Page 111 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

HARUN YAHYA (ADNAN OKTAR)
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1953, are particularly striking. In 1953, fully 75 percent of the popula-
tion was Muslim, and just 6 percent Chinese. By 1982, the ratio had
changed to 53 percent Muslim and 40 percent Chinese. The 1990 census,
which reported a population of 40 percent Muslim to 53 percent
Chinese, began to lay bare the full dimensions of ethnic cleansing in the
region.
Currently, the Uighurs are being made to stay in the villages, and
Chinese are being installed in the cities. Thus, some cities now have
populations which are as much as 80 percent Chinese. The aim is to es-
tablish a Chinese majority in the cities. The Chinese government's pol-
icy encouraging intermarriage between the local people and the
Chinese is another part of this assimilation policy.
The Chinese administration has also used the Muslims of East
Turkestan in nuclear tests. These tests began on Oct. 16, 1964, and as a
result, people in the region have developed deadly illnesses, and some
20,000 handicapped children have been born. The number of Muslims
who have lost their lives as a result of the tests is known to be in the area
of 210,000. Thousands of others contracted cancer or were left crippled.
From 1964 to the present, China has detonated approximately 50
atomic and hydrogen bombs in East Turkestan. Swedish experts mea-
sured the effect of tremors set off by a 1984 underground test as regis-

tering 6.8 on the Richter scale.

The Real Reason for the Cruelty: Hatred of Islam
The one critical reason behind China's oppression of the people of
East Turkestan is that they are Muslims, because communist China sees
Islam as the biggest obstacle to its tightening its grip over the region.
Chinese intolerance resorts to all possible methods of oppression
in order to turn the people from their religion, and went through its
most fanatical period during the communist dictator Mao's Cultural
Revolution of 1966-76. Mosques were torn down, mass worship was

banned, Qur'anic courses were shuttered, and the Chinese moving into
the area harassed the Muslim population however they could. Schools