Moderate Islam Among the Hui in Ningxia
Short but interesting excerpts from an interview of an Egyptian Islamic scholar who praises the moderate ways of the Hui Muslim minority in China.
Over the centuries, there have been few stir-ups between the Hui and the Han majority. During the Sino-Japanese War, integrated and independent Hui divisions fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Han against the Japanese.
Since the founding of the PRC, a number of Huis have assumed high Party and government office such as Hui Liangyu, currently a prominent Vice-Premier.
At the grassroots, they are well integrated in society. The Niujie (Cattle Street) area is a major enclave of the Hui in Beijing and you often see peddlers of Hui delicacies in farmers’ markets, selling largely to Han customers.
The reference of the scholar to attempts by Saudi Wahhabiists to instill a purist and patriarchal form of Islam at the expense of native traditions in many parts of the world has basically failed among the Hui in China. Radicalized Islamic elements mainly belong to the Uighur minority in southwestern Xinjiang Autonomous Region bordering the Central Asian states.
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Over the past decade, people around the world have grown accustomed to a violent face of Islam, the extremism that a leading Islamic law expert, Khaled Abou El Fadl, described as “petrol bomber” Islam.
That extremism makes alternatives, like the more liberal traditions among the 10 million Hui Muslims in China, where female imams and women’s mosques are the norm, “more important than a lot of people might realize,” said Mr. Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Living far from the Middle East in an officially atheist state where they nonetheless enjoy substantial religious freedom, Chinese Hui Muslims have “remarkably untapped and underexplored rich and nuanced traditions” that would contribute immensely to global Islam if they shared more, said Mr. Abou El Fadl — although he warned those traditions may need protection from attempts by Islamic fundamentalists to radicalize them.