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Nearly half a million children, many of them ethnic minorities, have been placed in boarding schools in Xinjiang where the authorities aim to instill loyalty to China and the Communist Party.
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By Amy Qin
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HOTAN, China — The first grader was a good student and beloved by her classmates, but she was inconsolable, and it was no mystery to her teacher why.
“The most heartbreaking thing is that the girl is often slumped over on the table alone and crying,” he wrote on his blog. “When I asked around, I learned that it was because she missed her mother.”
The mother, he noted, had been sent to a detention camp for Muslim ethnic minorities. The girl’s father had passed away, he added. But instead of letting other relatives raise her, the authorities put her in a state-run boarding school — one of hundreds of such facilities that have opened in China’s far western Xinjiang region.
As many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others have been sent to internment camps and prisons in Xinjiang over the past three years, an indiscriminate clampdown aimed at weakening the population’s devotion to Islam. Even as these mass detentions have provoked global outrage, though, the Chinese government is pressing ahead with a parallel effort targeting the region’s children.
Nearly a half million children have been separated from their families and placed in boarding schools so far, according to a planning document published on a government website, and the ruling Communist Party has set a goal of operating one to two such schools in each of Xinjiang’s 800-plus townships by the end of next year.
The party has presented the schools as a way to fight poverty, arguing that they make it easier for children to attend classes if their parents live or work in remote areas or are unable to care for them. And it is true that many rural families are eager to send their children to these schools, especially when they are older.
But the schools are also designed to assimilate and indoctrinate children at an early age, away from the influence of their families, according to the planning document, published in 2017. Students are often forced to enroll because the authorities have detained their parents and other relatives, ordered them to take jobs far from home or judged them unfit guardians.
The schools are off limits to outsiders and tightly guarded, and it is difficult to interview residents in Xinjiang without putting them at risk of arrest. But a troubling picture of these institutions emerges from interviews with Uighur parents living in exile and a review of documents published online, including procurement records, government notices, state media reports and the blogs of teachers in the schools.
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State media and official documents describe education as a key component of President Xi Jinping’s campaign to wipe out extremist violence in Xinjiang, a ruthless and far-reaching effort that also includes the mass internment camps and sweeping surveillance measures. The idea is to use the boarding schools as incubators of a new generation of Uighurs who are secular and more loyal to both the party and the nation.
“The long-term strategy is to conquer, to captivate, to win over the young generation from the beginning,” said Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington who has studied Chinese policies that break up Uighur families.
To carry out the assimilation campaign, the authorities in Xinjiang have recruited tens of thousands of teachers from across China, often Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group. At the same time, prominent Uighur educators have been imprisoned and teachers have been warned they will be sent to the camps if they resist.
Thrust into a regimented environment and immersed in an unfamiliar culture, children in the boarding schools are only allowed visits with family once every week or two — a restriction intended to “break the impact of the religious atmosphere on children at home,” in the words of the 2017 policy document.
The campaign echoes past policies in Canada, the United States and Australia that took indigenous children from their families and placed them in residential schools to forcibly assimilate them.
“The big difference in China is the scale and how systematic it is,” said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado who studies Uighur culture and society.
Public discussion in China of the trauma inflicted on Uighur children by separating them from their families is rare. References on social media are usually quickly censored. Instead, the state-controlled news media focuses on the party’s goals in the region, where predominantly Muslim minorities make up more than half the population of 25 million.
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Visiting a kindergarten near the frontier city of Kashgar this month, Chen Quanguo, the party’s top official in Xinjiang, urged teachers to ensure children learn to “love the party, love the motherland and love the people.”
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Indoctrinating Children
Abdurahman Tohti left Xinjiang and immigrated to Turkey in 2013, leaving behind cotton farming to sell used cars in Istanbul. But when his wife and two young children returned to China for a visit a few years ago, they disappeared.
He heard that his wife was sent to prison, like many Uighurs who have traveled abroad and returned to China. His parents were detained too. The fate of his children, though, was a mystery.
Then in January, he spotted his 4-year-old son in a video on Chinese social media that had apparently been recorded by a teacher. The boy seemed to be at a state-run boarding school and was speaking Chinese, a language his family did not use.
Mr. Tohti, 30, said he was excited to see the child, and relieved he was safe — but also gripped by desperation.
“What I fear the most,” he said, “is that the Chinese government is teaching him to hate his parents and Uighur culture.”
Beijing has sought for decades to suppress Uighur resistance to Chinese rule in Xinjiang, in part by using schools in the region to indoctrinate Uighur children. Until recently, though, the government had allowed most classes to be taught in the Uighur language, partly because of a shortage of Chinese-speaking teachers.
Then, after a surge of antigovernment and anti-Chinese violence, including ethnic riots in 2009 in Urumqi, the regional capital, and deadly attacks by Uighur militants in 2014, Mr. Xi ordered the party to take a harder line in Xinjiang, according to internal documents leaked to The New York Times earlier this year.
In December 2016, the party announced that the work of the region’s education bureau was entering a new phase. Schools were to become an extension of the security drive in Xinjiang, with a new emphasis on the Chinese language, patriotism and loyalty to the party.
In the 2017 policy document, posted on the education ministry’s website, officials from Xinjiang outlined their new priorities and ranked expansion of the boarding schools at the top.
Without specifying Islam by name, the document characterized religion as a pernicious influence on children, and said having students live at school would “reduce the shock of going back and forth between learning science in the classroom and listening to scripture at home.”
By early 2017, the document said, nearly 40 percent of all middle-school and elementary-school age children in Xinjiang — or about 497,800 students — were boarding in schools. At the time, the government was ramping up efforts to open boarding schools and add dorms to schools, and more recent reports suggest the push is continuing.
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Chinese is also replacing Uighur as the main language of instruction in Xinjiang. Most elementary and middle school students are now taught in Chinese, up from just 38 percent three years ago. And thousands of new rural preschools have been built to expose minority children to Chinese at an earlier age, state media reported.
The government argues that teaching Chinese is critical to improving the economic prospects of minority children, and many Uighurs agree. But Uighur activists say the overall campaign amounts to an effort to erase what remains of their culture.
Several Uighurs living abroad said the government had put their children in boarding schools without their consent.
Mahmutjan Niyaz, 33, a Uighur businessman who moved to Istanbul in 2016, said his 5-year-old daughter was sent to one after his brother and sister-in-law, the girl’s guardians, were confined in an internment camp.
Other relatives could have cared for her but the authorities refused to let them. Now, Mr. Niyaz said, the school has changed the girl.
“Before, my daughter was playful and outgoing,” he said. “But after she went to the school, she looked very sad in the photos.”
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‘Kindness Students’
In a dusty village near the ancient Silk Road city of Hotan in southern Xinjiang, nestled among fields of barren walnut trees and simple concrete homes, the elementary school stood out.
It was surrounded by a tall brick wall with two layers of barbed wire on top. Cameras were mounted on every corner. And at the entrance, a guard wearing a black helmet and a protective vest stood beside a metal detector.
It wasn’t always like this. Last year, officials converted the school in Kasipi village into a full-time boarding school.
Kang Jide, a Chinese language teacher at the school, described the frenzied process on his public blog on the Chinese social media platform WeChat: In just a few days, all the day students were transferred. Classrooms were rearranged. Bunk beds were set up. Then, 270 new children arrived, leaving the school with 430 boarders, each in the sixth grade or below.
Officials called them “kindness students,” referring to the party’s generosity in making special arrangements for their education.
The government says children in Xinjiang’s boarding schools are taught better hygiene and etiquette as well as Chinese and science skills that will help them succeed in modern China.
“My heart suddenly melted after seeing the splendid heartfelt smiles on the faces of these left-behind children,” said a retired official visiting a boarding elementary school in Lop County near Hotan, according to a state media report. He added that the party had given them “an environment to be carefree, study happily, and grow healthy and strong.”
But Mr. Kang wrote that being separated from their families took a toll on the children. Some never received visits from relatives, or remained on campus during the holidays, even after most teachers left. And his pupils often begged to use his phone to call their parents.
“Sometimes, when they hear the voice on the other end of the call, the children will start crying and they hide in the corner because they don’t want me to see,” he wrote.
“It’s not just the children,” he added. “The parents on the other end also miss their children of course, so much so that it breaks their hearts and they’re trembling.”
The internment camps, which the government describes as job training centers, have cast a shadow even on students who are not boarders. Before the conversion of the school, Mr. Kang posted a photo of a letter that an 8-year-old girl had written to her father, who had been sent to a camp.
“Daddy, where are you?” the girl wrote in an uneven scrawl. “Daddy, why don’t you come back?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she continued. “You must study hard too.”
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Nevertheless, Mr. Kang was generally supportive of the schools. On his blog, he described teaching Uighur students as an opportunity to “water the flowers of the motherland.”
“Kindness students” receive more attention and resources than day students. Boarding schools are required to offer psychological counseling, for example, and in Kasipi, the children were given a set of supplies that included textbooks, clothes and a red Young Pioneer scarf.
Learning Chinese was the priority, Mr. Kang wrote, though students were also immersed in traditional Chinese culture, including classical poetry, and taught songs praising the party.
On a recent visit to the school, children in red and blue uniforms could be seen playing in a yard beside buildings marked “cafeteria” and “student dormitory.” At the entrance, school officials refused to answer questions.
Tighter security has become the norm at schools in Xinjiang. In Hotan alone, more than a million dollars has been allocated in the past three years to buy surveillance and security equipment for schools, including helmets, shields and spiked batons, according to procurement records. At the entrance to one elementary school, a facial recognition system had been installed.
Mr. Kang recently wrote on his blog that he had moved on to a new job teaching in northern Xinjiang. Reached by telephone there, he declined to be interviewed. But before hanging up, he said his students in Kasipi had made rapid progress in learning Chinese.
“Every day I feel very fulfilled,” he said.
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‘Engineers of the Human Soul’
To carry out its campaign, the party needed not only new schools but also an army of teachers, an overhaul of the curriculum — and political discipline. Teachers suspected of dissent were punished, and textbooks were rewritten to weed out material deemed subversive.
“Teachers are the engineers of the human soul,” the education bureau of Urumqi recently wrote in an open letter, deploying a phrase first used by Stalin to describe writers and other cultural workers.
The party launched an intensive effort to recruit teachers for Xinjiang from across China. Last year, nearly 90,000 were brought in, chosen partly for their political reliability, officials said at a news conference this year. The influx amounted to about a fifth of Xinjiang’s teachers last year, according to government data.
The new recruits, often ethnic Han, and the teachers they joined, mostly Uighurs, were both warned to toe the line. Those who opposed the Chinese-language policy or resisted the new curriculum were labeled “two-faced” and punished.
The deputy secretary-general of the oasis town of Turpan, writing earlier this year, described such teachers as “scum of the Chinese people” and accused them of being “bewitched by extremist religious ideology.”
Teachers were urged to express their loyalty, and the public was urged to keep an eye on them. A sign outside a kindergarten in Hotan invited parents to report teachers who made “irresponsible remarks” or participated in unauthorized religious worship.
Officials in Xinjiang also spent two years inspecting and revising hundreds of textbooks and other teaching material, according to the 2017 policy document.
Some who helped the party write and edit the old textbooks ended up in prison, including Yalqun Rozi, a prominent scholar and literary critic who helped compile a set of textbooks on Uighur literature that were used for more than a decade.
Mr. Rozi was charged with attempted subversion and sentenced to 15 years in prison last year, according to his son, Kamaltürk Yalqun. Several other members of the committee that compiled the textbooks were arrested too, he said.
“Instead of welcoming the cultural diversity of Uighurs, China labeled it a malignant tumor,” said Mr. Yalqun, who lives in Philadelphia.
There is evidence that some Uighur children have been sent to boarding schools far from their homes.
Kalbinur Tursun, 36, entrusted five of her children to relatives when she left Xinjiang to give birth in Istanbul but has been unable to contact them for several years.
Last year, she saw her daughter Ayshe, then 6, in a video circulating on Chinese social media. It had been posted by a user who appeared to be a teacher at a school in Hotan — more than 300 miles away from their home in Kashgar.
“My children are so young, they just need their mother and father,” Ms. Tursun said, expressing concern about how the authorities were raising them. “I fear they will think that I’m the enemy — that they won’t accept me and will hate me.”
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Fatima Er contributed reporting from Istanbul.
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FAQs
How many Muslims are there in China in 2019? ›
If we include all the population of those designated 'national' minorities with an Islamic heritage in the territory of China, then we can conclude that there are some 20 million Muslims in the People's Republic of China.
What is happening to Muslims in China? ›China has been witnessing a humanitarian crisis. More than one million Uighur and other Muslim minorities are forcibly held in mass detention camps in the Xinjian province where they face countless human rights abuses from forced labour, coerced sterilisation, and destruction of their culture and religious identity.
What is the problem with Uyghurs in China? ›China has also been accused of targeting Muslim religious figures and banning religious practices in the region, as well as destroying mosques and tombs. Uyghur activists say they fear that the group's culture is under threat of erasure.
Is China still putting Muslims in camps? ›...
| Xinjiang internment camps | |
|---|---|
| Operational | Since 2017 |
China's one-child policy was rolled out in 1980 by Deng Xiaoping and was strictly enforced after the population had increased to 969 million in 1980 from around 540 million in 1949.
How many Muslims are in China today? ›Today, there are about 25 million Muslims spread across China, scattered widely and concentrated in small groups. Islam is one of the four or five officially recognised religions in China.
How many Uyghurs are imprisoned in China? ›The United Nations has said that up to 1.5 million Uyghurs are in internment camps in China.
What is the main religion in China? ›Chinese Buddhism and Folk Religions
China has the world's largest Buddhist population, with an estimated 185–250 million practitioners, according to Freedom House. Though Buddhism originated in India, it has a long history and tradition in China and today is the country's largest institutionalized religion.
Many Uyghurs living in Xinjiang aren't allowed to leave the region. Information on Xinjiang within China is heavily censored, and state media now promotes the region as a safe, exotic tourist destination.
Who are the Uyghurs in China? ›
The Uyghurs (/ˈwiːɡʊərz, -ɡərz/ WEE-goorz, -gərz), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China.
What are 3 negative aspects of China's human rights issues? ›Members of minority groups are subject to mass arbitrary detention, Orwellian-style surveillance, political indoctrination, torture, forced abortions and sterilization, and state-sponsored forced labor.
How many mosques are in China? ›Islam was developing fast during the Qing Dynasty and a lot of mosques were set up throughout the country. Nowadays there are about 20,000 mosques in China.
Why is China detaining the Uyghurs? ›Camps for Uyghurs
Chinese authorities in Xinjiang began rounding up women and men in 2017 — largely Muslims from the Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz ethnic minorities — and detaining them in camps designed to rid them of terrorist or extremist leanings.
Living in the country today are more than 20 million Muslims, including members of more than 30 indigenous Russian nations," according to Talib Saidbaev, advisor to the Head Mufti of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia.
Which country has most Muslims? ›The country with the largest number (about 209 million) is Indonesia, where 87.2% of the population identifies as Muslim. India has the world's second-largest Muslim population in raw numbers (roughly 176 million), though Muslims make up just 14.4% of India's total population.
Which religion is most in the world 2022? ›Christianity. The world's largest religion is Christianity, which is practiced by almost 2.4 billion people. Christianity is divided into Eastern and Western theology, and within those divisions, many branches, including Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.
What is the biggest religion in the world? ›Of the world's major religions, Christianity is the largest, with more than two billion followers. Christianity is based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and is approximately 2,000 years old.
Is having 2 children in China illegal? ›Families in China can now have as many children as they like without facing fines or other consequences, the Chinese government said late Tuesday.
What happens if you have twins in China? ›What If A Family In China Had Twins Under The One-Child Policy? That's not a problem. While many stress the one child component of the policy, it's better to understand it as a one birth per family rule. In other words, if a woman gives birth to twins or triplets in one birthing, she won't be penalized in any way.
Can you only have 1 child in China? ›
The one-child policy was enforced for most Chinese into the 21st century, but in late 2015 Chinese officials announced that the program was ending. Beginning in early 2016, all families would be allowed to have two children, but that change did not lead to a sustained increase in birth rates.
Is Islam accepted in China? ›Muslims in China have managed to practice their faith in China, sometimes against great odds, since the 7th century CE. Islam is one of the religions that is still officially recognized in China.
How many Muslims are there in the world in 2022? ›Islam is the world's second-largest religion
Earth is home to more than 1.9 billion Muslims. Islam is also the world's fastest-growing religion. The Islamic population is mainly split between 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims and 240-340 million Shia Muslims, with the remainder scattered among a few smaller denominations.
...
(名) As a noun.
| 伊斯兰教 | yīsīlán jiào | Islam |
|---|---|---|
| 回教 | huíjiào | Islam |
| 绿教 | lǜjiào | (derog.) Islam |
| 伊斯兰 | yī sī lán | Islam |
Uyghurs live for the most part in northwestern China, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; a small number live in the Central Asian republics. There were some 10,000,000 Uyghurs in China and a combined total of at least 300,000 in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan in the early 21st century.
When did the Uighurs settle in China? ›For thousands of years, leaders, tribes and China's imperial dynasties have fought for control of this resource-rich territory. Around the 10th century, Arab influence arrived in the region and Islam became a part of Uyghur life. During the Qing dynasty, the region was brought once again under Chinese control.
How many prisons are in China? ›PRISON AND LABOR CAMPS IN CHINA
It has 670 prison with around 1.5 million prisoners, including 19,000 juveniles. According to the Chinese Ministry of Justice there are 1.3 million prisoners in prison, which are often referred to as “reform through labor” camps.
Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, according to many scholars, with roots and customs dating back more than 4,000 years. Today, with about 900 million followers, Hinduism is the third-largest religion behind Christianity and Islam. Roughly 95 percent of the world's Hindus live in India.
Is Christianity allowed in China? ›Chinese who are over the age of 18 are only permitted to join officially sanctioned Christian groups which are registered with the government-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Church, the China Christian Council and the Protestant Three-Self Church.
What is the fastest growing religion in China? ›Although most practice traditional Chinese religions such as Taoism, and longer-standing foreign imports such as Buddhism, Protestant Christianity is probably the fastest-growing faith, with at least 38m adherents today (about 3% of the population), up from 22m a decade ago, according to the government's count.
How can we help Uyghur Muslims? ›
- CONTACT CONGRESS. Contact your member of Congress to urge them to support or co-sponsor:
- STOP FORCED LABOR. Call out brands profiting from forced labor goods:
- Sign Petitions.
- Donate.
- Volunteer or intern.
- Join our Mailing List.
- Follow Us. Twitter: twitter.com/UyghurProject.
- Join a UHRP Event.
As of this year, the Uyghur Peoples live mostly within Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China; however, smaller communities live in different countries around the world, including the United States, Canada, Afghanistan, Russia, Germany, etc.
Why are there no Uyghur refugees? ›Experts say the main reason for the lack of Uyghur refugees is logistical: it's next to impossible for Uyghurs in China, most of whom are under extraordinary state surveillance, to access refugee resettlement systems.
How did Islam come to China? ›Islam is considered to be the newest world religion to come to China. The religion arrived in China after Buddhism and Christianity. Muslim traders began to arrive in China during the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907), and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Muslims were brought into the Yuan Empire (1271 - 1368) by the Mongols.
Where are Uyghurs originally from? ›The Uighurs, Turkic nomads living north of the Gobi Desert, ruled over a powerful empire between 744 and 840. Its capital was Karabalghasun on the upper Orhon River in Mongolia. Although of nomadic origin, the Uighurs presided over flourishing commercial centers and agriculture.
What religion is Uyghur? ›About eleven million Uyghurs—a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group—live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The Chinese government has imprisoned more than one million people since 2017 and subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, and forced sterilizations.
Does China allow freedom of religion? ›The constitution of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which cites the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), states that citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief” but limits protections for religious practice to “normal religious activities,” without defining “normal.” The government recognizes five ...
How many kids can you have in China? ›China said on Monday that it would allow all married couples to have three children, ending a two-child policy that has failed to raise the country's declining birthrates and avert a demographic crisis.
What country has the most human rights violations? ›The countries with the highest human rights and rule of law index scores are located in Africa, East Asia, and Middle East. In a scale from zero to 10, where zero represents the best conditions and 10 the worst, Egypt had the highest points and was closely followed by Syria, and Yemen.
Are there Muslims in China? ›Islam in China
Today's China is home to a large Muslim population – around 1.6% of the total population, or around 22 million people.
Which country have more mosque? ›
It is said that India has the largest number of mosques in the world. There are 300,000 active mosques in the Asian state, more than in any other country, including the Muslim world.
Is there any mosque in China? ›China is renowned for its beautiful mosques, which resemble temples. However, in western China the mosques resemble those of Iran and Central Asia, with tall, slender minarets, curvy arches and dome shaped roofs, as well as the unique multi-layered portals.
What race is Uyghur? ›The Uighurs (also spelled as Uyghurs) are an ethnic minority group mostly living in the Xinjiang autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. The Uighurs are predominantly Muslims.
How do you say Uighur? ›How to Pronounce Uyghur (in English and in the Uyghur Language)
Does Russia accept Islam? ›Recognized under the law and by Russian political leaders as one of Russia's traditional religions, Islam is a part of Russian historical heritage, and is subsidized by the Russian government.
How many Muslims are in Germany? ›According to a representative survey, it is estimated that in 2019, there were 5.3–5.6 million Muslims with a migrant background in Germany (6.4–6.7% of the population), in addition to an unknown number of Muslims without a migrant background.
How many Muslims are in England? ›Out of the approximately 26 million Muslims living in China by 2020, the majority were Uyghurs, closely followed by Hui with more than 10 million people.
How many Muslims does China have? ›Today, there are about 25 million Muslims spread across China, scattered widely and concentrated in small groups. Islam is one of the four or five officially recognised religions in China.
Which religion is fastest growing in China? ›Today, it is estimated that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China, There were some four million before 1949 (three million Catholics and one million Protestants).
Where do Muslims live in China? ›
China is home to more than 23 million Muslims, most of which are located in the central and western regions of China, such as Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, etc. Muslims also can be found throughout the provinces of Yunnan in...
Which country has most Muslims? ›The country with the largest number (about 209 million) is Indonesia, where 87.2% of the population identifies as Muslim. India has the world's second-largest Muslim population in raw numbers (roughly 176 million), though Muslims make up just 14.4% of India's total population.
How many Muslims are there in the world in 2022? ›Islam is the world's second-largest religion
Earth is home to more than 1.9 billion Muslims. Islam is also the world's fastest-growing religion. The Islamic population is mainly split between 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims and 240-340 million Shia Muslims, with the remainder scattered among a few smaller denominations.
...
(名) As a noun.
| 伊斯兰教 | yīsīlán jiào | Islam |
|---|---|---|
| 回教 | huíjiào | Islam |
| 绿教 | lǜjiào | (derog.) Islam |
| 伊斯兰 | yī sī lán | Islam |
People in China are generally free to wear hijab (although it's not very popular), and if you go to a halal restaurant (usually 兰州拉面 [Lánzhōu lāmiàn] is halal), usually the cooks are women who wear headscarves. Many female outdoor workers wear something comparable to hijab to protect themselves from the sun.
Is Islam accepted in China? ›Muslims in China have managed to practice their faith in China, sometimes against great odds, since the 7th century CE. Islam is one of the religions that is still officially recognized in China.
Who spread Islam in China? ›Muslim traders began to arrive in China during the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907), and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Muslims were brought into the Yuan Empire (1271 - 1368) by the Mongols.
How many years will Islam last? ›In more than 15 ahadith found in the Sahih of Imam Bukhari, Sunnan of Imam Abu Dawwud, Jamii of Imam Tirmidhi and others, the prophet (saws) said Islam has a specific lifespan on earth, these Ahadith state Allah gave Islam 1500 years then relatively soon after this He would establish the Hour, we are now in the year ...
Who is the fastest religion in the world? ›...
Contents
- 1.1 Buddhism.
- 1.2 Chinese traditional religion.
- 1.3 Christianity.
- 1.4 Deism.
- 1.5 Druze.
- 1.6 Hinduism.
- 1.7 Islam. 1.7.1 Modern growth. ...
- 1.8 Judaism.
China has the world's largest Buddhist population, with an estimated 185–250 million practitioners, according to Freedom House. Though Buddhism originated in India, it has a long history and tradition in China and today is the country's largest institutionalized religion.
What is largest religion in China? ›
National surveys conducted in the early 21st century estimated that some 80% of the population of China, which is more than a billion people, practice some kind of Chinese folk religion; 13–16% are Buddhists; 10% are Taoist; 2.53% are Christians; and 0.83% are Muslims.
Is there any mosque in China? ›China is renowned for its beautiful mosques, which resemble temples. However, in western China the mosques resemble those of Iran and Central Asia, with tall, slender minarets, curvy arches and dome shaped roofs, as well as the unique multi-layered portals.