Apple Withdraws Two Religious Apps From The App Store In China, Here's Why!

Officials in China asked tech giant Apple to remove two of the most popular Quran and Bible apps. (photo: unsplash)

JAKARTA - Officials in China asked tech giant Apple to remove two of the most popular Quran and Bible applications. These include the Bible App by Olive Tree and Quran Majeed.

According to Sensor Tower data, the two applications have hundreds of thousands of ratings on the App Store and are downloaded by more than 100,000 users every month. Quran Majeed alone has nearly 150,000 reviews.

However, Apple's decision is not without reason. The company, based in Cupertino, United States (US), was asked by Chinese officials on the grounds that the two applications allegedly contained illegal religious texts.

Reports of the removal of the app were originally made known by Apple Censorship, a website that monitors apps in Apple's App Store globally. The Bible App by Olive Tree and Quran Majeed were removed from the Chinese App Store between September 28 and October 8.

"We are required to comply with local laws, and sometimes there are complex issues that we may not agree with the government," Apple said.

However, neither Apple nor Chinese officials explained in detail what rules that enforce the two applications were violated in the country.

Launching the Reclaimthenet site, Apple is one of the few US tech giants still allowed to operate in China and access its market widely. Therefore, China accounts for 14 percent of Apple's market share of 970 million smartphone users, which means that about 136 million iPhone users are in China. In addition, the company's supply chain is also heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing.

But Apple's business in China has not always found a smooth path. Recently, China accused Apple of surveillance and suppression of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With the fall of the Qur'an and Bible applications, this is one of many examples of Apple's censorship applications in China.

The Chinese Communist Party actually officially recognizes Islam as the country's religion. However, China has been accused of human rights abuses, and even genocide, against the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic group in Xinjiang.

For information, Apple is not the only US company experiencing this. Yesterday, LinkedIn also announced that it had withdrawn its app from the country. Google also decided to close its operations in 2010, after the Chinese government began censoring search results and videos on YouTube. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook have been blocked for more than a decade in the Bamboo Curtain Country.