Support Scroll. Kashmiris look to heaven, with prayers and hope, as snow stays away through coldest phase of winter. On July 9, images of a notice from the Xining municipal government announcing the renovation of the front gate of the Dongguan Mosque circulated on social media sites such as Sina Weibo and Zhihu.
Twitter users in Xining documented and shared images of these changes as they swept across the city. On July 15, a woman wearing a hijab prostrated herself in prayer on the street in front of the mosque while she sobbed. But protests proved futile. On September 13 a tweet from Christina Scott, the British deputy head of mission to China, who was visiting the city, compared the photo of the building in a recent guidebook which displayed its Arabesque features, to the current state of the building, denuded of its dome and minarets.
My 4 yr old guide book getting out of date. Go to the Dongguan Great Mosque, it advises. So I do. Closed for renovations which seem to have included removing the dome and minarets - photo from street-side of building in book pic.
The sinicisation of Dongguan Mosque suggests a worrisome trend toward state-driven, coercive assimilation of Muslim minorities by the ruling Chinese Communist Party. The demolition of the front gate has happened against the backdrop of a much larger crackdown on Islamic identity unfolding across China.
Turkic Muslims have been detained in concentration camps , sentenced to lengthy prison terms, and subjected to forced labour. For Hui communities, this crackdown has resulted in the foreclosure of non-state approved expressions of faith. It is this mentality that drives the regime to curtail overtly Islamic architecture in public spaces.
