwork, said: “Sinification of these two landmark mosques marks the success of the campaign. Even if there are small mosques left of Arab style in villages, it will be difficult for local communities to contest their sinicisation”.

Hannah Theaker, a historian of Islam in China at the University of Plymouth, said the mosque sinicisation campaign had progressed “province by province”, with Yunnan, one of the furthest provinces from Beijing, being tackled last. “By 2023, there was a sense among communities that architectural sinicisation would reach the famous Yunnanese mosques, as the last major unsinicised mosques in China.”

Ma Ju, a Chinese Hui activist based in New York, said the renovations were “a clear message to destroy your religion and your ethnicity”.

First built during the Ming dynasty, the Grand Mosque of Shadian was destroyed during the cultural revolution in an uprising known as the Shadian incident, in which the People’s Liberation Army suppressed an uprising of Hui Muslims in the area. More than 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed.

The Grand Mosque was later rebuilt and expanded with government support. Its design was based on the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, where Muhammad is believed to be buried. It has three prayer halls and capacity for 10,000 worshippers.

The Hui are a Chinese Muslim ethnic minority, most of whom live in western China. There are more than 11 million Hui people, according to the 2020 census, a similar population to Uyghurs.

Yusupov said the development of Shadian and Najiaying mosques represented “the ability of Muslims to regain religious and Islamic space after the cultural revolution. In the Xi Jinping era, the inclusion of Chinese Muslims into the national space happens through their [mosques’] impairment or disfigurement.”

A Hui Muslim who opposed the redevelopment of the mosques said: “Shadian mosque is very important to all Muslims, not just in Shadian. It’s a big loss.

“We just wanted to preserve our last bit of dignity, because except for Shadian and Najiaying, every [mosque] in the country has been remodelled,” said the man, who has since left China and who asked to remain anonymous because of fears for his safety.

One of the Grand Mosque’s modifications is the addition of Chinese characters underneath the gold-plated Arabic writing on the front of the building. The Chinese text reads: “The imperial palace of supreme truth”, a Taoist term that is also used in Chinese Islam. But it has not been previously associated with Shadian’s mosque.

Ian Johnson, the author of The Souls of China, a book about religion, said: “Given the tragic history of this mosque – especially that within living memory Han chauvinism already led to its destruction once – the reconstruction and renaming of it is another effort to erase local people’s beliefs and their cultural heritage.”

In 2014, the Chinese government launched a “strike hard” campaign against Uyghurs, who live mainly in the north-western region of Xinjiang. The policies involved oppressive surveillance measures and harsh punishments for a wide array of expressions of Islamic faith, such as abstention from alcohol or the possession copies of the Qur’an or other Islamic materials.

The campaign eventually led to around a million Uyghurs and other minorities being imprisoned in extrajudicial detention centres, which the UN said may constitute crimes against humanity. The Chinese government has defended its policies as necessary for tackling extremism and separatism.

In 2018, the campaign officially spread to the sinification of Islamic architecture. An analysis published last year by the Financial Times found that three-quarters of more than 2,300 mosques across China had been modified or destroyed since 2018.

Hui communities have typically been given more latitude than Uyghurs to practise their faith because the government sees them as being better integrated with the Han majority and does not have concerns about Hui separatism. But clashes have occasionally broken out over plans to modify or destroy mosques.

Last year hundreds of police clashed with protesters at the Najiaying mosque over the planned renovations. The protests were eventually suppressed and the renovations went ahead.

Muslims in Shadian did not stage similar protests when their mosque was closed for sinification last year. That was because they had paid close attention to events in Najiaying, say former residents.

“Since that time, Shadian people realised that the government has a very strong power to control everything,” said a former employee of the Shadian mosque who left China in 2021. “But people are not happy with the government forcing them to change the mosque style … Most of my friends have left Shadian. They said we cannot survive.”

The Grand Mosque of Shadian appears to have reopened in April, in time for Eid. A video from inside the prayer hall shows that several surveillance cameras have been installed. In 2020 the mosque management committee refused a request from the authorities to install surveillance cameras, said the former mosque employee.

Five sources with knowledge of the local environment in Shadian said wireless speakers had been distributed to households to broadcast the call to prayer, since public calls are generally banned, raising concerns about surveillance.

China’s mosque sinicisation plan is now considered to be largely completed, but is only part of its plans to mould religion, particularly Islam, to fit with the government’s ideology. In February Beijing tightened its regulations on religious expression to ensure that faiths “adhere to the direction of sinicisation”. Several local authorities already ban under-18s from attending mosques, and in Najiaying, minors are banned from fasting.

“The sinicisation of Islam campaign was never just about the appearance of mosques,” said Theaker, the historian.

Well their house, their rules. My house, my rules.