The Communist government of China, under the leadership of Paramount leader- Xi Jinping, has decided to rewrite Bible and Quran, the holy text of Christianity and Islam respectively. In the last few months, the news of crackdown on Muslim Uighur minority in western Chinese province became a big issue in international media, human right groups, and Muslim nations.
Amid this bad press about the crackdown on minority, the Communist government has decided to ‘socialize’ the holy books of the two of the largest religions, but constitute minority in China. This shows that the Xi Jinping government does not give two hoots about getting bad press in global media.
The Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the authority responsible for ethnic and religious matters, has called for a “comprehensive evaluation of the existing religious classics aiming at contents which do not conform to the progress of the times.”
The government will remove all the content Socialism, or China’s official interpretation of Communism. One can imagine that the Chinese version of the Bible and Quran might start with popular Communist phrase, “Religion is the opium of the people”- one of the most frequently paraphrased statements of Communist ideologue, Karl Marx.
The paragraphs of Bible, which contradict any policy of the Communist government would be amended or re-translated. Censor or modification of religion is not new in China. Previously, it was reported that the portrait of Virgin Mary, installed in a Catholic church, was replaced by the portrait of paramount leader, Xi Jinping.
China has its own version of Communism too! The country ranks fairly high in the list of free market economies, and they call it “Communism with Chinese characteristic”.
The Chinisation or Sinisation (as it is popularly known) is not limited to political economy or religion. The country has its own version of Facebook, Twitter, e-commerce; all based on (read copied) from the famous American companies.
Internet penetration in China is higher than that of India, or many other developing nations, but the ‘Internet freedom’ is very low, as most of the websites are heavily regulated. The project, popularly known as Great Firewall of China (GFW), a combination of legislative and technological actions, is enforced by the Communist government to regulate Internet.
The Communist in India, who cry foul over restrictions in Freedom of Expression in India, however, defend the religious, social, political, restrictions by the Chinese government with their typical hypocritical logics.