Hajj and reading the Quran declared to be a 'crime' in China

Protest rally in front of Chinese Embassy by Uighurs living in Belgium

A court in China's far-western region of Xinjiang has sentenced five imams to seven years in Chinese concentration camps for "illegally" organizing Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the World Uighur Congress reported.

The clerics were also charged with illegally providing copies of the Koran at a recent sentencing rally in Xayar County, near Xinjiang's Aksu City, said the Munich-based spokesman of the Congress.
More than 300 people attended the rally organized by the County People's Court, said the spokesman.

In a separate report, the World Uighur Congress said authorities in Aksu's Kalpin County had demolished a mosque, which refused to hang slogans supporting the Beijing Olympics. It happened despite the worldwide response initiated by the report about this incident. Moreover, Muslims were officially not allowed to show up on the streets during the "Olympic torch-bearing ceremony" for "security purposes".

State media said that more than 100,000 Chinese people completed pilgrimages to Mecca from 1985 to 2006. An annual record of 10,000 Chinese Muslims were sent to Saudi Arabia from November 2006 to last January, reports said.

There are almost 21 million Muslims living in China. Half of them are from the Huai nation living in Northeastern region. The largest ethnic community of the Province of Xinjiang consists of Uighurs practicing Islam. Their number is about 7.4 million.

Chinese authorities persecute Muslims on a regular basis, and imams of the mosques are supposed to undergo special "political retraining".

Guy Coq has an op-ed in today’s NYT,

defending the proposed French law banning Muslim schoolgirls from wearing head scarves in class. He cites the long French history of religious strife to justify the ban, as if the historical problem of religious strife did not underlie American ideas about religious freedom.

By separating church and state — instituting a republic that was neutral toward all religions, and without a national religion — France finally realized the aims of the Revolution. This is laïcité, and it has worked well.

But the laïcité of schools has been eroded by the intrusion of religious symbols, prompted by an excess of individualism, that philosophy so revered by Americans. … More than ever, in this time of political-religious tensions, school secularism is for us the foundation for civil peace, and for the integration of people of all beliefs into the Republic. If the French hold laïcité so dearly, it is because that principle, as much as the republic and democracy, is essential for a cohesive society. ... They no longer have a base of common religious tradition. Instead, they are constructing social guidelines built around ethical, universal values like justice and liberty of conscience.

The question that France is posing to the world is this: Can one progress toward true respect of these universal values without relying on some sort of "laicity"? To disarm fundamentalism, notably Islamic fundamentalism, can we give up laïcité, which builds a neutral space for all of us?

It isn't a lack of understanding of history that makes the French head scarf ban seem wrong to Americans, it is respect for individual freedom. Coq's "neutral space for all" benefits those whose religion imposes no clothing requirements, just as enforced silence benefits those with nothing to say. Bans on articles of clothing might still be justifiable, but this attempt to convince us by insulting our knowledge of history and invoking superficial neutrality is quite feeble.