< 'Afraid We Will Become The Next Xinjiang': China's Hui Muslims Face Crackdown

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Now, this can be an all-consuming story, but we are continuing to track other developments elsewhere in the world, as we should. And we've been tracking the security crackdown on an ethnic minority inside China. It's a crackdown that for many Americans will be news. We've heard much about the ways that China restricts, targets and detains members of the Uighur Muslim community in western China. This crackdown involves a different group in other parts of China. They are the Hui.

NPR's Beijing correspondent Emily Feng traveled to some of the regions where Hui live.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Praying in foreign language).

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Friday prayers ring out across this Ningxia mosque in China's northwest. Hundreds of men wearing white caps, all Hui Muslims, hurry in.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Praying in foreign language).

FENG: China has more than 10 million ethnic Hui. They've been maintaining their Islamic way of life for centuries. This mosque, the Hongsibao Mosque, is a sign of how things are changing, though. Love your country is now written in big gold letters across the mosque. The mosque has also had its domes removed and replaced with tiled, Buddhist-style pagodas.

It's one of the many mosques renovated by Chinese authorities in the Hui heartland of Ningxia region. It's part of a campaign to remove any Islamic symbols across China from southwestern Yunnan province to even as far east as Henan province. But the most severe aspects of the crackdown are invisible - they're happening inside Hui mosques.

MA: (Through interpreter) About 80% of imams have all had to leave Henan.

FENG: This is teacher Ma. He's an active Muslim community member in Henan province. We're not using his name and disguising his voice because talking to a foreign journalist would likely put him in prison.

MA: (Through interpreter) Imams now have to undergo ideological learning about traditional Chinese culture. They also have to go to frequent meetings to learn about socialist core values and President Xi Jinping's speeches.

FENG: Teacher Ma explains the turning point came last April. That's when a powerful Communist Party body called the United Front Work Department took over China's religious affairs regulatory body. Abroad, the United Front builds support for China's Communist Party. At home, it's been one of the most aggressive proponents behind the crackdown on Uighur Muslims in China's Xinjiang region.

Now it has turned its attention to the Hui ethnic group. Aspects of Xinjiang-style religious control are creeping into other parts of China.

MA: (Through interpreter) During Friday prayers, the largest mosques will be guarded by local government officials who forbid youth under 18 from entering the mosque. And pretty much every Islamic school was also closed by the end of 2018.

FENG: The thousands of Hui Muslims who make the Hajj each year - a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia - are now also coming under scrutiny much like they have in Xinjiang.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Through interpreter) Because they did not go with the state-sanctioned Hajj group, they are now being investigated.

FENG: That's a Hui man from Gansu province. We're not using his name and modulating his voice because he faces political reprisal for sharing this information.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Through interpreter) As soon as you are investigated, they forcibly confiscate your phone and record all your information.

FENG: Unlike Uighur Muslims, the Hui have no distinct language. And save for religious dress, many Hui are easily mistaken for China's ethnic majority, the Han. The Hui pride themselves on having assimilated to Chinese society while maintaining their faith. But religious leaders warn, the Hui should not think they are safe.

MA JU: (Through interpreter) The oppression I saw inflicted on Tibetans 20 years ago and the Uighurs ten years ago has finally reached my people.

FENG: That's Ma Ju, a leader in a Sufi sect of Hui Muslims. He left China for the United Arab Emirates in 2009 because of his outspoken criticism of religious restrictions in Xinjiang. This year, he fled to the United States because the UAE has an extradition agreement with China. Ma Ju worries for his community back in China, especially now that technological tools like facial recognition make evading restrictions in China nearly impossible.

MA JU: (Through interpreter) You have the legs, but you can't run away. You have money, but it's of no use. You have a heart, but you cannot lift yourself up. This is a new kind of repression.

FENG: There's a reason for this new kind of repression, says Dru Gladney, an anthropology professor at Pomona College and an expert on the Hui. He says China is trying to correct for what it believes were overly permissive policies for religious groups, policies that allowed conservative Muslim groups outside China to influence its citizens.

DRU GLADNEY: The Salafi groups or the Wahhabi groups had been pouring influence and money into China. So these restrictions are part and parcel of the government's effort to control Islamic practices, to synthesize them, to make them more Chinese.

FENG: Still, some Hui in China are doing their best to resist in small ways.

(SOUNDBITE OF CONCRETE CHURNING)

FENG: Concrete is being churned outside this Henan mosque we are leaving unnamed to protect it from further restrictions. Like the rest of the mosques here, it's been ordered to take down its dome. But instead of demolishing it, the mosque is building a cover to shield the dome from view as part of a compromise with local authorities. And as for the Arabic inscriptions they've been ordered to remove, they made new ones out of clear plastic.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Through interpreter) They are transparent. You might say they are gone, but we can still see them.

FENG: The imam remains hopeful this wave of restrictions is temporary and his people will survive, just like they have through previous dynastic and political struggles over hundreds of years.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Through interpreter) This is a bit of extreme weather we are seeing. At least in the last 30 years, we had stability. We're seeing a bit of fierce wind now.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRENDON MOELLER'S "PULL BACK")

FENG: But, the imam continues, fierce winds usually dissipate quickly.

Emily Feng, NPR News, Henan province, China.

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