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Notes Regarding China’s War Against Its Religious Citizens

Notes Regarding China’s War Against Its Religious Citizens

Last updated on: March 28, 2021 at 12:10 am by Dan Peterson

Notes Regarding China’s War Against Its Religious Citizens 2021-03-28T00:10:39-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Earthrise, from the Moon
(NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Arizona State University)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image

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Here’s a new posting on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:

“Book of Moses Essays #48: Moses Witnesses the Creation (Moses 2) “This I Did By the Word of My Power” (Moses 2:5)

***

And here are two new short pieces from the Interpreter Foundation’s own Jeff Lindsay:

“Many Hits But Plenty of Misses in Vogel’s Book: Part 2 of My Review of Book of Abraham Apologetics“

“Missing Some of the Most Important Questions, Documents, and Evidences: Part 3 of My Review of Dan Vogel’s Book”

***

I’ve been neglecting my Latter-day Saint Scholars Testify (formerly Mormon Scholars Testify) website. Unexpectedly, though, a new submission came in just the other day from my former BYU department chairman. I had requested it quite some time back, and was surprised and pleased to see it:

Robert A. Russell, Associate Professor of Japanese, Emeritus, Brigham Young University

My thanks to Tanya Spackman for her help in getting the entry up

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Yesterday, as on virtually all other days, I saw a few anonymous online attacks against me. One of them declared me a “monster.” (All too true, say I!) Today one of them says that I’m a narcissist. And, of course, that accusation may well be true, as well. (Who am I to judge?) It also pronounces me a sociopath. Which, I expect, is also very likely true. Further, it declares, I practice priestcraft, profiting financially from the Restoration while knowing full well that its claims are false. Here, however, I want to quibble. In fact, I don’t know that the claims of the Restoration are false, probably because I’m simply too stupid. But I’m really puzzled by the charge of “priestcraft.” Where’s my check?

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Robert Starling shared a couple of film ideas with me today and, with his permission, I’m sharing one of them further here. I would love to see something come of it:

“Bridgebuilders” Pitch Video

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The Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File© runneth over continually. Here are a few recent items that should send a thrill of horror through the hearts of decent readers:

“Latter-day Saint Charities Boosts Global Efforts in 2020: Annual report highlights over 3,600 projects in 160 countries”

“Latter-day Saints Around the World: Country Newsroom Websites, March 26, 2021: This edition features news from the Pacific, the United States, Nigeria, Chile, Australia, Ecuador and the Philippines”

“Latter-day Saints Open Doors to Fire Victims in Davao City”

***

It’s helpful to contrast the horrors sampled above with the current record of the People’s Republic of China, which is an officially atheistic state. Since 1949, China has been governed by the Communist Party of China, which, consistent with the Marxist-Leninist ideology that it espouses, is explicitly atheistic, prohibiting party members from practicing religion while in office.

Here, for example, is a statement (which I cite from Wikipedia), from Sa’eda Buang and Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew, eds., Muslim Education in the 21st Century: Asian Perspectives. (Routledge. 2014): Subsequently, a new China was founded on the basis of Communist ideology, i.e. atheism. Within the framework of this ideology, religion was treated as a ‘contorted’ world-view and people believed that religion would necessarily disappear at the end, along with the development of human society. A series of anti-religious campaigns was implemented by the Chinese Communist Party from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. As a result, in nearly 30 years between the beginning of the 1950s and the end of the 1970s, mosques (as well as churches and Chinese temples) were shut down and Imams involved in forced ‘re-education’.

Here are some links that I’ve been unsystematically gathering over the past year or two on the current plight of the Muslim Uyghurs and other religious groups under Communist Chinese rule.

National Review: “China Sentences Founder of One of the Nation’s Largest Independent Churches to Nine Years in Prison”

Jewish News: “Jewish leaders call for action on China’s ‘intolerable’ treatment of Uyghurs: Munich-based WUC president Isa Dolkun met representatives of Jewish groups in event hosted by Board of Deputies”

New York Times: “Her Uighur Parents Were Model Chinese Citizens. It Didn’t Matter. When Zulhumar Isaac’s parents disappeared amid a wave of detentions of ethnic minorities, she had to play a perilous game with the state to get them back.”

BBC: “Inside China’s ‘thought transformation’ camps”

GetReligion: “China and its creepy facial recognition technology targets Uighur Muslims”

Daily Mail: “China will rewrite the Bible and the Quran to ‘reflect socialist values’ amid crackdown on Muslim Uighur minority”

ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] News: “‘Deeply disturbing’ footage surfaces of blindfolded Uyghurs at train station in Xinjiang”

Reason: “China’s Mass Internment of Uighurs Is a ‘Modern Cultural Genocide’: Activist Nury Turkel discusses the vast network of camps that may hold over a million Uighurs in western China.”

Religion News Service: “On July 5, Uighurs remember 2009 violence that set Chinese crackdown in motion: The uprising of July 5, 2009, and ensuing ethnic violence charted the way forward for China’s mass suppression of Uighurs over a decade later.”

Real Clear Religion: “America Must Condemn China’s Abuse of Muslim Minority”

The Economist: “Before leaving office, Mike Pompeo accused China of genocide: His assessment of the plight of Uyghurs will add to tension between China and America”

National Review: “The Latest Research on Beijing’s Concentration-Camp Lies”

Deseret News: “China sanctions Cruz, Rubio, Smith, Brownback for criticizing its treatment of minorities, people of faith”

Deseret News: “Romney, McAdams urging sanctions against China over alleged forced sterilization of ethnic minorities”

Deseret News: “Mitt Romney says video of Chinese treatment of ethnic minorities ‘absolutely sickening’”

The American Spectator: “China Is Persecuting Muslims, and We Should Do Something About It: A mounting case that China is committing both genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Foreign Policy: “The World’s Most Technologically Sophisticated Genocide Is Happening in Xinjiang: The United States needs to formally acknowledge the scale of the atrocities.”

National Review: “‘Even If Genocide Were to Happen’: A Uighur intellectual and victim of China’s repression foresaw the forced assimilation of the Uighur people.”

Varsity: “I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps. This is my story. In the first installment of our new series shedding light on current humanitarian crises, Victor Jack sits with Ӧmir Bekali, an Uighur Muslim who recounts his imprisonment, torture and indoctrination at the hands of the Chinese state”

National Review: “Shame on Sarah Jeong for Belittling the Uyghur Genocide”

National Review: “Incoming Secretary of State Backs Pompeo’s Uyghur Genocide Designation”

Islam21C: “Report on Uyghur Muslims: China has breached every act of Genocide Convention”

GetReligion: “BuzzFeed plumbs satellite photos for exhaustive report on China’s persecuted Muslims”

National Review: “Apple Spent $90,000 Lobbying Lawmakers on Uyghur Forced Labor Bill”

Reason: “Disney Thanks Chinese Labor Camp Authorities in Mulan Credits”

National Review: “Corporate America’s ‘Xinjiang Silence’ — and One Promising Exception”

DailyWire: “‘Extremely Sadistic’: Guards Gang Rape Religious Minorities In China’s Concentration Camps, Former Detainees Allege”

The Forward: “We Jews Know What Happens in Concentration Camps: We Cannot Be Silent About China’s Abuses”

The Guardian: “As chief rabbi, I can no longer remain silent about the plight of the Uighurs: An unfathomable mass atrocity is being perpetrated in China. The responsibility for doing something lies with all of us”

The Forward: “For Passover, this Jewish congressman wants to ‘help free another people’: the Uyghurs”

GetReligion: “Question: What is the world’s worst government on religious liberty? Clearly, it’s China”

National Review: “Christians in Hong Kong, under the Thumb of the Chinese Communist Party: The restrictions under which they may practice their faith increasingly resemble those of their coreligionists living in the mainland.”

The Daily Signal: “How the Chinese Communist Party Robs Children of Their Religious Faith”

I hope that you’ll take the time to look at one or two or a few of them. We shudder with righteous disbelief at the inaction of earlier generations in the face of the Nazis’ “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem,” confident that, had we but been alive in those days, things would have turned out differently. But would they?

People's Republic of China

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