China's Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation by Colin Mackerras

Author:Colin Mackerras [Mackerras, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781134392889
Google: 3EWAAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-09-02T04:39:37+00:00

Islam

Islam is by far the most prevalent of all formal religions in China. Among its adherents, the three most populous nationalities are the Hui, the Uygurs and the Kazaks, but there are seven others with much smaller populations. The Hui have their own autonomous region, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, but in fact they are scattered throughout virtually all China, even including Tibet. The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Prefecture is not only the province-level unit dedicated to the Uygurs, but is also the one with the most Muslims and the principal home of six of China’s Islamic nationalities: the Uygurs, Kazaks, Kirgiz, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Tatars. There is also a significant concentration of Hui in Xinjiang.

The Hui are descended from Muslims who became integrated into Chinese society from about the fourteenth century, and are now hardly distinguishable from the Han Chinese, other than in their adherence to Islam. Most of the other Islamic nationalities are Turkic culturally and linguistically. The only people in China to speak an Iranian language are the Tajiks.

The great majority of Muslims in China are Sunni, the prevalent form of Islam worldwide, other than among Iranians, who are Shiite. There are still adherents to the mystic Sufi sect of Islam, with its emphasis on direct personal experience of God. Since the 1990s, Sufis have been reclaiming land lost during the collectivization programme of the 1950s, a process sometimes leading to conflict (Dillon 1999: 182).

Official figures claim that at the end of the twentieth century there were over 18 million believers in Islam in China;2 in Xinjiang 8.1 million people, that is 56.3 per cent of the total population, were religious believers, almost all of them being Muslim. There were about 30,000 mosques in China, about two-thirds of them in Xinjiang, and some 40,000 Islamic clergy, with about 29,000 religious personnel in Xinjiang, the overwhelming majority of them Muslim (Information Office 2000b: 48–9).

In Xinjiang, Islam is considerably stronger in some places than others. According to Justin Rudelson (1997: 48), the strongest resistance to Chinese restrictions on religion is to be found in Kashgar and Khotan, both in the south of Xinjiang. At the same time, in Turpan in central Xinjiang and Hami to its east Islam has reacted less forcefully, ‘sometimes with seeming indifference’. In my opinion, the Chinese are more suspicious of Islam in southern Xinjiang, believing it will be used against the state there, but are more relaxed about the religion in Turpan and Hami.

A survey carried out by the Centre for Religious Research, Xinjiang Social Sciences Institute, in 1983 and 1984, appears to bear out the greater strength of Islam in the south than the north. The team surveyed two Kazak villages in Yili, northern Xinjiang, and two rural communities and one urban in and near Kashgar. It found that among the people of Kashgar, who are Uygurs, over 90 per cent of villagers take part in Islamic religious practice, while among the Kazaks of Yili the relevant proportion was only about one in five.

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