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第32章 Striving against Insults and Discrimination(2)

In early 1936, another incident of insulting and discriminating Muslims took place in Beijing. On March 30, “The Citizen” newspaper published “Bizarre Customs”, a paper that insulted Muslim women, and was reprinted by “Time Speech” newspaper soon after. It rekindled the indignation of Muslims in Beijing. Only when the two newspapers made corrections and apologized openly was the problem finally settled. “The World Daily” and “The Citizen” reprinted this paper under the title of “Hami Produces Beauty” on April 5 and 6 respectively, so it wasconsidered to be deliberately in defiance. It aroused the public anger of Muslims. A number of Muslims fought with the staff of the two newspaper offices£¨ resulting in bloodshed. Armed police intervened afterwards and the incident calmed down. As the impact of the incident continued to spread, the Kuomintang Government had to mediate and settle the problem. The two newspaper offices were compelled to apologize in its important new columns in big lettering for three days, and throw daylight on the whole event in “The World Daily” and “The Morning Paper”? Firmly requested by Muslims, Beijing authorities also guaranteed that: 1)? the municipal government would strictly prohibit insults on the Huis in accordance with the laws that had already been in practice; 2)? the Beijing Journalist Association should restrict and supervise its members and would never publish papers insulting Islam, and apologize to all the mosques.

In 1947, there occurred the “Case of September 16th”? “Beijing New Paper” published an anonymous paper in entitle of “Pig” to humiliate Islam. It deeply hurt Muslims and triggered great indignation of Hui Muslims. They held the “Convention on Defending Islam concerning the "Beijing New Paper Incident‘”? On the next day, thousands of Hui Muslims wearing white caps marched on demonstration to the office of “Beijing New Paper”

from Niujie. Ignoring the strong protest of the Muslims, some newspapers in Beijing published a paper simultaneously in the name of the Press Association to support “Beijing New Paper”? The Central News Agency of the Kuomintang government also shielded it with the excuse of misunderstanding of Islamic doctrines, and it aroused even more anger from Hui Muslims. They presented a petition to the government, and by then the Beijing authorities had to acknowledge their faults. “Beijing New Paper” also made a self-criticism in the newspaper and its principal went to the Beijing Muslim Association to apologize. The municipal government reiterated its command to respect religions and prohibit insults on them. The mayor addressed Hui Muslims to show his utmost solace and put an end to the incident.

Moreover, similar incidents also occurred in other places. In November 1933, the Guangyi Publishing House in Nanchang was commissioned to sell “The Romance of Fragrant Imperial Concubine” published by Jingzhi Publishing House in Shanghai, which contained words insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. “The Interesting Hearsay of Three Kids” published in the 17th issue of “Beijing Secondary School Newsletter” in1933 contained content humiliating Islam. In December of the same year, “Industry and commercial Daily” in Tangshanpublished a paper cooking up a story that Huis practiced a custom of polyandry. On May 23, 1934, “The Oriental Express” in Beijing published a paper titled “On the Throne” by Zhi Xuan, which contained words disgracing the Prophet Muhammad. On June18 of the same year, Dacheng, Zhili and Weiwen three publishing houses put on sale “Nian Gengyao"s Conquering March to the West”, in which there were several comments insulting Muslims. This incident resulted in violent conflicts. Still there were other incidents of this sort: dramas that insulted Huis were played in Shanghai and Hebei, and textbooks used in these places contained content that insulted Islam; someone with evil purpose even threw pork into Muslim food shops in certain places. All these incidents mentioned above indicates that there existed ethnic inequality during the Republic Period.