Here is a list of some books related to Islam in China and or Muslims in China. Please feel free to suggest books if something is not in this list.

1. Atwill, David G., The Chinese sultanate: Islam, ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in southwest China, 1856-1873 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)
2. Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi,  The dao of Muhammad : a cultural history of Muslims in late imperial China (Cambridge: Published by the Harvard University Asia Center ; dist. by Harvard University Press, 2005)
3. Dillon, Michael, China’s Muslim Hui community: migration, settlement and sects ( Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999)
4. Gladney, Dru C., Muslim Chinese: ethnic nationalism in the People’s Republic (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University: dist. by Harvard University Press, 2nd ed. 1996)
5. Israeli, Raphael, with the assistance of Lyn Gorman, Islam in China: a critical bibliography (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994)
6. Israeli, Raphael, The cross battles the crescent: one century of missionary work among Chinese Muslims (1850-1950), Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 1 (1995), 203-221.
7. Jaschok, Maria, and Shui Jingjun, The history of women’s mosques in Chinese Islam: a mosque of their own (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000)
8. The Legacy of Islam in China : an international symposium in memory of Joseph F. Fletcher, Harvard University, 14-16 April 1989 / sponsored by the John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies & the Andrew D. [sic] Mellon Foundation.
9. Leslie, Donald, The integration of religious minorities in China: the case of Chinese Muslims (Canberra: Australian National University, 1998)
10. Leslie, Donald, Islamic literature in Chinese, late Ming and early Ching: books, authors, and associates (Belconnen: Canberra College of Advanced Education, 1981)
11. Lipman, Jonathan, Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997)
12. Wang, Jianping, Concord and conflict : the Hui communities of Yunnan society in a historical perspective (Stockholm : Almqvist & Wiksell, 1996)
13. Wang, Jianping, Glossary of Chinese Islamic terms (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press on behalf of Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2001)
14. Xinjiang : China’s Muslim borderland, ed by  S. Frederick Starr ( Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2004 )

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 area of China is likely dominated by those adhering to Islam. This is due to the fact that the Turkic majority province of Xinjiang is so expansive in relation to the rest of the China. But the Muslims of China are not an undifferentiated mass; rather they can be divided into two broad classes, those who are part of the Turkic cultural world, mostly Uighur, and those of the Chinese world, the Hui.

Image by Wlodek Cieciura

Though the Uighur are fascinating in their own right, it is the Hui that I wish to focus on. Xinjiang, the “New Territories,” were conquered by the Manchus two centuries ago, and administered as a personal domain of the dynasty which was distinct from China for much of that period. An analogy to a colonized people is very appropriate for the Uighur, for though they have long resided on the margins of the world of China, they have not been of that world. The Hui in contrast are of China, as they speak the dialect of whatever region of China in which they reside, and in general resemble the Han Chinese majority physically. In fact Hui auxiliaries played a role in pacifying Xinjiang and serving as intermediaries between the central government and the local Turkic Muslim population. In China the Hui were distinctive because of their Islamic religion, but in Central Asia they were, and are, notable for their Chinese culture (they are called Dungans in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia).

Though China is notable for its relative isolation from the other civilizations of the world until recently, the presence of Muslims likely dates to only few decades at the latest after the rise of Islam itself. During the Tang dynasty, which peaked in the 8th century, Western religions such as Manicheanism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam arrived in China. It seems possible that the Jewish community of Kaifeng, now absorbed into the Han or Hui populations, dates from this period as well. While Western traders moved along the Silk Road and settled in Xi’an, there was also a notable colony of Arab traders in the south in Guangzhou. Though Muslims were noted as presences in the cities of China during the Tang and the subsequent Song dynasties, it seems likely that the permanent nature of the community was established during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, who promoted many Central Asian Muslims into positions of power in China proper and recruited Muslims to staff the bureaucracy and serve in the army. It seems likely that Muslim openness to professions which the Han traditionally disdained, such as the military and mercantile sector, played a role in their dispersion to various regions of China. Several prominent generals during the Ming dynasty were Muslim, as was the famous explorer Zheng He.

While the presence of Muslims is clear from the textual and physical records during the Tang and Song dynasties, after the Yuan Mongol interlude Muslims are much more prominent. The aforementioned Jews of Kaifeng expended a great deal of effort at distinguishing themselves from the Hui, because the Han Chinese naturally observed the similarities of their religion to that of the Hui (the remnants of the Kaifeng Jewish community who were absorbed into the Hui often wear a black cap instead of a white one to prayer to signify their origins). Today the Hui are the generally the most numerous minority in areas where the Han are the majority. Though to outsiders they are not distinguishable from the Han physically and they speak Chinese dialects the People’s Republic classifies the Hui as a National Minority, and not as Han who happen to be of the Muslim religion. In other words a Hui who is an avowed atheist is still a Hui, a Han who converts to Islam becomes a Hui, while a Han who converts to Christianity remains a Han. Because of benefits conferred to National Minorities some assimilated groups of Han in China whose ancestors were likely Hui have attempted to reclaim the identity purely on ethnic grounds (as they do they not maintain any Islamic religious identity). The idea that Hui are always Hui is a modern fiction, insofar as genealogically it is almost certain that most Han have some Hui ancestry within the past 500 years.

Because of the demands of Islamic orthopraxy, most notably the ban on the consumption of pork, there are obvious barriers between the Hui and the Han. But a population resident in China or centuries, speaking the Chinese language, trading with and living amongst the Han, is certainly going to be influenced by the dominant culture. In fact by the very physical appearance of the Hui it is clear that even if their forefathers were Arabs, Persians and Turks, Han women married into the community generation after generation, and so brought with them their own cultural presuppositions. Books like the Dao of Muhammad recount the influence which Chinese high culture had upon the Islamic intellectual class in China. Unlike in Africa or among the Turks, Muslims confronted in the Chinese a high culture of great antiquity which was confident in its own claims of access to ultimate truth. Unlike South and Southeast Asia Muslims did not come to China with military power or mercantile connections which gave them advantages over the native population. The Chinese had often considered the outside world superfluous, a trivial detail to be ignored in the ideal. As a small minority the Muslims had to engage with the majority on their terms, so they integrated Chinese metaphysical concepts into their theology and sketched out exactly how Islam complemented the traditions of China. These early modern scholars had Christian analogs, during the late Ming and early Ching period there was an attempt by Jesuits to convert elite Chinese to Roman Catholicism by reframing their religion as a complement to the secular principles elucidated within Confucianism. This accommodation was stillborn due to the infamous Rites Controversy which precipitated the banning of Christian missionaries in China in the early 18th century.

But Islam does not have such a centralized institutional framework as Roman Catholicism, and the relative isolation of China from other centers of the Muslim world meant there was little outside sanction to innovation. It was in this manner that Islam could develop with Chinese characteristics. In Islam in China: Religion, Culture, and Politics, several essays explore the peculiar cultural terrain that the Hui traversed in their status as fundamentally Chinese and yet orthodox Muslims. Frictions between the Manchu ruling class of China, the Hui minority and the Han majority came to a head in the 19th century and resulted in several massive Muslim rebellions in the northwest and southwest. Though the Muslim specialization in martial professions served them in good stead, the reality of numbers took their toll and these uprisings were defeated. Concomitant with the religious conflict a series of reformist impulses were moving through the Muslim community, likely enabled in part by greater ease of communication with other Muslim communities. And yet despite this shift toward world-normative orthodoxy and the decline of the project to integrate Islam into a Chinese Confucian framework, Muslim movements often had to make recourse to Daoist inflected imagery and metaphor in their exhortations to rebellion. This can be understood in light of various religious secret societies, often Daoist and Buddhist, in fomenting uprisings against the political status quo throughout Chinese history, often in concert with peasant unrest. It stands to reason that as Chinese rebels the Hui would attempt to leverage apocalyptic rhetoric which their audience would be familiar with. But this fact goes a long way to suggesting how indigenized the Islamic identity of the Hui had become, during a phase of reform and shift toward world-normative Islamic belief and practice combined with greater consciousness of their distinctiveness due political mobilization, they still existed within a Chinese framework, and had to appeal to Chinese motifs as a means toward achieving the ends of the Muslim community.

Again I believe the special and very distinctive history of Chinese Muslims by the 19th century must be reaffirmed. There is one school of thought which contends that Muslims have an obligation to emigrate if a non-Muslim power conquers the territory on which they live. This was the reason that a mass migration of Muslims from the former Ottoman lands north of the Black Sea occurred in the 18th century after the Russian conquests under Catherine the Great. Of course another school of thought is that Muslims may reside in non-Muslim lands so long as they can practice their religion freely, and those Muslims who remained after the Russian conquest appealed to this tradition and extended it. During the time of the Muslim rebellions in China India was ruled by the British East India Company, but the Mughal Emperor remained a figurehead, a nod to the fact that Muslims were by rights still the notional ruling caste on the Subcontinent. The fact that the secular Muhammad Ali Jinnah succeeded in creating a separate Muslim homeland out of British India is a testament to the numbers of South Asian Muslims, but also to the unpalatability of the inevitably dominant political position of non-Muslims in a united India to the Muslim upper classes. In much of Africa Muslims might have been the minority, but they were culturally and economically dominant. Even in areas where Muslims have been under the colonial rule of non-Muslims for generations, such as in Java, their religion received due deference. The Dutch even facilitated the final conversion of the Hindu kingdoms of East Java to Islam in their wars against Bali. In the 19th century the Muslims of China were sui generis. Their ancestors had emigrated to a land ruled by non-Muslims, never ruled by Muslims, and with little prospect that Muslims could ever come to power. Though during the initial centuries Muslims seem to have played a conventional role as merchants, after the Yuan, and into the Ming and Ching dynasties, Muslims served the Emperors of China as soldiers and diplomats. They were not simply strangers in the land, but they were of the land, and furthering the interests of the Chinese state in their lives.

In such a way I believe the Chinese Muslims can serve as a model to Muslims around the world who are minorities, and who are making the transition from being in nations to being of nations. Intellectuals such as Tariq Ramadan are simply treading on the same ground Wang Daiyu and Liu Zhi did long ago, another instance of “it happened in China first.” Naturally the outcome will be different because Ramadan is a man of the West, and specifically the French intellectual world, which different tools and goals. But the principle is the same. Not only do Chinese Muslims serve as a model for how to exist within a plural society where Islam is not dominant, but it seems likely that within the next generation China will become the largest economy in the world and begin to reassert its conventional position as the preeminent power on this planet. Western Muslims are wont to assert that they have much to teach as members of the most dynamic contemporary societies, but it may be that in the 21st century Islam will start looking to the Far East. As Chinese geopolitical interests spread to the Middle East it would seem likely that just as Hui aided the expansion of the Manchu into Turkic Central Asia, so they would serve as intermediaries between Muslim nations and the Chinese government. Before the Asian Flu of the late 1990s Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed had given signals that perhaps the new developments in Islam would come from Southeast Asia. But while the economies of ASEAN are relatively quiescent China is a relative dynamo, and it will be interesting to see what changes are wrought among its Muslims, and these these Muslims might eventually shape the nature of the conversation in the Muslim world as a whole.

About the Author: Razib Khan is an American blogger who blogs at Gene Expression.

Image Credits: Umar Jaspal

While other provinces and regions may not have that many Muslims but Muslims are nonetheless found in all parts of China. One of the reasons is because traditionally Muslims were involved in trade in China.

Brief Bio: Wang Daiyu is a doctoral student and the editor of the Islam in China webzine. He also maintains a blog on Islam and China.

Here is a gallery of wallpapers with Chinese and Islamic themes. The Chinese characters in the center can roughly be translated as “Truth Reason” Each surrounding tile has the Islamic deceleration of faith says in Arabic “There is not God but God and Muhammad (pbuh) is his prophet.”

The following three wallpapers have the map of China and the first two also have the name of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in Chinese.

And in red.

About the Author: Wang Daiyu is a doctoral student and the editor of the Islam in China webzine. He also maintains a blog on Islam and China.

Culture and History: The history of Chinese Muslims and their culture.

Image Gallery: Pictures of all things Chinese and Muslim.

China Guide: Information for places to visit in China for Islamic history and culture, where to find Mosques, Halal Food etc.

Diaspora: Chinese Muslims are spread through out the world and reside in many countries like Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Central Asian countries and even America.

Interviews: Interviews with Chinese Muslims, Sinophile Muslims and experts on the subject of Islam and China.

With this particular goal in mind I welcome you to the new website.

Brief Bio: Wang Daiyu is a doctoral student and the editor of the Islam in China webzine. He also maintains a blog on Islam and China.

By: Kellen Parker

Image Caption: Fuyou Road Mosque
Image Source: John Baez’s site

Back in May 2006 on my second morning in China, within hours of seeing anything of the city outside my campus for the first time, I set out on a mission. I knew there was a mosque around here and I was intent on finding it. Armed with a map and not a word of Chinese, I set out South for the old city to search out the Fuyou Road Mosque, the nearest of the three crescents laid out on the grid folded up in my pocket. I had just set up a blog at that time, and shortly after I wrote about being impressed with the sheer size and foreignness of the place. But, thinking myself a seasoned traveler, I was not to be deterred. Finally I saw an oddly misshapen scribble of Arabic and figured this must be it. Inside were half a dozen men, most much older than I, and none of whom spoke English. One, a man by the name of Ibrahim, had a smattering of Arabic. And so on my second day in China, I found a familiar conversation.

Though it may be a cliché, I can’t help but think of Ibn Battutah. Frequently. Though in no way am I a rightful comparison to someone who’d taken on so much, I think I may be able to understand at least to some extent how he felt. I’ve been traveling on and off now since I was 13, making it just over half of my life. Sixteen countries have entry visas in my passport and for almost each one, there is the shadow of the hospitality to which he was likely to have been subject on so many occasions during his travels. I will be the first to admit I’ve seen the problems too. I can say with confidence that I’m the only person I know to have been kicked out of Masjid al-Aqsa for not being Arab enough. I’ve met with suspicious glances in my direction on more than a few occasions, my race or nationality being the primary issue. I mention this not to bring up the conditions being endured by so many but rather to make a point. The reality is that life is often filled with xenophobia and turmoil, where suspicion of the Other is a means of survival, so I do not begrudge those who have acted as they saw best at the time. But, while I have not always been the recipient of the warmest hospitality, this has never been a problem among the Muslims in China.

I cannot be sure what the reasons may be, though I have my guesses. What I can say is that the spirit of welcoming to the vast extended family that is the Ummah is alive and well here. I have seen it first hand. It has been a dinner invitation by a couple of Uyghur men who spotted me in an Ürümqi bookstore, a Chinese-language text for would-be Hajjis under my arm. It has been a conversation with the Imam Hajji Muhammad of the Great Mosque in Xi’an or the group of Chinese Kazakhs who wanted to talk, having thought I looked friendly upon seeing the Imam and I in conversation. And most recently, It has been the local halal butcher who I was asked to see by a friend of mine in order to translate an order for leg of lamb. Maybe that’s the most impressive one in my mind. I would expect it from an Imam at a mosque turned tourist site, or from a group of college kids, who tend to be friendly in most countries. But this city in which I live, at 2 million people a mere town by Chinese standards, is not the most open minded place in China. It at times can feel outright hostile to outsiders. Having only just begun to open up to the possibilities of the future, it’s still figuring some things out. That means, unfortunately, at times I’ve seen the worst kind of xenophobia in people. In the mosque, however, there is respite. It must be some sort of antidote which is being slowly filtered into the mosque’s air conditioning. With the butcher, it was simple. We talked about what kind of meat and how much. He pleasantly joked with me, asked me if I was a Muslim, and then we concluded our transaction. I’ve had conversations like this a dozen times since coming to this town, each time with regardless if my own identity as a Muslim was known.

When I sat down to write this, I had planned to write something about the small differences in how they pray here or how their lines aren’t kept very straight, basically giving a rather clinical view that would inevitably miss the humanity of it all, reducing the manifestation of the faith into some scholarly opinion. After I got started I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Not so far back I was thinking what it must have been like to travel without passports and without borders as Ibn Battutah had. It had occurred to me that perhaps the distrust of neighbors would rival what we see in the world today. It had also occurred to me to watch out for bandits that at the time were a much bigger threat than the occasional pickpocket is today. It’s an idea of travel with much greater freedom but much greater hardship.

I had found that mosque in Shanghai and was warmly welcomed as if it were my own Friday haunt. In spite of this and the many conversations of which I’ve just spoken, some bit of cynicism wasn’t letting me accept the possibility of people really being that accepting of an early traveler just because the Tangerine knew the right words to say as the light would begin to fade on a Ramadan evening. These thoughts began to fade as I took off my shoes one Friday and found a place to sit between a middle-aged Uyghur man and a teenaged Hui, the room filled with whispers in a half-dozen tongues only to be silenced by an all-to-familiar call.

About the Author: Kellen Parker is an American-Muslim who currently resides in China.

Image Source: International Horizons

Indonesian religious leader and Islamic scholar Hamka (1908–1981) wrote in 1961: “The development of Islam in Indonesia and Malaya is intimately related to a Chinese Muslim, Admiral Zheng He”1 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).

Admiral Zheng He’s vast fleet arrived on the shores of Malacca in 1405. Aside from establishing the diplomatic ties within the courts of the Sultanate of Malacca with the Ming Dynasty, his presence brought upon the influx of Chinese Muslims in Malacca. In order to consolidate the relations, the Sultan sent his envoy to go along Admiral Zheng He to China. Official visits to China were made in the subsequent years by the Sultans of Malacca; Parameswara, Iskandar Shah and Muhammad Shah respectively.2

The relations between the Ming Dynasty with the Sultanate of Malacca were further strengthened when the Ming Dynasty Emperor offered Sultan Mansur Shah his daughter, Princess Hang Li Po’s hand in marriage. The princess brought an entourage comprising of 500 officials and servants that later embraced Islam, eventually remaining there, settling at “Bukit Cina” (Chinese Hill). Relations involving the Ming Dynasty and the Sultanate of Malacca continued until 1511, when the Portuguese ousted the Sultanate.2 In present days, “Bukit Cina” (Chinese Hill) has now become a Chinese cemetery. Whilst recent studies indicate that there are no Ming records to substantiate the existence of Princess Hang Li Po, there are gravestones that date back to the Ming Dynasty. 2

Several of the Chinese Muslim mosques constructed at that time soon became Zheng He temples; for the most part it is to commemorate the admiral. Even so, till today, a number of the mosques in Malacca such as the Masjid Kampung Hulu (Kampung Hulu Mosque) and Masjid Tengkera (Tranquerah Mosque) have managed to retain certain characteristics from the Chinese architectural designs, represented in the embellishments as well as the pagoda-like structure, adding further to the tangible evidence of Chinese Muslims influence. 2

The most recent discovery uncovered that from the 12th till the 14th century, the district of Kuala Berang (Fo-Lo-An), in the state of Terengganu, is one of the earliest Chinese settlements. In addition, the “Batu Bersurat Terengganu” (Inscribed Stone Slab of Terengganu) was said to have inscription forms that are similar to ancient Chinese writings. There are “Orang Yunnan” (Yunnan people) that were Muslims before their migration from China. In the book published by the Al-Yunani Family, there is a significant coverage of the genealogy of the 7 Chinese Muslims of Hui ancestry from Guangdong Province that settled in Terengganu in the early 20th century. Elsewhere in Malaysia, there are a few families of Chinese Muslims comprising of Hui Chinese Muslims, i.e. the Koay Clan in Penang and the Tianjing Hui Hui in Sabah, in which their forefathers may have arrived at an earlier time or together with Admiral Zheng He. 1, 3, 7

A prominent Chinese Muslim figure acknowledged throughout Malaysia, Southeast Asia and the Chinese Muslim communities is Haji Ibrahim Tien Ying Ma (1900-1982) born in a traditional Muslim family in Beijing, China. He came to Malaya (present day, Malaysia) in 1948 as China’s consul to the state of Perak. As one of the founders of the Malaysia Islamic Welfare Organization (PERKIM), he introduced PERKIM to the Chinese community and founded the Noor-El-Islam (The light of Islam), a monthly magazine printed by PERKIM in Chinese. His son, Dato’ Haji Mustapha Ma Qi is among the eminent Malaysian Chinese Muslim and holds the position as the current president of the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association [MACMA]. 4, 5, 6

In general, the Chinese Muslims of Malaysia can be categorized into two categories, in which the majority encompasses of converts and the minority are the ones whose ancestors came directly from China. The converts’ category can be further divided into two categories, specifically those that intermarry with other Muslims whilst the other category consists of converts that embraced Islam out of their own accord. 4

According to the report from Sin Chew Daily dated on 19th November 2001, the population of Chinese Muslims throughout Malaysia was 57,227, approximately 1% from the overall total of 5.69million Chinese population in Malaysia, comparatively to the 1991 census that had 17,117 which was 0.4% from the 4.60 million surveyed. The statistics, however do not divulge nor differentiate the figures or percentages of the Chinese Muslims that are born as Muslims or are converts. 4

References:

1. Chinese Muslims in Malaysia, History and Development by Rosey Wang Ma
2. Oversea Chinese Muslims, Yusuf Liu Baojun
3. The writings on the state of Terengganu from the history of China and the early settlements of the Chinese community in Terengganu; Alcoh Wong Yahao Chinese Historian Researcher. Held by the Malaysian History Association, Terengganu Branch.
4. The Chinese in Malaysia (South-East Asian Social Science Monographs) , Oxford University Press Lee Kam Hing and Tan Chee-Beng ISBN 983 56 0056 2
5. http://www.perkim.net.my - Malaysia Islamic Welfare Organization (PERKIM)
6. Dept. of Statistics: “Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2000″, Kuala Lumpur: Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2001
7. Kuala Berang’s Glorious Past, Alias Mohamed, Heritage Culture, News Straits Times

About the Author: Siti Hajar Alwi is a Malaysian blogger who blogs at A Voice in the Clouds.