When Muslims throughout the world are fasting for the Islamic holy month of Ramazan, China has released a propaganda video to cover up its abuse of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region.
A state-sponsored promotional video exposes Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to further erode Uyghur cultural heritage and obscure historical links to the Xinjiang area. In this video, a lady is seen performing dance moves in Buddhist attire in the Grand Kuqa Mosque, the second-largest in Xinjiang, to demonstrate how Uyghur Islam evolved from Buddhism.
The depiction of the Great Kuqa Mosque in a cameo as a Buddhist-Muslim holy site intricately entwined with Han Chinese history and culture, with a Buddhist dancer taking centre stage among the pillars of the major prayer hall, has enraged exiled Uyghurs.
According to exiled poet Aziz Isa Elkun, who is currently residing in the UK, this is not just another government initiative to further Sinicize the area, but it is also a heinous insult to their faith. He bemoans the destruction of their cultural heritage and the belittling of their religious beliefs.
The video features an arduous brick-stepped staircase from a 1930s restoration of the original sixteenth-century edifice that was destroyed by fire and adored by Uyghurs worldwide. There is a formidable double-gated entryway and a young Han Chinese woman wearing jeans explains the background and history of this religious facility, ‘with Chinese characteristics.’
She enters the building without a headscarf and casually steps through the doors into the pillared hallway. The Uyghur dancer dominating the prayer space begins to whirl to mild Chinese music in the next minute while wearing full Buddhist orange regalia.
The narrator uses subdued tones to describe how Buddhist and Islamic civilizations have been intertwined throughout history. She represents the ‘daughter of China’s history,’ and through history, one can comprehend the culture of the great Chinese nation, she says.
She concludes that Kuqa is indissolubly a part of China, the blood of the Western regions is braided together with the gentleness and beauty of the Central Plains. She says that ‘they unite to be as one.’ She exhorts the listener to remember that Kuqa the people and the religion are Chinese.
Aziz Isa Elkun reportedly holds a particular place in his heart for Kuqa. He used to pass by and visit the building every day when he was in the city in 1988 for his university admission tests.
He told Bitter Winter that his heart was crushed after watching the video. “There are so many sacred sites now that have been entirely demolished by the CCP,” he added, noting that the clip was one more humiliation to his people.
He said that he has seen videos of members of the British royal family entering mosques all around the world without shoes on, and the women, including Queen Elizabeth, donning scarf over their heads. He stated, “This desecration does nothing to glorify the so-called Chinese culture’s 5000 years of history. Their disrespect to our religion shames them.”
When Islam arrived in the thirteenth century, Kuqa, formerly known as Qiuci, was one of the most important Buddhist centres in the sixth century, expanding from India. Certainly, Uyghurs were Buddhists in those days and they were fervent believers who were keen to spread their religion, according to Elkun.
The city had a key location along the Northern Silk Road, which brought wealth and trade. Its surrounding hills and rocks are home to caverns and paintings that contain artefacts from the Buddhist era.
However, by the end of the fourteenth century, Buddhism had been fully subdued and Islam had established itself. Nowadays, the majority of Uyghurs identify as Muslims, but there is a tiny but increasing Christian minority among them.
Beijing has been actively destroying Uyghur and Turkic religious and cultural monuments recently, according to the 2019 report ‘Demolishing Faith, The Destruction and Desecration of Uyghur Mosques and Shrines’ commissioned by the Uyghur Human Rights Project. Many mosques, particularly tiny neighbourhood structures, have been destroyed or used for other purposes and leaders of these communities have also suffered the same fate and been imprisoned.
Further investigation, published recently in ‘The Complicity of Heritage: Cultural Heritage and Genocide in the Uyghur Region’ by Elkun and his wife Professor Rachel Harris, revealed that a number of intangible cultural treasures from the Uyghur, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh cultures have also been eviscerated and are in danger of going extinct under the prying eyes of Beijing.
The most recent video, along with other such CCP marketing gimmicks, is only the top of the cultural injustices that Uyghurs and other Turkic people are currently facing in the Uyghur heartland. The insults are intentional, complaints Elkun.
He asserts, that in addition to undermining us, they also want to mislead Chinese people who are less familiar with our history due to the subtitles and audio being entirely in Mandarin. He mentioned that assimilation, caricature, cultural cliches, and falsity were the purpose of the video. This is an act of shame and a blatant affront to our ideals, he remarked.
