Book any holiday with lastminute.com through this link and Mansized gets up to 7% of sales. Every order you place helps us build more great stuff for you
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities in the restive far western region of Xinjiang have demolished a mosque for refusing to put up signs in support of this August's Beijing Olympics, an exiled group said on Monday.
Why does anyone apart from the local Muslims care about this?
There are women being raped, today, in Darfur and Zimbabwe, men and women being murdered, today, in Zimbabwe to keep Mugabe in power, dozens dieing in Iraq each day... come on people get a grip... if anything has anything to do with Muslims these days the world has to be up in arms yet these atrocities go on with barely and hand raised in protest. I reckon most of the world's muslims would surely see the horrors in Africa as far worse and if not then they need to get their priorities right.
Why does anyone apart from the local Muslims care about this?
Erm, because this is about more than mere buildings being torn down, it is symptomatic of a general level of oppression. A few weeks after 9/11, China claimed it was fighitng al qaeda by arresting muslim protesters, forcing them to eat pork and drink wine to humiliate them then publicly hanging them.
ETA: and destruction of this sort deserves just as much attention as Taliban destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. They're both wrong.
Why does anyone apart from the local Muslims care about this?
Erm, because this is about more than mere buildings being torn down, it is symptomatic of a general level of oppression. A few weeks after 9/11, China claimed it was fighitng al qaeda by arresting muslim protesters, forcing them to eat pork and drink wine to humiliate them then publicly hanging them.
I don't think China have an issue with muslims specifically. They just appear to have an issue with anybody or any group that gets in their way irrelevant of who they are, what they are or what they stand for.
...and has China had an Islamic terrorist incident after making those examples? No they haven't - but they see that the Olympics are a big chance to make an attack so they have every right to enforce their security as opposed to the PC British approach.
When I see Arab Muslims killing black Muslims in Darfur with tacit approval of that Government, any injustices of the West towards Islam aren't something I have any sympathy over.
ETA: and destruction of this sort deserves just as much attention as Taliban destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. They're both wrong.
I don't think China have an issue with muslims specifically. They just appear to have an issue with anybody or any group that gets in their way irrelevant of who they are, what they are or what they stand for.
I wasn't trying to say they did. They oppress christians, buddhists and any secular group that dares to differ from the party line.
@nethlyn - As far as I know there has never been an al qaeda presence in China, although there have been numerous uprisings in the muslim populations. Do they deserve execution for speaking up against their government? Of course we can't know for sure because the Chinese rarely let much news out of the region.
As for darfur, the muslim arabs and their janjaweed militia are in the vast majority of the wrong, but there is more going on than a simplistic north sudan bad, south sudan good. The issues there are a desperate scramble over oil riches and serious lack of enough water for the entire country.
