Governing Faith: The Sinicization of Islam in the Uyghur Region

By Erk Altay

Executive Summary

At the May 2015 Central United Front Work Conference, Xi Jinping directed authorities to ensure all religions in China “adhere to the direction of Sinicization,” explicitly integrating religious management into Beijing’s ideological governance. Sinicization is a state-led policy that reshapes religious institutions, doctrines, and public expressions to conform to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) objectives. In the Uyghur region (East Turkestan), authorities apply this framework by framing everyday Islamic practices as extremism.

Over the past decade, state policies have dismantled the foundations of Islamic life through mosque demolitions, restrictions on religious education, and the criminalization of ordinary observance. Authorities portray everyday practices, including prayer, fasting, religious attire, aqiqah, nikah, and funerals, as signs of radicalization. These measures form a part of a broader campaign of systematic and widespread human rights violations, including mass arbitrary detention, political indoctrination, family separation, and forced labor. International monitors and several governments have determined these crimes amount to genocide.

This policy report examines how Sinicization operates in the context of Islam in the Uyghur region by focusing on its impact on everyday life. It evaluates the legal, administrative, and ideological tools through which the Chinese state regulates Islam and redefines officially acceptable religious practice. The findings indicate Sinicization of Islam in the Uyghur Region functions as a governance strategy that treats religion as a security threat and subjects it to continuous ideological control.

Key Takeaways:

• Sinicization subordinates Islam to Party authority. What Beijing frames as “adaptation” of Islam functions as political control with doctrine, clergy, architecture, and rituals permitted only insofar as they reinforce CCP ideology. Religious legitimacy is contingent on political loyalty.
• Ordinary religious practice is treated as a security threat. Authorities treat everyday observance, including prayer, fasting, Qur’an study, religious attire, and nikah, as indicators of extremism, subjecting Uyghurs to surveillance, detention, and long prison sentences.
• Temporary policy has hardened into permanent governance. Sinicization policy evolved from ideological guidance to administrative planning and is now embedded in binding regional law, institutionalizing religious control across bureaucratic and legal structures.
• Sinicization is reinforced through international narrative management. Curated visits, diplomatic engagements with Muslim-majority states and Islamic organizations, and propaganda messaging present repression as modernization, reducing external pressure and normalizing the dismantling of Uyghur Islamic life.

Background of Restriction on Religion

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) formally recognizes five religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam, but permits practice only within state-approved institutions under government-controlled associations. Islam is legally recognized yet tightly regulated.

Uyghurs, predominantly Sunni Muslim, face increasing controls on religious practice. For decades, the Chinese government restricted religious practice, banning Uyghur children, state employees, and Party members from mosques. Until the escalation of repressive policies into mass atrocities over the past decade, informal religious education had continued in unofficial madrasa-style settings, particularly in southern rural areas.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government institutionalized religious securitization, escalating in the 2000s through the “Strike Hard” campaign targeting alleged separatism. Mass arrests (over 3,700 prosecutions by May 2001), public sentencing rallies, and due process violations expanded surveillance and criminalized “illegal” religious activities. After 9/11, authorities weaponized the Global War on Terrorism to link Islamic practice in the Uyghur Region to terrorism and justify repression internationally. Following the 2009 Urumqi massacre, the state reframed Islam in the Uyghur region as a matter of ideological security.

The Second Xinjiang Work Forum in 2014 marked a crucial turning point. Xi Jinping declared “social stability and long-term security” (社会稳定和长治久安) the central governance objective in the Uyghur Region, establishing a centralized, security-oriented administrative framework that paved the way for genocide in the region. Since 2017, the Chinese government has committed mass atrocities against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Uyghur Region through mass arbitrary detention of millions people in internment camps and prisons, forced sterilization and birth prevention, torture and sexual violence, forced labor, family separation, cultural erasure, suppression of Uyghur language education, and mass surveillance.

In 2021, The independent Uyghur Tribunal found genocide “beyond reasonable doubt.” In August 2022, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded China’s actions “may constitute crimes against humanity.” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also concluded that atrocities in the region amounts to crimes against humanity. Multiple parliaments made genocide determinations. Yet, the Chinese government continues many of these repressive policies in the name of counter-extremism and Sinicization.

Policy Framework for Sinicization

At height of the genocide, the Chinese government implemented policies directly targeting everyday Islamic life. Two internal CCP directives were central to this process:

• Document No. 5 (2017): Language from the “Minutes of the Informal Seminar on Several Historical Issues in Xinjiang” instructed officials to apply a Marxist approach to religion and strengthen the Five Identifications (五个认同). These included identification with the motherland, nation, culture, Party and socialism with “Chinese characteristics.”  

• Document No. 10 (2018): “Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Islamic Work under the New Situation” identified “Arabization” (阿化) and “Saudization” (沙化) as ideological threats and ordered mosque redesign, restrictions on Arabic education, limits on halal labeling, and political training for imams.

Together, these directives recast Islam from a religious identity into a security matter subject to political management, seeking to re-engineer aspects of religious life that may be deemed incompatible with the Chinese nation. By framing Islam as a “foreign” religion, the state made it a primary target for erasure during the genocide against Uyghurs.  Authorities continue to apply this framework, embedding Sinicization within a broader governance agenda centered on stability and ethnic unity, enabling Beijing to severely undermine Uyghurs’ religious freedom protected under China’s constitution and international law.

Institutionalization of Sinicization of Islam

Sinicization of religion in the Uyghur region operates through a structured chain of command. The United Front Work Department (UFWD, 统一战线工作部) sets ideological direction and coordinates religious work across Party organs. The Religious Affairs Bureau (宗教事务局) manages registration, licensing, and inspection of mosques and religious personnel. The Xinjiang Islamic Association (新疆伊斯兰教协会), a state-aligned “patriotic religious organization,” implements directives through trainings, sermon guidance, and day-to-day mosque management. Together, these bodies execute Sinicization across three levels: central Party leadership, regional administrative coordination, and local enforcement within mosques and neighborhoods.

In 2019, the China Islamic Association published a Five-Year Plan (2018–2022) to construct an “Islamic theological system with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色伊斯兰教思想体系). This comprehensive administrative project built on Documents No. 5 (2017) and No. 10 (2018) sets out to systematically reinterpret Islamic scripture to align with state ideology. It also mandates patriotic education for imams and integration of Chinese socialist values into sermons, education, and mosque activities.

In February 2024, the regional government enacted new regulation on religious affairs requiring all religious doctrine, education, architecture, and online content to reflect “Chinese characteristics.” The new regulation mandates prior government approval for large religious gatherings and stipulates that interpretations of religious doctrine must conform to “contemporary Chinese development and excellent traditional culture.” Crucially, the regulation formalized earlier practices by embedding them in enforceable legal provisions, thereby transforming Sinicization from a policy framework into a binding governance regime.

This institutional evolution, from party directive to administrative framework to legal regulation demonstrates deliberate institutional hardening. What the CCP initially issued as ideological guidance in Document No. 10 (2018) has been transformed into a comprehensive Five-Year Plan coordinated across Islamic institutions and ultimately codified as regional law with enforceable legal provisions. By 2024, Sinicization had become a permanent governance regime in the Uyghur Region.

Architecture of Sinicization Policy

Beyond formal institutions and legal frameworks, authorities advance Sinicization through ideological messaging, symbolic rebranding, and doctrinal reinterpretation that normalize state control over everyday religious practice. Official discourse frames religion as an object of political guidance rather than protected belief. In February 2025, The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference’s (CPPCC) Xinjiang Chairman Nurlan Abdulmajin stated that the CPPCC has the authority to guide religious belief, reshaping ethnic identity, and align faith with socialist and national objectives, describing efforts to “actively guide religion to adapt to socialist society” and “steadily advance the Sinicization of Islam in Xinjiang.” Similarly, an inspection report from August 2025 on the Xinjiang Islamic Institute’s Ili branch revealed Party officials directly oversee Islamic curricula, directing  staff to “integrate [religion] with Chinese traditional culture and adapt to socialist society” to advance the “forging a Chinese national community.”

Authorities implement this ideological project through textual and educational control, replacing independent theological discourse with political pedagogy and turning mosques and seminaries into channels of political indoctrination. State media reinforce this framework: a 2022 Xinjiang Daily article instructed imams to “firmly unite believers around the Party and government” and a 2024 interview with the rector of Xinjiang Islamic Institute described Sinicization as an “historical inevitability,” stating that “a good believer must first be a good citizen.” Political loyalty thus becomes a precondition for religious practice in the Uyghur Region.

The state also reshapes religious symbolism. In March 2025, the China Islamic Association replaced its long-standing green emblem containing Islamic imagery with a simplified blue logo that removed Islamic symbols and the English translation of the Association’s name. Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao Daily reported that the redesigned logo is an effort to “dilute religious characteristics and emphasize national subjectivity.”

This shift coincided with broader campaigns targeting Islamic texts. Chinese authorities published a state-approved annotated Qur’an in September 2024 and later mandated its use in seminaries. At an October 2024 conference, Chen Ruifeng, Director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs and Deputy Director of the United Front Work Department, declared that the publication “will surely push the Sinicization of Islam in China to go deeper and more solid.”

Party officials openly define China’s Sinicization policy as a comprehensive ideological project. In December 2025, Zhang Xunmou, Director of the Central United Front Work Department’s Religious Studies Research Center, stated “systematically advancing the Sinicization of religion,” requires Party leadership over doctrine, personnel, ritual, architecture, and scripture, with religious associations implementing directives and clerics expected to internalize approved teachings. In this system, religious legitimacy depends on political conformity.

Timeline of Implementation of Sinicization Policies (2014-2025)

Year	Key Event / Policy	Significance
2014	Second Xinjiang Work Forum	Xi Jinping defines Xinjiang’s “overall goal” as social stability and long-term security and introduces “Five Governing Principles” to integrate religion into a security-centered governance framework.
2015	Directive on Sinicization	At the Central United Front Work Conference, Xi orders all religions to “adhere to the direction of Sinicization,” turning religious management an ideological task.
2016–2017	Legal Foundations	Revised regulations on religious affairs expand control over registration, education, and foreign contacts; Document No. 5 (2017) links Islam to national security.
2018	Institutionalization of Sinicization	Document No. 10 mandates mosque “rectification,” imam training, and restrictions on Arabic education; the Five-Year Plan (2018–2022) formalizes a “theological system with Chinese characteristics.”
2019	Community-Level Control	Authorities establish the “Three Teams” (clerics, mosque managers, model believers) to monitor religious life and standardize sermons under Party guidance.
2020	Spatial and Cultural Erasure	ASPI and NYT document mosque demolitions and shrine destruction; at the Third Xinjiang Work Symposium, Xi calls for forging a “Chinese national community consciousness” and reaffirms Sinicization.
2022	Global Exposure	UN OHCHR Assessment concludes abuses in the region “may constitute crimes against humanity.”
2023	Intensified Restrictions on Religion	International Religious Freedom Report documents bans on nikah, fasting, possession of religious texts, and minors entering mosques.
2024	Legalization of Sinicization	Regional government enacts new regulation on religious affairs and arrests individuals for “illegal preaching” using old Qur’an versions.
March 2025	Symbolic Rebranding	China Islamic Association replaces green Islamic emblem with simplified blue logo removing Islamic references.
September 2025	Persistent Repression	Xi Jinping convenes Politburo study session declaring Sinicization a “historical and practical inevitability” and orders stricter enforcement of Five Identifications.
December 2025	Comprehensive Control Framework	United Front researchers publish a framework to “systematically advance Sinicization with Party leadership doctrine, scripture, ritual, personnel, and architecture.”

Consequences of Sinicization

The Chinese government presents Sinicization of Islam in the Uyghur Region as “adaptation” and “modernization,” but in practice it is a governance system that merges ideology, security, and social engineering. Beyond aligning religion with socialism, the policy restructures Islamic practice and dismantles the religious foundations of Uyghur identity in the name of social stability.

Destruction and Transformation of Religious Space

Chinese authorities systematically demolished mosques and transformed religious spaces across the Uyghur Region. Satellite imagery analysis indicates authorities destroyed roughly 8,500 or more than one-third of all mosques in the region, while field investigations confirm up to 16,000 mosques were destroyed or demolished since 2017. Journalists visiting more than two dozen mosques during Ramadan in 2021 found that most of the mosques were closed, partially demolished, and stripped of Islamic features. Officials removed domes and minarets, replaced Arabic inscriptions with Chinese slogans, and installed Chinese flags at mosque entrances. Police guarded entrances, and in one case, authorities told visitors, “There has never been a mosque here.”

Authorities also targeted sacred Sufi pilgrimage sites, including the Imam Asim and Ordam Shrines. In other locations, they converted mosques into bars, shops, or community centers. Even where mosques remain open, authorities restrict entry, monitor attendance, and use the premises for political supervision. A 2024 inspection illustrated this transformation: authorities praised Chinese-style mosque architecture as a model of Sinicization and explicitly described mosques as venues for patriotic education rather than worship.

Surveillance and Control of Religious Life

The Chinese government operates one of the world’s most extensive surveillance regimes in the Uyghur region, transforming the region into an open-air prison. The state has woven religious life into this system, continuously monitoring daily worship to ensure “religious security” as part of “national security.” Authorities deploy facial recognition cameras,  digital ID checks, and phone tracking as standard practice around mosques and during religious gatherings. Authorities screen millions of residents for “terrorism,” flagging those with overseas ties for arrest.  

Through the “Becoming Family” (结对认亲) program, officials quarter Uyghur homes and monitor private behavior, including prayer. At the community level, authorities use the “Three Teams” –clerics, mosque managers, and designated model believers –to report attendance, sermon content, and perceived irregular practices. They also subject imams to ideological training and certification review, prioritizing political reliability, as illustrated by then Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui’s November 2024 inspection of the Xinjiang Islamic Institute.

Authorities carry out regular inspections, such as those conducted in November 2025 near Urumqi, combining safety checks with data audits and tightened visitor registration. In practice, the state operates mosques as semi-policed zones and treats participation in religious life as a security threat that requires administrative monitoring.

Authorities ban civil servants, students, and educators from observing Ramadan, with officials ordering residents of Kashgar Prefecture to record daily videos proving they are eating during fasting hours. Police enforced these bans under counter-extremism justification, demonstrating that Sinicization penetrates beyond public religious spaces into private homes and even bodily observances like fasting.

Authorities have also centralized sermon content, requiring imams to promote ethnic unity, gratitude to the Party, and the Five Identifications while restricting Arabic instruction. Footage from a Friday prayer in May 2025 at the Dongkowruk Mosque, one of Urumqi’s most prominent central mosques, shows an imam reading directly from the Xinjiang Ethnic Unity Progress Work Regulations in Mandarin from the pulpit, with only brief Arabic recitations. The observer, Taha Yasin Erel, also noted the absence of Qurans, restricted entry, and predominately elderly attendance, indicating deterrence of broader participation.

Criminalization of Religious Practice

The 2017 Regulation on De-extremification criminalizes ordinary Islamic practices such as hijab, sporting a beard, nikah, Islamic names, and possession of religious materials such as the Qur’an. The state labeled women who persist in veiling or men who pray outside registered mosques as “suspicious” or “infected with extremism,” while confining Friday congregations to designated sites under police surveillance.

The human cost of these regulations is documented in UHRP’s analysis of the leaked Xinjiang Police Files, which reveal sentences of shocking severity for religious practice. Women were sentenced retrospectively for childhood religious education. For example, Ezizgul Memet received a 10-year prison sentence for studying the Quran for three days at age five or six in 1976 while Aytila Rozi received the longest recorded sentence of 20 years for studying and teaching the Quran between 2009 and 2011. UHRP also documented more than a thousand cases of detained or imprisoned Uyghur Imams, with 96 percent receiving sentences of at least five years, including a life sentence for “spreading the faith and organizing people,” a 20-year sentence for refusing to surrender a Quran for burning, and a 17-year sentence for teaching others how to pray.

The Failure of State Propaganda and International Complicity

The Chinese government has invested heavily in framing the Sinicization of Islam in the Uyghur region as modernization, emphasizing economic development, ethnic unity, and claims that religious life continues freely. State media showcase renovated mosques, patriotic clergy, and staged religious observance to portray Islam in the region as regulated but not repressed. Internationally, Beijing relies on curated visits, selective access, and favorable coverage to counter criticism. Through tightly managed “propaganda tours,” authorities mobilize influencers, journalists, and tourists to produce content that projects normalcy and obscure documented abuses.

Chinese-language media reinforces this narrative by depicting declining religiosity among Uyghurs as voluntary social change. Pro-government  influencers attribute reduced mosque attendance and religious dress to modernization and dismiss evidence of restrictions as foreign disinformation, masking the role of surveillance and legal coercion.

Beijing amplifies this messaging through diplomatic accommodation, particularly from Muslim-majority states and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). During Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s September 2025 visit to the Uyghur Region, officials showcased the Id Kah Mosque where he performed Asr prayer and praised China’s “efforts to improve religious facilities.” This visit reflects a broader pattern: the 2019 OIC resolution praised China while refraining from criticism of mass detention or Sinicization. Subsequent delegations in 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025 issued similar statements. Delegations of religious scholars have repeatedly endorsed official narratives after government-managed tours. In January 2023, “world-renowned Islamic religious figures and scholars” from fourteen countries praised China’s security measures, avoiding discussion of mass detention, bans on religious practice or mosque destruction.

Independent observation contradicts China’s narrative. Turkish journalist Taha Kılınç traveled across the region in the summer of 2025 and reported widespread mosque closures, demolition, and conversion into entertainment spaces. Even the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, one of the largest and oldest mosques in the region, functioned as a cultural exhibit with prayer areas closed for public access. The journalist observed no public call to prayer, minimal visible religious expression, and elderly-only congregations forced to pledge loyalty to the Chinese state upon admission to the mosque.

Sinicization therefore operates simultaneously as domestic control and internationally insulated governance. Limited criticism from Muslim-majority states weakens multilateral accountability efforts and emboldens Beijing to dismiss human rights concerns as geopolitical hostility. Continued acceptance of Beijing’s curated narratives entrenches Sinicization policies that dismantle Uyghur religious life in a region historically central to Turkic Islam heritage.

Conclusion

Recent Chinese leadership statements confirm Sinicization is a permanent governance framework. In September 2025, Xi Jinping declared the acceleration of the Sinicization of religion a “historical and practical inevitability” and ordered stronger legal enforcement, ideological training, and Party oversight of religious affairs. Authorities now require doctrine, institutions, ritual practice, and religious education conform to state ideology.

Beijing’s policies in the Uyghur Region have evolved from counterterrorism measures to a nationwide model for religion regulation. Measures first implemented in the Uyghur Region, including surveillance, standardized sermons, architectural redesign, and doctrinal supervision, now serve as templates for broader religious governance.

For Uyghurs, the system shows no sign of reversal. Detention infrastructure, surveillance systems, and ideological reengineering remain intact. Mosques operate under administrative control, imams function under political supervision, and religious practice persists only within state-defined limits. The gap between official claims of religious freedom and documented conditions continues to widen.

Policy responses remain decisive. Governments should condition engagement with China on independent, unfettered access to the Uyghur Region. The OIC should establish an independent monitoring mechanism and withdraw statements that legitimize abuses. States should expand asylum protections for Uyghurs, enforce due diligence in Uyghur Region-linked supply chains, and treat existing documentation as the basis for accountability. Without sustained international pressure, China’s Sinicization of Islam will continue to reshape religious life in the Uyghur Region. The question is no longer whether Islamic life is being erased, but whether international actors will act before the process becomes irreversible.