BEIJING: China has yet again tried to undermine the Uyghur’s cultural heritage and blur historical ties to the Xinjiang region through a state-sponsored promotional video where a Chinese woman urging that Grand Kuqa Mosque, the people and the religion are “Chinese,” according to the Bitter Winter.
In the state-sponsored promotional video, a woman swirls in Buddhist fashion in the Grand Kuqa Mosque, the second largest in Xinjiang, to prove Uyghur Islam came from Buddhism.
The narrator stating, “Remember” where Uyghurs came from and adding, “They are the same as us.”
According to Bitter Winter, Xinjian’s Grand Kuqa Mosque as a Buddhist-Muslim religious hub inextricably bound up with Han Chinese history and culture, in which a Buddhist dancer takes center stage among the pillars of the central prayer hall has angered and humiliated exiled Uyghurs.
This is not only another attempt by the Chinese Communist Party but also a step to further Sinicize the region, but a gross humiliation and affront to their religion, says exiled poet Aziz Isa Elkun, now based in the UK. Their cultural roots are being torn out and their religion mocked, he complains.
Elkun also stated that she wanders nonchalantly through the doors into a pillared hall, without the headscarf and even kept her shoes on, shows disrespect towards the religion.
The next minute, a Uyghur dancer dominating the prayer area, dressed in full Buddhist orange regalia writhes characteristically in Buddhist style to soft Chinese music, Bitter Winter reported.
The narrator speaks in the muted tones of the centuries of Buddhist and Islamic cultures woven inseparably through the centuries.
“The long river of the setting sun,” the “clattering of silhouetted horses” galloping across the plain. We are introduced to “Uyghur beauty” outlined as if “veiled” behind the latticed window. She represents the “daughter of China’s history,” and through history we can understand the culture of the great Chinese nation, she intones.
Kuqa is inextricably part of China, she concludes. The softness and elegance of the Central Plains is woven together with the blood of the Western regions, reported Bitter Winter.
“They combine to be as one,” Elkun said. The culmination of multicultural integration throughout the centuries, is met here, in the “Kuqa Temple.” The setting sun casts a long shadow through the “traditional Chinese window latticework.” The pillars, the painted beams are magnificent.
We should remember this, she urges the listener. Kuqa, the people and the religion are Chinese.
After seeing the video, exiled poet “was broken,” according to the Bitter Winter. “There are so many sacred sites now that have been completely destroyed by the CCP,” he said, adding that the video was one more humiliation to his people, according to bitter Winter.
Kuqa, formerly known as Qiuci, had been one of the foremost Buddhist centers in the sixth century, spreading from India before Islam appeared around the thirteenth century. But by the end of the fourteenth century Islam had become well established and Buddhism largely vanquished.
Most Uyghurs would consider themselves Muslim today, although there is a small but growing Christian minority among them. (ANI)