In an article posted on Urumqi city’s official WeChat social media account on October 8, party cadres were told to post the same oath on their social media accounts, which read: “My belief is Marxism-Leninism… I must fly the flag high and battle (the) ‘pan-halal trend’ to the end, resolute in my beliefs, even to death!” The article added that government officials should not have dietary restrictions and said work canteens would be changed so officials can try “cuisines of various nationalities”. As part of the campaign, Urumqi’s Chief Prosecutor Ilshat Osman, an ethnic Uyghur, wrote an essay titled: “Friend, you do not have to find a halal restaurant specially for me”. The state-run Global Times tabloid on October 11, cited “experts” as saying that the “pan-halal” tendency blurs the boundary between religion and secular life, making it easy to “fall into the mire of religious extremism”.
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