Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Islam in China 1 6 3Kurds now make up more than 10 percent of the population of Scandinavia).As Jonathan Lipman insightfully noted, these long-term Muslim communitieshave often been the “familiar strangers” found in small enclaves throughoutAsia (1997, 2). And if Kosovo and Bosnia are to serve as lessons, failure to accommodateMuslim minorities can lead to national dismemberment and internationalintervention. Indeed, China’s primary objection to NATO involvementin Kosovo was based on its fear that involvement there mightencourage the aiding and abetting of separatists generally, a potential problemin light of the fact that independence groups in Xinjiang, Tibet, andeven Taiwan remain a major Chinese concern.This chapter will seek to examine Muslim-minority identity in Asia with specificreference to China, not only because that is where I have conducted mostof my research, but also because, as the largest Muslim minority in East Asia,C h i n a ’s Muslims are clearly the most threatened in terms of self-preserv a t i o nand Islamic identity. At the same time, some of the lessons gleaned from thestudy of the Chinese case might be useful for other Muslim communities inEast Asia, and perhaps elsewhere in the world as well. Most relevant to this isthe thesis that successful Muslim accommodation to minority status in Asia canbe seen as evidence that Muslim groups can reconcile the dictates of Islam tothe contexts of their host cultures. This goes against the opposite view that canbe found in the writings of some analysts of Islam in China, such as Raphael Israeliand Michael Dillon, who argue that Islam in the region is almost unavoidablyrebellious and that Muslims as minorities are inherently problematic to anon-Muslim state (Israeli 1978; Dillon 1997).Islam in ChinaAccording to the reasonably accurate 1990 national census of China, the totalMuslim population is 17.6 million, including Hui (8,602,978), Uyghur(7,214,431), Kazakh (1,111,718), Dongxiang (373,872), Kyrgyz (373,872),Salar (87,697), Tajik (33,538), Uzbek (14,502), Bonan (12,212), and Ta t a r(4,873). The Hui speak mainly Sino-Tibetan languages; Tu r k i c - l a n g u a g espeakers include the Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tatar; combinedTurkic-Mongolian speakers include the Dongxiang, Salar, and Bonan, concentratedin Gansu’s mountainous Hexi corridor; and the Tajik speak a variety ofIndo-Persian dialects. It is important to note, however, that the Chinese censusregistered people by nationality, not religious affiliation, so the actual numberof Muslims is still unknown, and all population figures are influenced by politicsin their use and interpretation.Archaeological discoveries of large collections of Islamic artifacts and epigraphyon the southeast coast suggest that the earliest Muslim communities in