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Comment by Ozzie_osman | Hacker News Reader

I don't get why China is taking these extreme measures. I know there's a general feeling of anxiety towards Muslims (I'm Muslim) and I understand that China worries about these sorts of cultural issues. But this is really heavy-handed. Can someone explain this to me?

Of course, I should make clear that I completely condemn this type of behavior from any country. And point out that letting China get away with this means many other countries will do the same.

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An authoritarian one-party government correctly views religious organizations (or corporations, or large unions) as a threat to its power that needs to be managed.

With regard to religion, they can try to cope with this by driving people out, "reeducating" people, or manipulating the leaders of the church (issuing threats or just appointing their own Catholic bishops, Buddhist Lamas, and so on). I believe you will find examples of these things happening in modern China.

Everyone seems to ignore the trouble China has with terrorists in this region. Plane hijackings, mass killings, suicide bombings. I think that you have to view what's happening in the context of the violent terrorist attacks that have occurred.

Probably because China has a problem with authoritarianism is every region.

Tienanmen Square happened because the Chinese government claimed there was "unrest" and "crime" when there was just protests about human rights.

You realize that this and worse (actual death penalty for the wrong religion) is quite common, right? All across northern Africa and southern Asia, particularly where they meet around the Middle East, it is totally normal to take far more extreme measures. Until the Chinese can go preach atheism in Mecca without fear of decapitation, they don't seem to be all that extreme.

I don't think that's true. I'm no fan of authoritarian regimes, and the middle east has plenty, but I'm not sure there's anything of this magnitude ANYWHERE in the world right now. Maybe the Rohingya.

A Chinese going to Mecca to preach atheism is very different than a Uighur going to a mosque in their town or reading the Quran at home. And we're talking hundreds of thousands.

There were quite a few incidents happened in the past, hundreds of people were killed, tens of attacks. Basically declared the city as unsafe to live. The government recognized the old policy was a failure, and then new official is assigned, and trying to do something different. Currently it is well received by the central government because the violence has dropped. It is not about cultural issues.

it’s not about cultural issues, it just happens to involve wiping out the local culture and identity as thoroughly as possible

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19574179 Just curious. What does the Muslim community think is the best way of fighting against terrorism and extremists?

It's not so much that they're Muslim, but that they're Uighar, concentrated in one region, and calling for independence much like Tibetans. The Hui are also a majority-Muslim ethnicity within China, but their faith is accepted and even growing, because they're less geographically concentrated and seem to be fine being part of China [1].

Note that's not to excuse the terrible treatment of the Uighars, but to illustrate that it's not just about their religion.

[1]: http://time.com/3099950/china-muslim-hui-xinjiang-uighur-isl...

so why are they trying to stop people from teaching young kids Muslim?

There were numerous terrorist attacks, with one of the worst being in Kunming (2014) where 31 people were killed and more than 140 others injured.

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