Mosques in China directed to hoist National flag

New Delhi, May 24: The Chinese Islamic Association, a state-run organisation has asked all the mosques in China to raise the country’s national flag and study the Chinese Constitution and socialist core values to strengthen their “concept of nation” and carry forward the “spirit of patriotism”.

This is particularly in contrast as compared to the situation in India. The Uttar Pradesh government’s directive to Madarsas to raise national flag was opposed by the Muslims in the country and the Archbishop of Bhopal brazenly opposed the Madhya Pradesh Government’s directive to the students to respond with ‘Jai Hind’ to attendance roll call.

Against this background the Chinese directive to the mosques stands tall above the religious affiliations and looked at as a step to foster nationalism.

Chinese experts hailed the initiative for seeking to assimilate religion into a socialist society and as progress for religious development.

The Chinese Islamic Association hosted a letter on its website urging the nationwide Islamic associations and mosques to raise the national flag all the time and in prominent positions.

The state run ‘Global Times’ quoted the letter as directing the associations and mosques to study the Chinese Constitution, socialist core values and traditional classical Chinese culture to strengthen their ‘concept of nation’ and carry forward the ‘spirit of patriotism’.

The legal study classes should be offered so that Muslims can conduct religious activities in accordance with the law and correctly understand its relationship with religious doctrine.

According to an official white paper published last month, China has 20 million Muslims mainly comprised of Uyghurs of Xinjiang and Hui Muslims of Ningxia.

China has about 35,000 Islamic mosques, according to the White Paper on religions in China.

Resource-rich Xinjiang home for over 10 million Uyghurs was restive during the past few years over resistance to migration of Hans from other provinces.

China blamed the growing incidents of violence on the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

Some internet users questioned whether raising a national flag at a religious site was a violation of the principle of separation of politics and religion, the report sad.

Experts said that Chinese law stipulates that politics and religion should not interfere with each other, but the national flag represents the country, not politics and hanging flags does not intervene in the freedom of religious activities, the report said.

(Additional inputs from agencies)