By: Razib Khan
According to figures from the Chinese census on the order of 2% of the population of the People’s Republic of China is likely to be Muslim in their religious identity. 2% may seem like a trivial fraction, but that number is between 20 and 30 million people. In other words if the Muslims of China were their own nation they would be as populous as Iraq. And though Muslims are a very small minority of the Chinese population, approximately 1/4 of the …

History has it that the arrival of the earliest Chinese Muslims in present day Malaysia can be traced as far back as the 15th century, attributed to the explorations of Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) during the reign of the Ming Dynasty. According to “Ming Shi” [明史] or the History of Ming, the historical records reveal that Admiral Zheng He might have visited Malacca at least five times as well as to the states of Terengganu, Pahang and Kelantan throughout his seven voyages to the Western Oceans (1405-1433).