How China kept lid on Ramadan

[rug]

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
September 11, 2011, 10:22 p.m.

Reporting from Beijing— At a teachers college in far northwestern China, students were irritated to find that their professors were escorting them to lunch last month — an odd occurrence since they were more than capable of finding the cafeteria themselves.

There was an ulterior motive, students told travelers who recently visited the city of Kashgar: The college wanted to make sure that the students, most of them Muslims, were eating rather than fasting in daylight hours during the holy month of Ramadan.

Then, something even stranger happened, the students said. When Ramadan ended late last month, launching the three-day Eid al-Fitr feast, all the restaurants and the cafeteria on campus were shut down. Students were barred from leaving the campus. On the next two days of the holiday, the cafeteria was open, but the students were locked in, unable to leave to celebrate with their families.

"It was totally backwards," complained a 20-year-old Muslim student who was forced to skip the holiday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-muslims-20110912,0,4850941.story

[ZombieHorde]

1. The Chinese government sucks. They seem to feel so threatened

by non-government authority.

[Odin2005]

2. That is just evil.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. How sad. Muslims make up about 2% of China and Islam is one of the 5 recognized religions.

The other 4: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, and Protestantism

[Pterodactyl]

4. As was mentioned earlier, the government of China sucks.

Commie jerks.

[NMMNG]

5. Control freaks are so pathetic

[Taverner]

6. Wow - that's fucked up

As anti-religious as I may be, this is just plain fucked up