The Muslim Midwest in Modern China: The Tale of the Hui Communities in Gansu (Lanzhou Linxia and Lintan) and in Yunnan (Kunming and Dali)

For several centuries now the Muslim Midwest notably the Northwest and the Southwest had been the Muslim country of China. Although Muslims only sporadically constituted local majorities in some towns villages counties and neighborhoods they remained overall a minority in the overwhelming Han landscape of China. Nonetheless in those areas the Muslim-Hui culture has had its greatest impact and visibility. It was in those areas in mid-nineteenth-century China that major Muslim rebellions took place with the stated purpose of seceding from the Kingdom and establishing independent Muslim states. Almost two centuries later those areas still bear the traumas of the past--crushed Muslim rebellions with massive massacres of Muslims who lost their predominance and are reluctant to invoke past glories. The result has been a multitude of sects and sub sects notably the Menhuan which has no parallel in other parts of China and even a new hybrid--the Xidaotang. The author took the advantages of his rich knowledge about the Islamic schism and combed the Chinese Islamic new sects into systematic categories so that they are easily understood by English readers. The author also explores some main factors of the Yunnan Hui Uprising in the nineteenth century and the influence upon the Hui-Han relationships to today. This study does not stop on the façade however; it touches the root part of the Hui faith which lead to their social interactions among themselves and with the majority Han. Even many Hui researchers in such area of expertise have neglected such discussions. I highly appreciate the book. --Wan Lei Senior Research Fellow at
King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Raphael Israeli has a PhD from the University of California Berkeley. At Hebrew University in Jerusalem he taught courses on the modern Middle East Islamic history Islamic radicalism and on Islamic minorities in Europe and Asia. He is the author of fifty-five books and over 100 scholarly articles on those topics.