Mosque row focuses Muslim anger in Hong Kong

Hong Kong Muslims' glee at being granted permission to build the city's largest mosque has been dented by a row with the government over land surcharges they say is born of racism. Planners gave the go-ahead late last year for the construction of a 100 million Hong Kong dollars (12.8 million US dollars) place of worship in the city's suburban New Territories.
Soon after, the project was slapped with a 10-million Hong Kong dollars surcharge. At the same time, however, a local ethnic Chinese charity received a bill for a similar sized building project of just 1,000 dollars.
The disparity has left the Islamic community seething over what it feels is the latest insult in the city's repeatedly poor treatment of its estimated 100,000 Muslims.
"It was a shock but what can we do? We are just a minority here and they are the government," said Mohammad Alli Din of the United Muslims Association, which is overseeing the mosque project.
"God is great and he provided the money though generous donors but it has left a sour taste in our mouths," added Alli Din, conceding that they had to pay the bill in order to get work started on the mosque.
The row has crystallised Muslim ire in Hong Kong, a territory that proudly touts its credentials as "Asia's world city" but where race-relations experts say minorities are given short shrift from the Chinese majority.
"The local people need to be educated about the different racial groups here," said Chow Sau-fong of UNISON an anti-discrimination NGO.
"There is a lot of misunderstanding and prejudice," Chow added.
The government claims the mosque was slapped such a high surcharge as Muslim leaders stipulated it must contain lodgings for visitors -- a common feature of Islamic houses of worship.
But Alli Din said it was the latest in a string of battles Hong Kong's Muslims have had to fight to win approval to build the edifice.
"We had lots of trouble with the local people, lots of meetings to win them over," he said. "They thought that because we were Muslims we would bring terrorists to their neighbourhood."
UNISON and community leaders say Muslims have been subjected to increasingly hostile treatment in the city since the September 11 attacks on the US by Islamic extremist group al Qaeda.
"A lot of people here simply associate Muslims with terrorism, it's regretful," said Chow.
Pakistani businessman Daoud Bokhary, who has lived in Hong Kong since he entered the city with the British army to liberate it from Japanese wartime occupation, said many Muslims feel discriminated against.
"The mosque issue is very much down to race," Bokhary said. "But I'm not sure we can do much about it. We are guests here and we should observe the local laws."
Recent Islamic anger at cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a variety of demeaning situations, which were published in mainly European newspapers, has failed so far to erupt in violence in Hong Kong.
Muslim leaders have praised the restraint of Hong Kong's media for refusing to reprint the caricatures and a street demonstration of support for the global protests planned for Friday is, as a result, expected to pass off with little fuss.
However, Chow said Muslims here -- who hail mostly from South Asia and Indonesia -- were facing a multitude of other obstacles in the city.
"Although many of the jobs available to them do not have any language requirements they are often refused work because employers assume they cannot speak Cantonese", the local Chinese dialect, she said.
"Making matters worse is when the applicants can speak Cantonese but when they turn up at the interview and the employer sees they are not Chinese, they are told the job has already gone," she added.
These are issues the government had hoped to have covered by anti-discrimination legislation by now but conflicts over the small print has delayed the bill's passage for two years.
UNISON this week urged the government to speed up the process.
"A racial discrimination bill was first floated 37 years ago," said Chow. "It's about time this law was passed."