Green-domed mosques still dominate the skyline of China's "Little Mecca", but they have undergone a profound change -- no longer do boys flit through their stone courtyards en route to classes and prayers.
In what locals told AFP they fear is a deliberate move to eradicate Islam, the atheist ruling Communist Party has banned minors under 16 from religious activity or study in Linxia, a deeply Islamic region in western China that had offered a haven of comparative religious freedom for the ethnic Hui Muslims there.