China’s Mosque Makeover: From Minarets to Pagodas – The Battle of Architectural Identity

The last grand mosque in China retaining its Arabesque features has lost its domes, radically altering its minarets, as part of a campaign by authorities to impart a Chinese character to Islamic places of worship in the country.

The Guardian reported on Saturday, May 25, 2024, that the Shadian Grand Mosque, one of the largest and most magnificent mosques in China, sits atop the small town that bears its name in the southwestern Yunnan province.

Until last year, the complex, covering an area of 21,000 square meters, housed a large building topped with a green dome adorned with a crescent, surrounded by four smaller domes and towering minarets.

Satellite images from 2022 show the entrance wing adorned with a large crescent and a star made of bright black tiles.

Dome Removal

However, photographs, satellite images, and eyewitness accounts from this year (2024) indicate that the dome has been removed and replaced with a surface resembling a Han Chinese temple, with the minarets shortened and transformed into pagoda-like towers. Only a faint trace of the crescent and star tiles that once distinguished the mosque’s front porch can be seen.

The Guardian’s report also shed light on the conversion of other mosques from their Arabesque style to Chinese, citing the historic Najiang Mosque, located less than 100 miles from Shadian, which recently underwent a renovation removing its Islamic features.

In 2018, the Chinese government published a plan regarding “sinicizing” Islam. Part of the plan involved resisting “foreign architectural styles” and imbuing “Islamic architecture with Chinese characteristics.”

A leaked memo from the Chinese Communist Party reveals that local authorities received instructions to “adhere to the principle of demolishing more and reducing construction.”

In this context, Raslan Yousupov, an anthropologist at Cornell University who spent two years in Shadian conducting fieldwork, said, “The sinicization of these two historic mosques represents the success of the campaign. Even if small Arabesque-style mosques remain in villages, it will be difficult for local communities to object to the sinicization plan.”

Meanwhile, Hannah Theaker, an Islamic historian at the University of Plymouth, stated that the sinicization campaign is progressing “province by province,” adding, “By 2023, there was a sense among communities that the architectural tradition would reach the famous Yunnan mosques, as they represent the last major mosques unfamiliar in style in China.”

Ma Guo, a Chinese activist of Hui ethnicity residing in New York, remarked that the renovations were “a clear message to destroy your religion and ethnicity.”

The Hui are a Chinese Muslim ethnic minority, most of whom reside in western China. There are over 11 million Hui people, according to the 2020 census, a population similar to that of the Uighurs.

China’s plan to politicize mosques is largely complete, but it is just one part of its efforts to mold religion, especially Islam, to fit the government’s ideology, according to The Guardian.

Since the Communist Party seized power in China in 1949, authorities have targeted all forms of religion, reaching its peak in 1975 when Hui Muslims in Yunnan protested the closure of a mosque, leading to the military invading the area, resulting in the deaths of 1,600 people, including women and children.

While the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of worship, it imposes strict limits on this principle, recognizing only five religions that face stringent restrictions on their practices.