Vocal vigilante groups angered by what they see as creeping Islamisation in Chinese society
It’s time for a victory lap for Xi Wuyi. She has finally “won” against “Islamic extremists” she has been fighting for years.
A few days before the start of the Lunar New Year, People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, sent out a new year’s greeting on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service. It said: “Butcher the pig and save some pork!”
For a small online group of vigilantes waging a war against “pan-halal tendencies” in Chinese society, the short message was loaded with importance and symbolism.
Xi, a Marxism scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the best known member of the group cheering the post, said it had finally righted the wrong against “religious fundamentalism eroding Chinese secular mainstream culture”.
“Let us all call for the totem of the pig to return to the Lunar New Year’s gala show!” Xi wrote on Weibo, referring to the annual television special watched by more 700 million people on nationwide state broadcaster CCTV.
Xi and her fellow vigilantes have been watching with growing unease what they see as the creeping Islamisation of Chinese society, marked by the setting up of halal cafeterias in universities, the provision of halal-only food on planes and the use of code words to prevent the utterance of “pig” or “pork” on national television or social media.
Halal, an Arabic word, refers to things that are regarded as permitted, including food and drinks, according to the Koran, the holy book for those who practice Islam. The Koran forbids the consumption of pork.
For Xi’s group, these developments represent a blatant effort to appease China’s Muslim population in areas where they believe the state should make no compromises that blur the boundary between religious and secular life. In this Year of the Pig, the battles seemed more urgent than ever for the vigilantes.
Xi’s Weibo account highlights a number of these small “victories” – some of which she became aware of herself. Others were brought to her attention by internet users who have been stirred up similarly by these issues. One recent post shows a new year’s parade in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, in China’s northwest, that included a line of pigs. People wearing pig outfits also took part in the procession.
These images were especially significant in Xi’s view because Xian has a large Muslim population and even a “Muslim Street” that leads to the city’s Grand Mosque, where vendors sell halal food and serve beer in bowls to make it look like soup, since alcohol is prohibited in Islam.
What is more, the government has gone to great lengths to tiptoe around anything pig-related, making the Xian developments even sweeter for the vigilantes. Xi’s Weibo account features several pages from a 2007 memoir by Ye Xiaowen, former director of the state administration for religious affairs, in which Ye talks about the new year’s gala of 1995, another pig year, during which he blanked out pig references to avoid offending Muslims.
He recounts that when he saw a huge pig’s head hung in the middle of the set for the gala during a rehearsal at CCTV’s studio, he told the channel director to take it down. Even though “Spring Festival is a holiday for all ethnic groups”, he said, “more than 10 of them don’t like pigs”.
At his insistence, he writes, the director changed it to the Chinese character for spring, “chun”.
Ye also tried to get the director to remove pig-head-shaped lanterns that children carried in another segment, but he was too late. It was decided instead to keep the lanterns in a faraway shot to prevent viewers from seeing them clearly.
Xi’s followers also have sent her Weibo posts showing pig symbols or words in the Lunar New Year greetings of foreign embassies as well as on official governmentor state media Weibo accounts.
