Sunday, February 15, 2009

On Islam in the PRC



Razib points to a website on Islam in the People's Republic of China . This is not something that I know very much about - but it seems to me that people assume China is more homogenous than it is. The country is mainly Confusian/Daoist/animist, but there are Muslim and Christian minorities.

The largest group of Chinese Muslims are the Hui. The Hui speak Chinese and, as such, differ from the Han Chinese in terms of religion but not in terms of language. The last census in China estimates that there were about 9m Hui.

There are Muslim nationalities in China that do not traditionally speak Chinese - although of course the younger generation may well have learned it in school. They are concentrated in the more peripheral areas of the country. In the far west, Xinjiang is a province which has had an independence/autonomist movement based on the Turkic-speaking Uighur minority. The Uighurs are Muslim as well and have more in common (religiously and linguistically) with many of the peoples in the former Soviet Central Asian republics than they do with Han Chinese. Although the Hui seem to be happy to be part of the Chinese state, the Uighurs seem more discontented. A state based on the Chinese language and Chinese culture alienates them.

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