Welcoming Ramadan the past few years has always been eery for me. The joy is quickly overcome with sadness and disturbing graphic images. My thoughts go to millions in East Turkistan not allowed to observe, including prisoners beaten for praying or even muttering 'Allah'. (tw)
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I think about cases like Ismail Sidiq, a farmer who was sentenced to 11 more years of prison because he secretly performed prayer in the cell, performed ablution in the bathroom, and yelled at this Uyghur inmates for snitching on him. https://shahit.biz/eng/viewentry.php?entryno=13566

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I think about the yearning of prisoners to practice basic hygiene, not have to defecate in a bucket shared by dozens of other inmates, and having to fall asleep with the smell of human feces and inmates who haven’t showed in over a year next to them.

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I think about our female prisoners who've been stripped naked, heads have been shaved, and forced into rooms to be gang raped by Chinese officials. I think about the immense fear they have sitting in the cell, waiting whether they will be chosen that night.

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I think about nursing mothers separated from their babies in China's prisons, with their breasts leaking with milk. I think about the fact that this month is simply an extension of daily trauma -- w/the most amount of worship they can do being silent cries and prayers.

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I think about the immense stress of those not in official camps, because their own home has become a prison. CCP officials live in their home (+sometimes sleep in their beds) to monitor their daily activity. People are forced to eat during the day to prove they aren't fasting.
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When it’s Iftar time, I think about the yearning of Uyghurs to sit around w/ their families and also break their fast. But instead, each family member is scattered in a different prison and their children are in barbed wire orphanages, forced to speak Chinese and hate Islam.
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I think about the humiliation and guilt Uyghurs and other Turks in ET face when they are forced to participate in drinking alcohol festivals, eat pork, and are forbidden from selling and consuming halal meat.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/festival-02062019140637.html

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I think about the psychological trauma that occurs when they have to purposely replace the word ‘Allah’ with ‘Xi Jinping’. I think about the shame, the guilt, the disgust in their heart when they have to fake their worship to China in order to avoid prison, torture, +genocide.
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The list goes on and on, and my mind is exhausted of actively trying to illustrate why times like Ramadan elicit so much pain. Nonetheless, Allah hears and answers all prayers of the oppressed.

I ask you all to keep East Turkistan on the top of your Ramadan dua list.

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A lot of the above descriptions come from numerous reports and testimonies of former Uyghur/Kazakh prisoners, newcomers suffering from PTSD, and simply the ability to picture the dystopian hell of Chinese occupied East Turkistan -- where people have become the walking dead.

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There isn't a single day where I don't think about China's genocide (it's impossible not to), but I've tried to find mechanisms to gear my energy towards prayer and knowing there will be justice in the afterlife. Islam has kept me relatively sane throughout this process.

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May Allah SWT make this month full of blessings, growth, prosperity, and allow us not to forget the suffering of our communities. May Allah keep our hearts soft so we don't easily retreat into our (often privileged) bubbles and forget about those around us.

Ramadan Kareem

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