Comments on: On Engaging Modernity: Beyond Symbolic Critique Towards A Robust Assessment (Part II)[Tradition and Modernity: China A Case Study]

By: dawud

dawud — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:29:01 +0000

Azeem, you mean the Han who are part of the mainstream (widespread amonst China, traders, and culturally indistinct) Chinese population, and who are ethnically Chinese, as opposed to the Hui from the province of Xinjiang, who are of Turkic / Central Asian extraction.

I think Dr. Abdullah’s “Thinking beyond the Abrahamic box: Muslims in China” has a good coverage of the muslims in China, and is an extension of his argument about “Islam and the Cultural Imperative” – see http://www.nawawi.org/courses/index_reading_room.html and the specific article on Islam in China at
http://www.nawawi.org/downloads/article5.pdf

By: Azeem

Azeem — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:55:19 +0000

Off topic:

I was in a meeting with Chinese Scholars of Islam (all Muslims, mostly researchers), hosted by the State Dept. they were interested in how Imams are trained in the U.S. And I just so happened to mention your blog. What a quinky dink.

They told us There are over 20 million Muslims in China.
30,000 masajid
40,000 – 50,000 “Islamic clergy” and Imams

They also mentioned that other than ethnic groups which are known to be Muslim there are 50,000 converts/reverts in China from what they described as Hamm? people (the mainstream population? I guess our version of Indigenous?) in Beijing.