No halal please: meet China’s pig vigilantes
- Vocal vigilante groups angered by what they see as creeping Islamisation in Chinese society
- The fight to ‘take back’ the Year of the Pig is the newest battle in an escalating confrontation between the vigilantes and ‘religious extremists’
It’s time for a victory lap for Xi Wuyi. She has finally “won” against “Islamic extremists” she has been fighting for years.
A few days before the start of the Lunar New Year, People’s Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, sent out a new year’s greeting on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service. It said: “Butcher the pig and save some pork!”
For a small online group of vigilantes waging a war against “pan-halal tendencies” in Chinese society, the short message was loaded with importance and symbolism.
Xi, a Marxism scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the best known member of the group cheering the post, said it had finally righted the wrong against “religious fundamentalism eroding Chinese secular mainstream culture”.
“Let us all call for the totem of the pig to return to the Lunar New Year’s gala show!” Xi wrote on Weibo, referring to the annual television special watched by more 700 million people on nationwide state broadcaster CCTV.
Xi and her fellow vigilantes have been watching with growing unease what they see as the creeping Islamisation of Chinese society, marked by the setting up of halal cafeterias in universities, the provision of halal-only food on planes and the use of code words to prevent the utterance of “pig” or “pork” on national television or social media.
