see, here's the thing: i actually agree that religion (and islam is kind of the last religion left standing in a lot of ways, so it is often going to get singled out for that reason....) is a mental illness.

so, i don't really have any particular aversion to a social program designed to help the uighurs modernize their society, and discard their religion as obsolete.

further, i know that the atlantic isn't even a good source of information about dissident movements in north america; this is a publication that routinely smears everybody left of hillary clinton. i would expect that they're exaggerating a little bit.

my bigger concern here is whether or not something like this is actually going to work. if you compare the chinese attempt to modernize tibet (which was largely successful) to the russian attempts to modernize the slavic heartland (which was a disaster), you'd think the chinese would learn lessons from their own model - that this is a carrot & stick operation that needs to be carried out very carefully, and not something that can be pushed down too violently from the top. even genocide, as ghastly as it is, would be unlikely to actually be effective as the few that escape are going to attribute their good luck to being chosen.

the left really needs to learn the lesson: you can't wipe out religion with force. this question of if it's right or wrong is tricky, but it largely doesn't matter, because it just doesn't work. you have to actually convince them.

so, i worry that the chinese are repeating the error that the soviets made, and that in the end the religion comes out stronger.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/china-pathologizing-uighur-muslims-mental-illness/568525/