Considering that many people simply feel that a building is just a building, and that the governments of conquering countries have every right to do what they wish with the land... is there a crime here?
Or do the Chinese Communists have a right to eradicate mosques, shrines, etc., without any sort of consent of the people..?
Is it foolish to care for these places?
Or have the Chinese Communists overstepped their bounds and are violating the basic rights of the Uighurs through destroying their collective heritage and attempting to wrest away from them their spiritual heritage..?
Mosques have been demolished.
Domes and minarets deemed “un-Chinese” have been removed.
The authorities have destroyed or significantly damaged thousands of religious sites in Xinjiang in recent years, according to new estimates by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which analyzed satellite imagery.
The destruction attests to the Chinese government’s drive to erode the cultural and religious heritage of the region and forcibly assimilate its Muslim minorities.
Until a decade ago, the pilgrims would travel by bus, car, donkey and foot to gather by the thousands at the Imam Asim Shrine in the desert on China’s western frontier.
They trudged through the sand dunes to kneel at the sacred site dedicated to Imam Asim, a Muslim holy man who helped defeat the Buddhist kingdom that had ruled here over a thousand years ago. The devotees were Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority, and often joined annual festivals to pray for abundant harvests, good health and strong babies.
...
The Chinese authorities have in recent years closed and demolished many of the major shrines, mosques and other holy sites across Xinjiang that have long preserved the culture and Islamic beliefs of the region’s Muslims.
The effort to close off and erase these sites is part of China’s broader campaign to turn the region’s Uighurs, Kazakhs and members of other Central Asian ethnic groups into loyal followers of the Communist Party. The assimilation drive has led to the detention of hundreds of thousands in indoctrination centers.
The new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a research group based in Canberra, systematically gauges the degree of destruction and alteration to religious sites in recent years. It estimated that around 8,500 mosques across Xinjiang have been completely demolished since 2017 — more than a third of the number of mosques the government says are in the region.
...
Many of the shrines and cemeteries that the authorities have recently closed or razed embodied the Uighurs’ diverse Islamic traditions. Pilgrims would visit shrines, known locally as “mazar,” with food offerings, goat horns and animal hides to show their piety, or cloth dolls embodying their hopes for a healthy child. Some spent weeks traveling from one sacred site to another.
...
By early 2018, the Ordam shrine, isolated in the desert and almost 50 miles from the nearest town, had been leveled, eradicating one of most important sites of Uighur heritage. Satellite images from that time showed the shrine’s mosque, prayer hall and simple housing where its custodians once lived had been razed. There is no news of what happened to the huge cooking pots where pilgrims left meat, grain and vegetables that custodians of the shrine cooked into holy meals.
“You see a real and what seems to be a conscious effort at destroying places that are important to Uighurs, precisely because they are important to Uighurs,” Mr. Thum said.
New York Times via Archive
https://archive.is/o1Qkq
@philokaliasaid Considering that many people simply feel that a building is just a building, and that the governments of conquering countries have every right to do what they wish with the land... is there a crime here?
Or do the Chinese Communists have a right to eradicate mosques, shrines, etc., without any sort of consent of the people..?
Is it foolish to care for these places?
...[text shortened]... mportant to Uighurs,” Mr. Thum said.[/quote]
New York Times via Archive
https://archive.is/o1Qkq
I haven’t read the link, I don’t have to at this juncture because you are conflating the destruction of historic buildings with the reassignment of others I.e. Hagia Sophia.
Jesus chided his contemporary religious leaders for overly caring about even Solomon’s Temple, telling them “nor one stone will be left standing”. Yes it is right that we do not overly care about these temporal things and instead we look to the author of life himself.
Separate from all that, you got your tiny nuts squeezed in the Hagia Sophia thread primarily because of your manufactured outrage stating being “personally offended” when you became a Christian and found out about the Hagia Sophia. You weren’t “personally offended” before you were a Christian and you weren’t “personally offended” about black slavery ... in fact you spent much of the thread apologising for it.
And now here you are trying to tangentially deflect the topic away from your underpants-at-your-ankles efforts by conflating the destruction of buildings with what we were actually talking about. No gonna happen.
@divegeestersaid I haven’t read the link, I don’t have to at this juncture because you are conflating the destruction of historic buildings with the reassignment of others I.e. Hagia Sophia.
Jesus chided his contemporary religious leaders for overly caring about even Solomon’s Temple, telling them “nor one stone will be left standing”. Yes it is right that we do not overly care about ...[text shortened]... y conflating the destruction of buildings with what we were actually talking about. No gonna happen.
🎶 Oh when the state
Comes marching in
Oh when the state comes marching in
Divegeester wants to be in that number
When the state comes marching in 🎶
@secondsonsaid 🎶 Oh when the state
Comes marching in
Oh when the state comes marching in
Divegeester wants to be in that number
When the state comes marching in 🎶
A little something for you to wipe off since your reply to the OP was of no value except to engorge your already over inflated sense of self importance at the expense of the integrity of others.
@philokaliasaid Considering that many people simply feel that a building is just a building, and that the governments of conquering countries have every right to do what they wish with the land... is there a crime here?
Or do the Chinese Communists have a right to eradicate mosques, shrines, etc., without any sort of consent of the people..?
Is it foolish to care for these places?
...[text shortened]... mportant to Uighurs,” Mr. Thum said.[/quote]
New York Times via Archive
https://archive.is/o1Qkq
You don't have me pegged at all. You're just a presumptuous leftist know it all wishy-washy whining entitlement sucking hand licking obey your master's dictates automaton.
@secondsonsaid You don't have me pegged at all. You're just a presumptuous leftist know it all wishy-washy whining entitlement sucking hand licking obey your master's dictates automaton.
So there! 😷
And yet you have claimed to enjoy my posting, you think I’m one of the best debate opponents here and agree with half of what it say.
China Eradicating Uighur Holy Sites
29 Sep '20 02:53
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