From Missiopedia

• See also Peoples of China or China

Contents 1 Muslims in China 1.1 History 1.2 Modern Muslims in China 1.3 Muslim Minorities in the People's Republic of China 1.3.1 Hui

[edit] Muslims in China

Today, strange as it may seem, Muslims are the most widely distributed of all China's fifty-five formally recognised ethnic minorities. They live in all of China's provinces and have erected mosques in all its major cities. Muslims are China's second largest religious group; they have far outnumbered Christians in China and former Chinese Jews were even sometimes regarded as a sect of Islam.

Muslims were at one time a privileged class above the native Han Chinese and, when later subjected to duress under Chinese authority, they rebelled in nearly three centuries of protest that caused the loss of millions of lives. Muslims in China have dominated important occupational specialisations, played important military roles, and been a source of concern to all Chinese regimes including the present.

Muslims are found all over China, reflecting the variety of paths by which their forbears reached the celestial kingdom: via trade routes to the south and east and via invasion routes from the north and the west. There are Muslim colonies in most of the major cities, including the large eastern metropoles of Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Rural Hainan Island, far to the southeast, has a sizeable Muslim community, as does Tibet's Lhasa, the holy city of Lamaist Buddhism. There are so-called Panthay Muslims in China's northwest, where their influence, and even their numbers, were predominant for many centuries. This is particularly true of the four northwestern "Muslim belt" provinces of Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, and Ningxia.

Ten ethnic groups of some size are virtually wholly Muslim in faith: the Turkic Muslims (Uighur, Kazak, Kyrgyz, Salar, Uzbek and Tatar); the Persian Muslim Tajik of Xinjiang; the Mongolian Muslims (Dongxiang and Bonan); and the Hui, who have their largest concentrations in Qinghai, Gansu, and Ningxia. So-called "scattered Hui" are also found in most Chinese cities. The Miao of South China, the same group known in Indochina as Meo, have had a substantial number of converts to Islam.

As well as being geographically dispersed, China's Muslims are found in a variety of professions, "a tendency...to follow the more adventurous of the subsidiary callings, or those which require more hardihood and daring". Such occupations as innkeeper, trader, muleteer, carter, soldier and the like attract many more Muslims, proportionately, than Chinese. Many Muslims, including the Uighur, Hui and Miao, are engaged in sedentary agriculture, while the Kazak and Kyrgyz are nomadic herders. Popular professions for urban Hui are, in addition to trade, the butchering of cattle and ownership of "pure and true" restaurants which conform to Islamic dietary strictures. These last two callings enjoy a reputation for high sanitary standards among non-Muslim Chinese, as well, and are well patronised by them. All of China's Muslims are reputed to be excellent soldiers.

Each Islamic group (save the Chinese-speaking Hui), uses its own language. Before 1949 those who were literate - an estimated 20 per cent of population, though most males had had some training in the Qu'ran - read in Arabic. Birthrates, particularly for the Turkic Muslim groups were high, though the Hui birthrate was lower than that of the Han.

The socio-political organisation of Islamic communities in the Muslim belt was cohesive, with whole villages tending to be either Muslim or Han and their inhabitants having little to do with one another. In the urban coastal areas where Muslims were a minority, they tended to cluster together on certain streets, forming Muslim enclaves within the city. The largely Turkic Muslim groups of Xinjiang were more decentralised around local clan and lineage groups, but overlapping ancestral connections provided links, as did their common Muslim faith.

It has been traditionally accepted in Chinese-Muslim historiography that all Muslims in China are Sunni of Hanafi School. Even tentative conclusions which had identified proto-Shi'ite propensities among some currents of New Teaching (Xin Jiao) in China have been contested in various quarters.

Muslim leaders were powerful individuals, able to mobilise large numbers in battle on very short notice. When organised around such a strong leader, different clans and ethnic groups were welded into a formidable fighting force. This was particularly true when the cause was a holy war, which most Muslim grievances quickly escalated into.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has three major concerns regarding the Muslim population:

• Muslims occupy territory along China's vulnerable international frontiers, especially that with the former USSR;
• The minority tribes - including the Muslims - have a history of uprisings and political unrest;
• The northwestern provinces have great economic value because only about 15% of China's land is arable and therefore the dairy and meat resources of the grasslands could provide much food for an already overpopulated nation.

To these three factors we should perhaps add a fourth: tourism. The PRC certainly exploits the minzu (minorities) to attract foreign visitors, but the Han Chinese themselves now seem to have developed a genuine interest in learning about the minorities and their culture. Chinese attitudes have changed in that the minority peoples are no longer simply seen as uncivilised barbarians. Interestingly, policy towards the minzu - and therefore the Muslims - is mainly conditioned by socioeconomic and political factors. The PRC may officially be an atheist regime, but fortunately for practicing Christians, Buddhists and Muslims a fair measure of religious tolerance currently goes along with political sense. For a brief time during the Cultural Revolution Muslims were subjected to religious persecution since at its extreme, Mao Zedong Thought was an exclusive 'religion' in the western rather than the Eastern tradition. In the period after the death of Mao, however, the Chinese authorities continue to be primarily motivated by sociopolitical considerations in their treatment of Islam. As a result the Muslims in China currently enjoy a relative freedom of religious expression.

[edit] History

Of all Muslim minorities throughout the world, the Muslims of China clearly rank foremost among those with the longest and one of the most unusual histories.

The history of Islam in China begins with the coming together of the two great traditions, the Islamic and the Chinese, when both were flourishing. Muslims were trading and settling in China as early as the seventh century, many centuries before Muslim communities would become established in South and Southeast Asia. Well before Europeans had arrived on the China scene in any significant numbers, Muslims had long become an indigenous population throughout all China. Today there are more Muslims in China than in Saudi Arabia itself, more in fact than any Arab country except Egypt.

The rise of Islam in Western Asia corresponds chronologically to the rise of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) in China. It was natural that these major Asiatic Empires should establish cultural and diplomatic relations. The first Arab ambassadors dispatched by Caliph Uthman (r.644-656) are reported to have arrived at the court of Tang Emperor Kaotsung (r. 650-683)in Changan, the Tang capital, in 651. The missionary nature of Islam, combined with the energy of the Arab armies during the first expansion of the Muslim Empire, ensured that the Arabs visted Changan before the Chinese visted Damascus. This state of affairs would anyway have appeared normal to the Chinese, with their ancient civilisation and their Sinocentric philosophy.

From then on, hundreds and thousands of Arabs and Persians came to China via two routes. First was the sea route, from the Persian Gulf and southern tip of the Arabian penninsula across the Indian Ocean to Canton and other port cities of Southeast China. Second was the land route - the fabled "Silk Road" that extended from the Eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia to Bukhara and Samarkand before entering Northwest China and terminating in the markets of Changan (modern-day Xian) and Beijing. Muslims came to number among China's citizenry both through immigration and through China's expansion into Central Asia. As Muslim communities became established throughout China the Muslims grew in numbers not only through natural increase but also by the absorption of large numbers of native Chinese - through in-marriage, adoption, and occasional conversion.

Those who came to China by land were mostly soldiers, diplomats, scholars, artists, traders, and religious leaders. They were deeply involved with Chinese politics, armies, commerce, religion, culture, and family life. Whether in peace or in war, most of them settled permanently, married Han Chinese woman, owned land, were employed by civil or military authorities, established stores, served as ahong (religious leaders) in mosques that they built. It was not easy for them to reach China and it was not easy for them to leave China. Their settlement in China was the chief factor in the creation of the Chinese Muslim minorities. The Muslims who traded at the coastal cities of China during the Tang, Sung and Yuan periods, contributed little to the growth of Chinese Muslim population in comparison to those Arabs, Persian and Central Asians who came to China by land.

Islam, Judaism, Manichaeism, Nestorianism and Zoroastrianism came to Tang China at about the same time. But by the end of the Ming Dynasty, Islam was the only faith which survived, developed, gained strongholds, evolved into a sinoised minority and obtained permanent ethnic membership in the formation of the Chinese nation. The other four religions either went underground or disappeared in the 14th century; although Buddhism, which came to China in the first century AD, was still the second largest faith, it was negative to reality and the wordly life, lacking the perpicacity and principles to meet the Chinese demands.

However, this glorious millennium was, unfortunately, followed by the dark age of Chinese Islam, the Muslim genocide in the Qing period (1644-1911). In these 267 years, the Manchu rulers adopted policies designed to oppress the Muslims and to suppress the practice of Islam, if not to completely eliminate this religion. After the downfall of the Qing, the First Republic of China was established in 1912. All the Chinese Muslims supported the new government and started their revival movement which is continuing to the present day on mainland China as well as in Taiwan.

When Islam in Western Asia was flourishing, Muslims in China also enjoyed prosperity and peace. When Islam in Western Asia fell on bad days, Muslims in China suffered too. Thus, historically viewed, Chinese Islam is an integral part of the world-wide Islamic entity.

[edit] Modern Muslims in China

It is extremely difficult to ascertain the number of Muslims there are in China today. Thus, at this time, any figure presented should be taken only as a best estimate. Care must be taken to distinguish clearly between facts on the one hand and assertions, possibilities, and hypotheses on the other.

In 1980, in the midst of the liberal mood of the "Four Modernisations" and the post "Gang of Four", post-Mao period, Beijing announced a new set of figures for the fifty-five ethnic groups that it currently identifies as "minority nationalities." Among these fifty-five minorities (whose total population Beijing states to be 55.8 million, or six percent of China's total population), ten are identified, among which Islam has been the prevailing religion. A tallying of the figures for these ten groups produces a total population of slightly more than thirteen million (13,152,200) or about 1.3 percent of the total Chinese population.

Beijing's general practice has been to avoid referring to these minority groups as Muslims per se, the rationale being that many members of the minority in question no longer "believe in religion". Nevertheless, this figure of about thirteen million may be taken as Beijing's present official position as to the total number of Muslims in China (excluding Taiwan province for which Beijing does not give statistics). Even this increase over the figure put forth by Beijing in 1953 is still unrealistically small, however, in view of the nearly one-hundred percent growth of the total Chinese population during the same period. Also, even if it were true that there were only ten million Muslims in 1953, it is highly unlikely that their rate of increase would have failed to keep up with that of the Han Chinese. Instead it is more likely that the Muslims would have surpassed the Han given that the minorities have not been obliged to conform to the rigid population control measures that the Chinese leadership has imposed upon the Han.

[edit] Muslim Minorities in the People's Republic of China

MINORITY	LOCATION	LANGUAGE FAMILY	1953 CENSUS	1957 PEOPLE'S HANDBOOK	1961 NATIONALITIE IN CHINA	BEIJING REVIEW 1980	APPROX. AVG ANNUAL % GROWTH
Hui	All Provinces but especially Ningxia, Gansu, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Henan, Hebei	Sino Tibetan	3,559,350	3,550,000	3,934,335	6,490,000	2.3%
Uighur	Xinjiang	Altaic (Turkic)	3,640,125	3,640,000	3,901,205	5,480,000	1.6%
Kazak	Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai	Altaic (Turkic)	475,000	500,000	533,160	800,000	1.8%
Dongxiang	Gansu	Altaic (Mongolian)		150,000	159,345	190,000	0.8%
Kyrgyz	Xinjiang	Altaic (Turkic)	60,000	70,000	68,862	97,000	1%
Salar	Qinghai, Gansu	Altaic (Turkic)		30,000	31,923	56,000	2%
Tajik	Xinjiang	Indo Iranian	80,000	14,000	15,014	22,000	1.4%
Uzbek	Xinjiang	Altaic (Turkic)	13,000	13,000	11,557	7,500	2.4%
Bonan	Gansu	Altaic (Mongolian)		4,000	5,516	6,800	1.6%
Tatar	Xinjiang	Altaic (Turkic)		6,000	4,370	2,900	4.3%
Totals			7,827,475	7,977,000	8,665,287	13,152,200

Beijing Review Vol 23 #9 (March 3 1980), quoting figures based on 1978 statistics

Government attempts to favor the minorities have included the establishment of "autonomous" minority adminstrative units at three levels: the region (comparable to a province and of which five have been designated), the prefecture (zhou), and the county (xian). The Muslim-inhabited areas that have been designated as autonomous regions, prefectures, and counties are shown in the following table.

MINORITY	PROVINCE	AUTONOMOUS AREAS	YEAR FOUNDED
Hui	Ningxia	Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region	1958
	Gansu	Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture Zhangjiaquan Hui Autonomous County	1956 1955
	Xinjiang	Changji Hui Autonomous County Yenqi Hui Autonomous County	1954 1954
	Guizhou	Weining Yi-Hui-Miao Autonomous County	1954
	Hebei	Dachang Hui Autonomous County Mengcum Hui Autonomous County	1954 1954
	Liaoning	Fouxian Hui Autonomous County	1957
	Qinghai	Hualong Hui Autonomous County Menyuan Hui Autonomous County	1954 1953
	Yunnan	Weishan Yi-Hui Autonomous County	1960
Uighur	Xinjiang	Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region	1955
Kazak	Xinjiang	Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture Barkol Kazak Autonomous County Mulei Kazak Autonomous County	1954 1954 1954
Gansu	Aksai Kazak Autonomous Region	1954
Qinghai	Haixa Mongol-Tibetan-Kazak Autonomous Prefecture	1954
Dongxiang	Gansu	Dongxiang Autonomous Region	1950
Kyrgyz	Xinjiang	Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture	1954
Salar	Qinghai	Xunhua Salar Autonomous Region	1954
Tajik	Xinjiang	Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous Region	1954
Uzbek	Xinjiang	None
Bonan	Gansu, Qinghai	None
Tatar	Xinjiang	None

To a great extent these territories are autonomous in name only. While the minority after which they are named does have considerable representation in local government and party organs, the Han generally retain ultimate control and pursue various colonising strategies designed to sinify the minorities and establish a strong Han presence. In no case is the "autonomous" unit inhabited only by the minority (or minorities) for which it is named and in some cases Han are in fact the majority. (This is even true, for example, of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region whose population is approximately only one-third Hui but two-thirds Han.)

As noted above, ten minorities have now been officially identified for which Islam has been the dominant religious tradition. As also noted, not all members of the ten minorities actually practice Islam. But Islam is so much a part of each of the ten ethnic identities that individual members of each group who, for one reason or another, do not practice Islam are still considered Muslim "by birth" or "by blood"; in nearly all cases, if members of any of these ten minorities do not practice Islam, then they do not practice any religion.

Each of China's ten Muslim minorities traces its descent to ancestors who were absorbed into China by Chinese territorial expansion or who migrated to China either for commercial purposes, as refugees from conflicts outside China, or to assist the Chinese court. Islam was not carried to China "by the sword" and, with minor exceptions, Muslims did not engage in proselytisation in China.

Nine of the ten Muslim minorities are of Central Asian derivation; they are the Uighur, Kazak, Dongxiang, Kyrgyz, Salar, Tajik, Uzbek, Bonan, and Tatar. Six of these nine live in what has traditionally been known as Eastern (or Chinese) Turkestan, territory that became a province of China (Xinjiang) only in 1884 but which constitutes one sixth of China's total land area; until only very recently these six Muslim groups made up well over ninety percent of Xinjiang's population.

Each of the nine Central Asian Muslim minorities still speaks its own native languages, all of which belong to the Altaic language family and are thus as different from Chinese as is English. Of the nine minorities, six (the Uighur, Kazak, Kyrgyz, Salar, Uzbek, and Tatar) speak Turkic languages which are similar to that spoken in Turkey and to those used throughout much of the former Soviet Union. Traditionally, when written, Arabic script was used for these peoples' languages although over the years both the former Soviet and Chinese governments have launched numerous campaigns to replace Arabic with other scripts. Four of the Turkic-speaking Muslim minorities represented in China - the Kazak, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tatar - have, in fact, greater numbers of their members living in the former Soviet Union than in China and the first three of them also extend into Afghanistan. Two of China's six Turkic-speaking minorities (the Kazak and Kyrgyz), still maintain a pastoral nomadic herding mode of subsistence while four of the six (the Uighur, Uzbek, Tatar, and Salar), have long been sedentarised and are either agriculturists or urban oasis dwellers. Also in Xinjiang, and farthest away from China proper, are the Persian-speaking Tajik, a minority whose greatest numbers live across the border in Afghanistan and the former Soviet Union.

The two remaining Muslim groups of Central Asian origin are the Dongxiang and Bonan (also spelled Tunghsiang and Paoan respectively) of Gansu province, both of whom speak their own separate Mongolian language. Unlike other Mongols, who are pastoral herders, both the Dongxiang and Bonan have adopted sedentary agricultural patterns characteristic of the Han-influenced areas in which they live. The Dongxiang, like the Turkic Salar who also live in a more Han-influenced area than Xinjiang, have a long-standing reputation among Han for daring, fiercencess, and solidarity and played active parts in the Muslim rebellions that occurred up through the early twentieth century.

By an analysis of the mosque congregations in China we arrive at a higher total for the Chinese Muslim population. On the mainland of China according to the China Islamic Association there are 40,000 mosques. Traditionally a mosque is built by Muslim localities on demand, under the supervision of local Muslims. Conservatively speaking a mosque cannot be built and maintained by less than 500 Muslims in one locality; if we multiply the total number of mosques by 500 persons per mosque we arrive at a total of 20,000,000 Muslims in China in 1955, when this number of mosques are said to have existed. Yet we cannot use the 500 person per mosque as a mean average because in Peking, there are 42 mosques among a population of 80,000 Muslims which averages 2,000 Muslims under the jurisdiction of each mosque. This estimate of mosque do not even include the mosque used primarily by women who in many communities have their own mosques due to Islamic traditions. Taking these estimates into consideration the total Muslim population in China should not be less than 40 million.

[edit] Hui

One of the minority groups in China are “The Hui”. Although this Muslim group is over ten million there are only few known churches among the Hui and possibly less than 0.01% Christians. Paul Hattaway in ‘Operation China’ says, “although, there are a small number of scattered Hui believers in China, the Hui are probably the largest people group in the world without a single known Christian fellowship group”. May the scattered believers grow and multiply and become a Hui Church. The Hui believers protection because they might be exposed to persecution. May more workers, both foreign and Han Chinese have a burden for this people group.