The largest Islamic training institute in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is committed to training religious staff with the correct political stance and excellent moral traits to uphold social stability and ethnic unity.
To achieve that goal, the institute attaches great importance to both political and anti-extremist education.
“These include lectures on laws, the report of the 19th National Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” Elijan Anayit, head of the CPC committee of the Islamic Institute in Xinjiang, told the Global Times.
Located in Urumqi, the Islamic Institute in Xinjiang started recruiting students from 1987 and has helped train religious staff, including imams for mosques.
The Global Times reporter saw banners with phrases from Xi's speeches, including “Cherish ethnic unity as if it was our eyes” in the institute.
Students need to take courses on religious doctrines and Putonghua in the institute, and after five years of study, they need to pass a final exam before being deployed to mosques in other regions in Xinjiang, Elijan said.
Courses on religious doctrine emphasize peace and solidarity, and reveal that extremism distorts Islam doctrines and is anti-human and anti-society, he said.
The three evil forces — extremism, separatism and terrorism — are trying…
