It all started by me reading up wiki for my Secondary school in Hong Kong. Apparently they now added an extra house (the house system where you belong to a house for competitions like swimming gala etc) and used the alphabet ‘Z’. Each of our houses back in Shatin College was named after an explorer, so this Z was named after Zhang He, one of the famous Chinese explorers in the past. So I read up on Zhang He and found that he was a Muslim.
That was when I got hooked reading up more on Islam in China on wiki+more. As most of you know there are 54 minority groups in China. One of the majority as Livia pointed out many months ago was ‘Hui’. The hui in modern China refered to the Chinese (who have the same culture as Han people) who lived in Mainland China and practiced Islam. In fact, one of the 5 stars on the Chinese flags is dedicated to the Hui people, which means its dedicated to the Muslims in China. I find that very cool.In fact, Prophet Muhammed (SAW) sent his companions all the way to China to preach Islam back in 7th Century, and 2 of them are buried in Lingshan. After 18 years after the prophet’s death, the 3rd Calliph sent another delegation headed by the prophet’s uncle - and this is according to BBC - to China, that was when they built the great mosque of Canton. I don’t know where I was, its been so close to home and I never knew this! To this day, the mosque still stands after 14 centuries. When I go back next time I think will make a semi-pilgrimage up there. I would also like to see the great mosque of Xian. Perhaps one day I will go back packing in China to find out the Islamic history in China.
Its all very facinating to me. I spent the whole day today on and off reading articles on Islam in China.This leads me to the criticism of how ‘behind’ Hong Kong is in its religious tolerance. Thinking about the fact that many locals actually refused to let Muslims build a mosque in Sheung Shui after the government actually approved the land is a living example of the backwardness in religious tolerance in the Asia’s world city. Perhaps this is a reminder to myself to up-hold the values of ancesters before me - that perhaps my ancesters are not fully from China, but that there was an umah (community) in China long before today, and for centuries we have always managed to live harmoniously (until the Qing Dynasty that is) with other religions. Being a semi-Chinese - at least a person born and bred in China - it is something worthwhile taking away with me today: Religious tolerance and religious pluralism.