Published by: THE WORLD UYGHUR NETWORK NEWS November 6, 1997

11/04/97, Reuters, By Jane Macartney (from TURKISTAN NEWSLETTER)

KASHGAR, Mosques are mushrooming across China's mainly Moslem Xinjiang region to meet an increasing demand for places of worship. Congregations are swelling as increasing numbers of young people among China's Moslem minorities are inspired by Islam in the country's westernmost region. Students even take time out during lunch hour to perform noon prayers.

The resurgence of Islam in Xinjiang is causing an uneasy relationship between Communist Party officials and Moslem clerics, between Han Chinese and ethnic Uighurs.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM GUARANTEED, LIMITED BY LAW

"Religious freedom is guaranteed by our constitution and no one can interfere with this," said Tsadik Kara Haji, deputy director of the Kashgar Islamic Association and imam or leader of the great 15th century Aidkah mosque in this ancient Silk Road city. With Moslems making up almost all the 10 million ethnic minority residents of Xinjiang's 16 million people, Beijing has a lot of watching to do. Tsadik Kara Haji said that of the three million minority residents of the Kashgar district, two million were believers. The rest were still too young to be admitted.

"All Uighurs are Moslem," he said.

He did not explain how that sweeping total was able to include government and party officials, who are banned from holding religious beliefs in atheist China. The region's party chief Wang Lequan has launched a campaign to stop officials from turning to religion -- a sign of the extent of the power of faith that has taken hold since Beijing's guarantee of freedom of religion in 1979.

"I don't drink wine, not since I went to Mecca," said one Uighur official at a dinner. Asked if he was religious, he burst into laughter. "Party members are not allowed to be religious," he said. No one was convinced.

Such tacit acceptance seemed to extend throughout the region, where Islam arrived more than 1,000 years ago, brought by Silk Road traders to this once Buddhist area. "I am free to worship," said one Uighur student as he emerged from noon prayers in the small New City United Mosque in the southern Xinjiang oasis town of Khotan. "Of course we are free," said the student's classmate.

CONCERNS OVER SEPARATISM

Moslem clerics have been called to frequent meetings by the government and ordered to ensure no member of their flock strays toward separatism. This is because Islam poses the greatest peril to China's unity, Xinjiang's top officials have said. In Kashgar, the heart of Islam in China, senior Moslem clerics insisted that the officially sanctioned faith was loyal to Beijing. "We carry out religious work, we do not interfere in politics or engage in splittism," said Tsadik Kara Haji, speaking after conducting noon prayers for some 500 faithful in the yellow and white tiled Aidkah mosque. However, the cleric said he would not use his preaching in the mosque as a platform to

disseminate the government's warnings against what it calls illegal religious activities.

"Our work is to worship, to read and to interpret the Koran," he said. "Other matters are the business of propaganda departments."

The government may not be able to persuade clerics to spread the party line, but it recognises the influence of Islamic elders in the local communities. In some parts of Xinjiang, clerics must attend government education sessions as often as twice a week. This is particularly so in the restive south, where the Uighur Moslems make up the vast majority and where most sporadic anti- Chinese unrest has erupted, officials said.

"We need to teach the imams what they can and cannot preach," one Khotan official said. "There are very detailed regulations covering what they can say." Such rules were essential. "Illegal religious activities are very numerous," the official said. Imam Mohammad Sit, 78, of Khotan's United Mosque was unable to answer when asked to describe an illegal religious activity. "I can say what I can say, what I should not say I will not say."

The Kashgar imams insisted those involved in the anti-China movement received no support from the Moslem community. They blamed illegal activities on impostors who duped gullible and illiterate Uighurs. "These people are not religious," Tsadik Kara Haji said. "They dress up as men of religion, they tell fortunes and take money... but we oppose this kind of activity. "They take advantage of illiterates and deceive people," he said.

ISLAM SHOWS HEALTHY SIGNS OF GROWTH

Despite threats from such impostors, Islam was still showing healthy growth in Xinjiang, the imam said. "There are now 10,000 mosques in the Xinjiang district, compared with 6,000 to 7,000 before the Cultural Revolution," he said. During the Cultural Revolution, the ultra-leftist movement launched by chairman Mao Zedong from 1966-1976, religion was outlawed as bourgeois, mosques were closed or destroyed and clerics jailed.

The imam glossed over the apparent flouting of a government rule that a religious building may only be built on a site previously used for the same purpose. "The population has grown a lot and so we need more mosques," he said. "If the people who want to build a mosque apply for the proper permission then they can go ahead."