The Chinese Muslim Ancestry of the Malaysian Prime Minister

Although most Malaysian Muslims may already know this but this fact is usually surprising for many non-Malaysian. One of the ancestors of the current Prime Minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was a Muslim from China who married a Malay woman. Prime Minister Badawi’s maternal grandfather Hassan (Ha Su Chiang) came from China’s Hainan Island [...]

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First Chinese Muslim Periodical

According to the Far Eastern Survey, 1946, the first Chinese Muslim periodical was published not in China but in Japan! In the early 20th century,there was group of Chinese Muslim students studying in Japan who called themselves the “Society of Muslim Students in Japan” (Liu-tung Ch’ing-chen Chiao-yu Hui). In 1908, they started a periodical called [...]

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Chinese Muslims in Pakistan

During the 1940s many Chinese Muslims fled China to escape the unrest caused by the civil wars and settled in what is now Pakistan. Some of these people did not go back to China. At one time there was even a mosque in Lahore called the Chini Masjid (Chinese Mosque). I do not know what [...]

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The Destination of Muslim Immigrants – China?

Who would have thought that out of all places in the world many people, including a lot of Muslims, would be migrating to China to flee political instability and other hardships in their countries. Apparently there are more than a thousand Iraqi refugees in Yiwu alone and Muslims from other parts of the Muslim world [...]

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Chinese Muslims in Saudi Arabia

Here is a fascinating fact: According to the Encyclopedia of Diasporas (page 115), Chinese Muslims refuges first arrived in Saudi Arabia during the unrest caused by the civil war in the 1940s. Ma Cheng Xiang, a commander in the Chinese Army, led 200 to 300 Chinese Muslim families to Saudi Arabia. The descendants of these [...]

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Three Chinese Converts in Dubai

Image Source: Gulfnews This news story, from Gulfnews, is a couple of months old but it recently caught my attention. It discusses the experience of Ramadan of new converts to Islam. They also talk about a Chinese family of three who converted to Islam. Here are the relevant excerpts from the story. A Chinese family [...]

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Emperor Gaozong of Tang Dynasty (唐高宗)

Islam was introduced in China by the uncle of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh),Saad bin Abi Waqas during the reign of the Chinese Emperor Gaozong of the Tang dynasty in 651. Gaozong is known in the Islamic sources as Yung Wei. The emperor is known to be impressed by the teachings of Islam but he did not [...]

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Chinese Muslim art exhibition

This news item may be of interest to people living in the Gulf region. The Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Abu Dhabi will organize a Chinese Islamic Art Exhibition at Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation from 17 to 19 this month. I wish I could see the exhibition. If any of the readers [...]

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Eid Mubarak

Eid Mubarak to Muslims all over the world. Children play in a street of Kax, city of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Oct. 24, 2006, on the first day of Eid al-Fitr. (Xinhua Photo)

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The Many Names of Islam in China

The religion of Islam has been called by different names in different eras in China. Here is interesting information from the book Islam in China. During the Tang Dynasty Islam was called “Dashi Jiao” (religion of Dashi, the Arabs were called Dashi), in the time of the Ming Dynasty it was called “Tianfang Jiao” (religion [...]

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