Anti- Islam acts are really becoming a cause for concern. This in effect has made many muslims uncomfortable in publicly practising their religion as expected. In reacting to this trending act, allegedly Islamophobic terms invented by Chinese Internet users to stigmatize Muslims have been blocked by authorities on Chinese social media.
This is as a result of the national policies some deem overly favorable to Muslim minorities. It revealed that all the internet users who have been guilty of this have violated the national policy rules.
In addition, reports confirmed that searches for “green religion” and “peaceful religion”, often used by Internet users to refer to Islam and to circumvent censorship of inappropriate online speech, showed no results on China’s Weibo microblog on Wednesday. Also, posts containing the phrases cannot be posted for “violations of Weibo’s complaints related rules.” Worse insults against Islam are also blocked in Weibo’s search engine.
However, in the recent years, it’s in record that the fear of Islam has been on the increase as the internet users continue to spread the hate on the religion. There had been numerous complaints on the discrimination towards the muslims in China but at this juncture, the government has decided to curb the situation.
“It’s necessary to timely remove radical phrases that discriminate against Islam and are biased against Muslims to prevent worsening online hatred towards the group. Those phrases severely undermine religious harmony and ethnic unity,” said Xiong Kunxin, a professor at Beijing’s Minzu University of China in Beijing.
He added that the act of stopping the anti-islam phrases from spreading is a way to regulate and abide by the rules governing the country:
“Blocking such phrases is not an infringement of people’s freedom of speech as freedom should abide under China’s related regulations and law.”
Also, in reaction to this, Some Internet users in China misunderstand China’s ethnic policies, calling them “unjust” to the majority. It has been revealed that the policy had only proven that every religion must be respected. As a matter of fact, the government is on this move to unveil the stigmatization bestowed upon the Chinese Muslims.
Record confirmed that China has 20 million Muslims, according to the 2013 population census. This population deserves to be respected and also enjoy the fundermental rights as every other citizen does. The government believes that the caution against the abuse of any religion will help to sustain unity, peace and development in the country.
