In their effort to “exert total control” over religion and to “sinicise” Catholic and Protestant Christianity, the authorities have “ordered the removal of crosses from churches [and] replaced images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures of President Xi Jinping,” the report said.
The report concluded that “every facet of religious life for Buddhists, Catholics and Protestant Christians, Muslims, and Taoists” was facing pressure to incorporate CCP ideology, and religious elements considered contradictory to the state’s political agenda were being eradicated.
Maohammed when?
As a Muslim this is one of the times I’m glad paintings of humans and animals are haram in Islam. We don’t got none of that shit in mosques (or anywhere else, really).
Many mosques in Xinjiang are reportedly damaged or destroyed though. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67483202.amp
I mean yes, but that only violates the sanctity of these mosques, which is to be fair a fucking atrocity as far as Islam is concerned. They are, however, unable to violate Islam itself, is what I’m trying to say.
Yeah Muslims are a bit sensitive when it comes these kinds of things
That’s like saying “catholics are a bit sensitive when it comes to eating meat on fridays”. It’s a nonsense statement
Well you could look at incidence where things got out of hand like the “Muhammad cartoons crisis”.
Or just look what happened in Sweden with the Quran
I think Muslims take this more seriously because, as someone who grew up in a region where most people identified Catholic (and most of the rest just had no religion) but didn’t practice much, I wasn’t even aware of that rule.
It is quite weird with catholics also. You should not make an image of god is part of the commandments, yet there is all the depictions of some old bearded white dude like in the sixtine chapel.
Also Islam rejects intercessors. We pray to Allah s.w.t. and only to him. We asked for forgiveness for our sins from him and him alone. The prophets and messangers a.s. were all humans of best character and faith, which is why they were honored but also challenged with their tasks.
This is why countries like China are particularly oppressive towards Islam. The faith is structured in a way that makes it more difficult to coopt it into exerting control over people for a government. Unfortunately we see (partly) successfull attempts at it like in Saudi Arabia. But they also control two of the holyest sites with Meqqa and Medina.
If i understand correctly China is oppressing Buddhism more strongly too because it is also not well controllable. But i have to admit that i know little about the details of buddhist spirituality/religion.
Most religions in China get the same treatment from the CCP.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/26/a-jealous-god-china-remakes-religions-in-its-own-image
Rejecting intercessors has not worked out, has it? See Sunni vs Shia.
I mean 80% of Muslims are Sunni so it has worked out to a large extent.
There are many more examples than just Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan comes to mind but also many other Muslim countries use Islam and Shari’a law to control the population or use religious laws as an excuse for their authoritarianism. No religion is free of that.