At a time when Islamic populations around the world are under increased scrutiny, the Chinese Hui are often confused in the Western media with China’s second-largest Muslim minority, the restive Uighurs, an ethnically distinct group concentrated in China’s Central-Asian Xinjiang province.
Chafing under Chinese rule, the Uighurs have given the Chinese government the opportunity to claim its own front in the War on Terror. It is the relationship between the Uighurs and the Chinese state that has dominated most international coverage of Chinese Islam.
By contrast, the Hui, although no strangers to political unrest, have maintained a relatively balanced relationship with the secular Chinese state. With the hurtling pace of change in China today, the question now is whether the Hui’s relationship with Beijing will remain stable.
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