Moslems Next

Christians have long felt the hard hand of persecution in Communist China; now it may well be the Moslems' turn. Radio Moscow last week attacked Moslem religious leaders as reactionary and fanatical and the Moslem religion as "a remnant of the past." And in China the press admitted that 300 Moslems, angered at their underprivileged status under the Red regime, rioted last week at Wu Lung Tsun, a village near Peking, destroying houses and stocks of grain and rallying later at the local mosque to hear their leader, one Liu Ming Sheng, congratulate them. "We have done well," he was quoted as telling them. "A bright future is ahead."

But the future looked somber for the 10 million descendants of the Moslems who began going to China from the Middle East in the 7th century to settle along the trade routes. The People's Daily accused the Moslems of plotting to set up an "independent kingdom." Moslem leaders, it said, were "slandering the Party's policy toward minority races . . . spreading absurd reactionary talk about Moslems of the world being one family and saying they would fight for their religion but not for their country."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.