Islam in China
2 min readIslam first reached China via the Silk Road in the mid-7th century. The first mosque was built at Guangdong. Now China has more than 30,000 mosques. (see Figure 32 )Figure 32 Muezzin’ s Mosque, Yining, Xinjiang Islam means getting free of inward evils. The Islamic main concepts are belief in the Oneness of God, belief inProphethood, and belief in the Hereafter. Muhammad is the Prophet of Islam.
History shows that after triumphing over the Byzantine, Romans and the Persians dispatched a deputation to China in29 AD, eighteen years after the Prophet’ s death. Under the leadership by Sa’ ad ibn Abi Waqqaas, Prophet Muhammad’ s maternal uncle, they invited the Chinese emperor to embrace Islam.
In the Tang Dynasty, there was the landmark visit which is considered to be the birth of Islam in China. To show his admiration for Islam, the Tang emperor ordered the establishment of China’ s first mosque, the magnificent Guangdong city mosque known to this day as the”Memorial Mosque’ .
In history, the Umayyads and Abbasids sent six delegations to China, all of which were warmly received by the Chinese. The Muslims who immigrated to China eventually began to have a great economic impact and influence on the country. They virtually dominated the import/export business by the time of the Sung Dynasty.
The Ming Dynasty is generally considered to be the golden age of Islam in China. Muslims gradually became fully integrated into Han society.
They married Han women and took on the names of their wives. Their customs of dress and food also underwent a synthesis with Chinese culture.
In the Qing Dynasty Muslims, along with, Hans, Tibetans, and Mongolians were suppressed by the Manchu Minority. When the Qing Dynasty fell in 1911, the Republic of China was established by Sun Yat Sen, who immediately proclaimed that the country belonged equally to the Han, Hui (Muslim), Man (Manchu), Meng (Mongol ), and the Zang (Tibetan ) peoples. His policies led to some improvement in relations among these groups.
