China’s repression of Islam is spreading beyond Xinjiang

AS DARKNESS BEGINS to settle on Duanjiaping village, a few men in white skullcaps head towards a large mosque. It is time for the Maghrib, the fourth of the five daily prayers of devout Muslims. It is clear even before they reach the building’s high yellow walls that all is not right. The prayer-hall’s four minarets, topped by golden crescent moons, are still a towering landmark. But they are covered in scaffolding and green netting and they are not due for repair.

It is less than six years since hundreds of Muslim men gathered in the mosque’s courtyard to celebrate the completion of its new Arab-style prayer hall. It had cost 9.8m yuan ($1.37m)—a tidy sum in a county that is officially classified as impoverished. The festivities had official blessing. The imam of one of the most important mosques in Lanzhou, the provincial capital, was there. So, too, was a senior leader of the government-backed Islamic Association of China.

Much has changed. A chill political wind has been blowing over Duanjiaping and hundreds of other villages and towns in Linxia, a majority-Muslim prefecture in Gansu province, which borders on the Tibetan plateau and the far-western region of Xinjiang. Many villages in Linxia have at least one mosque, with minarets visible far and wide. The one with the scaffolding in Duanjiaping can...