Chinese Muslims

Abstract

Books Reviewed: Sachiko Murata, Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light: Wang Taiyu’s
“Great Learning of the Pure and Real” and Liu Chih’s “Displaying the
Concealment of the Real Realm.”Albany: SUNY Press, 2000; Maria Jaschok
and Shui Jingjun, The History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam: A
Mosque of Their Own. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2000; Jean A. Berlie,
Islam in China: Hui and Uyghurs between Modernization and Sinicization.
Bangkok: White Lotus, 2004; Sheila Hollihan-Elliot, Muslims in China.
Philadelphia: Mason Crest Publishers, 2006.
With a population conservatively estimated at 20 million (and, according to
some sources, as high as 50 million), the Muslims of China remain one of
the least studied and most misunderstood Muslim communities in the
world. After decades of relative neglect, however, over the past few years
several books have been published that seek to shed light on different
aspects of the historic, religious, and contemporary lives of China’s Muslims.
This review essay will survey four recent works written by a wide range of
scholars.
Research on Islam in China has been hindered by many factors, including
the difficulty of gaining expertise in both Chinese studies and Islamic
studies, learning both modern and classical Chinese and Arabic, the longstanding
prejudices of Han Chinese scholars regarding the country’s minority
peoples, together with the similarly long-standing prejudices of many
western scholars regarding Islam. The earliest major work on the Muslim
communities of China was published in 1910, by Marshall Broomhall of the
China Inland Mission. Titled Islam in China: A Neglected Problem, its main
purpose was to educate Christian missionaries in China about the location,
customs, and history of the indigenous Muslims in order to facilitate proselytization
activities among them ...