Ismailies in china
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karam-e-khuda
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:59 am
Ismailies in china
Ya Ali Madad, I want to know about ismailies living in china, how they perform rites and cermonies, and is there any approximate value available for their population
Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah says in his memoir:
"With Sinkiang, Kashgar and Yarkand we have no communication at present, since the frontier is closed -no more firmly against Ismailis than against anyone else-but we know that they are free to follow their religion and that they are firm and devoted Ismailis with a great deal of self-confidence and the feeling that they constitute by far the most important Ismaili community in the whole world."
Prince Sadruddin in an article about his father upon his centenary published in the Times stated:
"For those who are more familiar with the East, he was the most gifted hereditary religious leader or forty eighth Imam of some 12 million Ismaili Shia Muslims who are to be found from the Great Wall of China to the southern tip of Africa, a direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad and a true believer in the percepts of Islam."
"With Sinkiang, Kashgar and Yarkand we have no communication at present, since the frontier is closed -no more firmly against Ismailis than against anyone else-but we know that they are free to follow their religion and that they are firm and devoted Ismailis with a great deal of self-confidence and the feeling that they constitute by far the most important Ismaili community in the whole world."
Prince Sadruddin in an article about his father upon his centenary published in the Times stated:
"For those who are more familiar with the East, he was the most gifted hereditary religious leader or forty eighth Imam of some 12 million Ismaili Shia Muslims who are to be found from the Great Wall of China to the southern tip of Africa, a direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad and a true believer in the percepts of Islam."
There is a related slide show and article linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/opini ... ref=slogin
May 29, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Terrorism and the Olympics
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KASHGAR, China
The reports of terror plots emanating this year from this Muslim region in the far west of China might seem fanciful: A foiled plot to blow up a plane; a cache of TNT to bomb the Summer Olympics; even a “violent terrorist gang” that planned to kidnap Olympic athletes.
But these aren’t whispers on the Internet. They’re reports coming from the Chinese government. So I flew out here to Kashgar — an oasis on the ancient Silk Road, where the minarets and camels and carpets provide a Middle Eastern ambience — to look for terrorists.
Instead, China’s State Security Ministry found me. I had been in Kashgar just a few hours when my videographer, who is ethnically Chinese, called to say that two plainclothes officials were interrogating him. They asked him not to tell me since American journalists tend to be touchy about such things.
The interrogation was a sign of the authorities’ anxiety about stability in China’s Muslim west. Separatists here in the Xinjiang region aim to create the nation of “East Turkestan” and have periodically blown up police stations — even bombed three public buses in 1997.
The Chinese government has claimed that 162 people were killed in such terror attacks by Uighur separatists between 1990 and 2001. Meanwhile, China has sentenced more than 200 people to death since 1997 for engaging in such separatist crimes.
Last year, Chinese officials said that 18 people had been killed when police raided a Uighur terrorist training camp with ties to Al Qaeda. The raid netted 1,500 grenades.
Then in March, China announced that it had foiled a plot “to create an air crash,” in a passenger plane shortly after it took off from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi. In April, the authorities said that they had confiscated explosives from Uighurs who were planning suicide bomb attacks.
“This violent terrorist gang secretly plotted to kidnap journalists, visitors and athletes during the Beijing Olympics,” The Associated Press quoted Wu Heping, a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry, as saying.
Then just this month, a crowded bus blew up in Shanghai, killing three people and injuring many more. No one publicly claimed responsibility, but it recalled the 1997 Uighur bus bombings.
Ronald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, cited these incidents — and also reports of a separatist plot to disrupt the Olympic Games with poison gas — and told a press conference that a terror attack at the Olympics was “a real possibility.”
It’s not entirely clear what to make of all this, for as I strolled around Kashgar I found the situation remarkably calm. I wasn’t expecting to uncover a terrorist cell, but I had anticipated more hostility toward the government. Ordinary Uighurs I spoke with offered measured complaints, but they weren’t seething as Tibetans are.
“Nobody likes it when the Chinese all move in here,” said a Uighur shop-keeper. “Of course, we’re all upset. But what can we do?”
One young woman offered a different take. “When I was a little kid, my mom would tell me, ‘Don’t wander or the Han Chinese will steal you away. They eat human flesh.’ ” She laughed and added: “But now we see more Han, and we’re not afraid of them. Relations are O.K.”
Some young Uighurs criticized the Beijing Olympics, saying the Games will drain local budgets. But I could have found stronger anti-government sedition on any street corner of Manhattan.
The only excitement I found in Kashgar was playing pied piper to State Security officers who tailed me whenever I left the hotel.
Normally, the Chinese government downplays security risks, but human rights groups argue persuasively that China is using concerns about Uighurs as an excuse to crack down on peaceful Uighur dissidents. After 9/11, China declared its own war on terror in Xinjiang, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented that this often has targeted Uighurs who are completely nonviolent.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has largely backed this Chinese version of the war on terror. Indeed, a Department of Justice report this month suggests that American troops softened up Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo Bay on behalf of visiting Chinese interrogators. The American troops starved the Uighurs and prevented them from sleeping, just before inviting in the Chinese interrogators.
That was disgraceful; we shouldn’t do China’s dirty work. It was one more example of the Bush administration allowing the war on terror to corrode our moral clarity.
We should encourage China to tolerate peaceful protesters even as it prosecutes terrorists. But instead of clarifying that distinction, in recent years we have helped China blur it. The risk of terrorism during the Olympics is real, but that shouldn’t force us to do violence to our principles.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/opini ... ref=slogin
May 29, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Terrorism and the Olympics
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KASHGAR, China
The reports of terror plots emanating this year from this Muslim region in the far west of China might seem fanciful: A foiled plot to blow up a plane; a cache of TNT to bomb the Summer Olympics; even a “violent terrorist gang” that planned to kidnap Olympic athletes.
But these aren’t whispers on the Internet. They’re reports coming from the Chinese government. So I flew out here to Kashgar — an oasis on the ancient Silk Road, where the minarets and camels and carpets provide a Middle Eastern ambience — to look for terrorists.
Instead, China’s State Security Ministry found me. I had been in Kashgar just a few hours when my videographer, who is ethnically Chinese, called to say that two plainclothes officials were interrogating him. They asked him not to tell me since American journalists tend to be touchy about such things.
The interrogation was a sign of the authorities’ anxiety about stability in China’s Muslim west. Separatists here in the Xinjiang region aim to create the nation of “East Turkestan” and have periodically blown up police stations — even bombed three public buses in 1997.
The Chinese government has claimed that 162 people were killed in such terror attacks by Uighur separatists between 1990 and 2001. Meanwhile, China has sentenced more than 200 people to death since 1997 for engaging in such separatist crimes.
Last year, Chinese officials said that 18 people had been killed when police raided a Uighur terrorist training camp with ties to Al Qaeda. The raid netted 1,500 grenades.
Then in March, China announced that it had foiled a plot “to create an air crash,” in a passenger plane shortly after it took off from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi. In April, the authorities said that they had confiscated explosives from Uighurs who were planning suicide bomb attacks.
“This violent terrorist gang secretly plotted to kidnap journalists, visitors and athletes during the Beijing Olympics,” The Associated Press quoted Wu Heping, a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry, as saying.
Then just this month, a crowded bus blew up in Shanghai, killing three people and injuring many more. No one publicly claimed responsibility, but it recalled the 1997 Uighur bus bombings.
Ronald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, cited these incidents — and also reports of a separatist plot to disrupt the Olympic Games with poison gas — and told a press conference that a terror attack at the Olympics was “a real possibility.”
It’s not entirely clear what to make of all this, for as I strolled around Kashgar I found the situation remarkably calm. I wasn’t expecting to uncover a terrorist cell, but I had anticipated more hostility toward the government. Ordinary Uighurs I spoke with offered measured complaints, but they weren’t seething as Tibetans are.
“Nobody likes it when the Chinese all move in here,” said a Uighur shop-keeper. “Of course, we’re all upset. But what can we do?”
One young woman offered a different take. “When I was a little kid, my mom would tell me, ‘Don’t wander or the Han Chinese will steal you away. They eat human flesh.’ ” She laughed and added: “But now we see more Han, and we’re not afraid of them. Relations are O.K.”
Some young Uighurs criticized the Beijing Olympics, saying the Games will drain local budgets. But I could have found stronger anti-government sedition on any street corner of Manhattan.
The only excitement I found in Kashgar was playing pied piper to State Security officers who tailed me whenever I left the hotel.
Normally, the Chinese government downplays security risks, but human rights groups argue persuasively that China is using concerns about Uighurs as an excuse to crack down on peaceful Uighur dissidents. After 9/11, China declared its own war on terror in Xinjiang, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented that this often has targeted Uighurs who are completely nonviolent.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has largely backed this Chinese version of the war on terror. Indeed, a Department of Justice report this month suggests that American troops softened up Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo Bay on behalf of visiting Chinese interrogators. The American troops starved the Uighurs and prevented them from sleeping, just before inviting in the Chinese interrogators.
That was disgraceful; we shouldn’t do China’s dirty work. It was one more example of the Bush administration allowing the war on terror to corrode our moral clarity.
We should encourage China to tolerate peaceful protesters even as it prosecutes terrorists. But instead of clarifying that distinction, in recent years we have helped China blur it. The risk of terrorism during the Olympics is real, but that shouldn’t force us to do violence to our principles.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
The change of official attitude towards faith in China as expressed in the article below, will hopefully enable Ismailis to come out in the open and express themselves...
China's Christian shift
About 70 million
underground church members
EVANOSNOS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE BEIJING PUBLISHED IN TODAY'S CALGARY HERALD
Rev. Jin Mingri peered out from the pulpit and delivered an unusual appeal: "Please leave," the 39-year-old pastor commanded his followers, who were packed, standing-room-only on a Sunday afternoon, into a converted office space in China's capital.
"We don't have enough seats for the others who want to come, so, please, only stay for one service a day."
A choir in hot-pink robes stood to his left, beside a guitarist and a drum set bristling with cymbals. Children in a playroom beside the sanctuary punctuated the service with squeals and tantrums. It was a busy day at a church that, on paper, does not exist.
Christianity—repressed, marginalized and, in many cases, illegal in China for more than half a century—is sweeping the country, overflowing churches and posing a sensitive challenge to the officially atheist Communist Party.
By some estimates, Christian churches, most of them underground, now have roughly 70 million members, as many as the party itself. A growing number of those Christians are in fact party members.
Christianity is thriving in part because it offers a moral framework to citizens adrift in an age of Wild West capitalism that has not only exacted a heavy toll in corruption and pollution but also harmed the global image of products "made in China."
Some Chinese Christians argue their faith is an unexpected boon for the Communist Party because it shores up the economic foundation that is central to sustaining party rule.
"With economic development, morality and ethics in China are degenerating quickly," prayer leader Zhang Wei told the crowd at Jin's church as worshippers bowed their heads. "Holy Father, please save the Chinese people's soul"
At the same time, Christianity is driving citizens to be more politically as-sertive, emboldening them to push for greater freedom and testing the party's willingness to adapt. For decades, most of China's Christians worshipped in underground churches—known as "house churches" — avoiding attention for fear of arrest on various charges such as "disturbing public order."
However, in a sign of Christianity's growing prominence, scores of interviews for a joint project of the Chicago Tribune and PBS's Frontline/World saw clerical leaders and worshippers from coastal boomtowns to inland villages publicly detailing their religious lives for the first time.
They repeated a seemingly shared belief the time has come to proclaim their place in Chinese society as the world focuses on China and its hosting of the 2008 Olympics, set to begin in August.
"We have nothing to hide," said Jin, a former Communist Party member who broke away from the state church last year to found his Zion Church.
Jin embodies an historic change. After centuries of foreign efforts to implant Christianity in China, today's Christian ascension is led not by missionaries but by evangelical citizens at home.
Where Christianity once was confined largely to poor villages, it is now spreading into urban power centres with often tacit approval from the regime.
It is reaching into the most influential corners of Chinese life, too. Intellectuals disillusioned by the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square are placing their loyalty in faith, not politics; tycoons fed up with corruption are seeking an ethical code; Communist Party members are daring to argue their faith does not put them at odds with the government.
Overall, the government is permitting churches to be more open and active than ever before, signaling a new tolerance of faith in public life.
This rise, driven by evangelical Protestants, reflects a wider spiritual awakening in China. As communism fades into today's free-market reality, many Chinese describe a "crisis of faith" and seek solace everywhere from mystical Taoist sects to Bahai temples and Christian megachurcbes.
Today, the government counts 21 million Catholics and Protestants—a 50 per cent increase in less than 10 years — though the underground population is far larger.
Much about the future of faith in China is uncertain, though, shaped most vividly in bold new evangelical churches such as Zion, where a soft-spoken preacher and his fervent flock do not yet know just how far the Communist Party is prepared to let them grow.
"We think Christianity is good for Beijing, good for China," Jin said. "But it may take some time before our intention is understood, trusted, even respected by the authorities. We even have to consider the price we may have to pay."
For the generation affected by Tiananmen Square, Christianity offered an alternative to China's political orthodoxy. To those in search of something new in which to believe, the church promised salvation, moral absolutes and a sense of being part of an enterprise larger than China.
"We (had been) taught not to learn from God, that God is a fake," said Wang Qingying, a 37-year-old member of Jin's church who grew up the daughter of a Communist Party member.
"After I started to believe, I realized everything that happens is a part of God's design."
After a stint of studying in the United States, Jin returned to China last year but felt constrained by the official church.
The Zion Church opened its doors in May 2007 with just 20 people. Within a year its membership surged to 350 worshippers. Nine out of 10, Jin estimates, are younger than 40.
Unlike their parents, these young Christians are coming of age at a time when Christianity is slowly shedding the stigma of illegality.
Western religion even has a touch of glamour because of high-profile converts in recent years. Retired Olympic soccer goalkeeper Gao Hong is a Christian, as is television actress Lu Liping and pop star Zheng Jun.
Moreover, young Christians are more accustomed than their parents to life outside the official church. The notion that a pastor would need official approval in order to preach puzzles Ma Junyan, a 25-year-old singer in the troupe.
"Jesus tells us to preach to everyone, so they all can follow his words,' she said.
"He never said, "You have to have this certificate in order to preach.' I disagree with that practice. Why follow people, not God?"
China's Christian shift
About 70 million
underground church members
EVANOSNOS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE BEIJING PUBLISHED IN TODAY'S CALGARY HERALD
Rev. Jin Mingri peered out from the pulpit and delivered an unusual appeal: "Please leave," the 39-year-old pastor commanded his followers, who were packed, standing-room-only on a Sunday afternoon, into a converted office space in China's capital.
"We don't have enough seats for the others who want to come, so, please, only stay for one service a day."
A choir in hot-pink robes stood to his left, beside a guitarist and a drum set bristling with cymbals. Children in a playroom beside the sanctuary punctuated the service with squeals and tantrums. It was a busy day at a church that, on paper, does not exist.
Christianity—repressed, marginalized and, in many cases, illegal in China for more than half a century—is sweeping the country, overflowing churches and posing a sensitive challenge to the officially atheist Communist Party.
By some estimates, Christian churches, most of them underground, now have roughly 70 million members, as many as the party itself. A growing number of those Christians are in fact party members.
Christianity is thriving in part because it offers a moral framework to citizens adrift in an age of Wild West capitalism that has not only exacted a heavy toll in corruption and pollution but also harmed the global image of products "made in China."
Some Chinese Christians argue their faith is an unexpected boon for the Communist Party because it shores up the economic foundation that is central to sustaining party rule.
"With economic development, morality and ethics in China are degenerating quickly," prayer leader Zhang Wei told the crowd at Jin's church as worshippers bowed their heads. "Holy Father, please save the Chinese people's soul"
At the same time, Christianity is driving citizens to be more politically as-sertive, emboldening them to push for greater freedom and testing the party's willingness to adapt. For decades, most of China's Christians worshipped in underground churches—known as "house churches" — avoiding attention for fear of arrest on various charges such as "disturbing public order."
However, in a sign of Christianity's growing prominence, scores of interviews for a joint project of the Chicago Tribune and PBS's Frontline/World saw clerical leaders and worshippers from coastal boomtowns to inland villages publicly detailing their religious lives for the first time.
They repeated a seemingly shared belief the time has come to proclaim their place in Chinese society as the world focuses on China and its hosting of the 2008 Olympics, set to begin in August.
"We have nothing to hide," said Jin, a former Communist Party member who broke away from the state church last year to found his Zion Church.
Jin embodies an historic change. After centuries of foreign efforts to implant Christianity in China, today's Christian ascension is led not by missionaries but by evangelical citizens at home.
Where Christianity once was confined largely to poor villages, it is now spreading into urban power centres with often tacit approval from the regime.
It is reaching into the most influential corners of Chinese life, too. Intellectuals disillusioned by the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square are placing their loyalty in faith, not politics; tycoons fed up with corruption are seeking an ethical code; Communist Party members are daring to argue their faith does not put them at odds with the government.
Overall, the government is permitting churches to be more open and active than ever before, signaling a new tolerance of faith in public life.
This rise, driven by evangelical Protestants, reflects a wider spiritual awakening in China. As communism fades into today's free-market reality, many Chinese describe a "crisis of faith" and seek solace everywhere from mystical Taoist sects to Bahai temples and Christian megachurcbes.
Today, the government counts 21 million Catholics and Protestants—a 50 per cent increase in less than 10 years — though the underground population is far larger.
Much about the future of faith in China is uncertain, though, shaped most vividly in bold new evangelical churches such as Zion, where a soft-spoken preacher and his fervent flock do not yet know just how far the Communist Party is prepared to let them grow.
"We think Christianity is good for Beijing, good for China," Jin said. "But it may take some time before our intention is understood, trusted, even respected by the authorities. We even have to consider the price we may have to pay."
For the generation affected by Tiananmen Square, Christianity offered an alternative to China's political orthodoxy. To those in search of something new in which to believe, the church promised salvation, moral absolutes and a sense of being part of an enterprise larger than China.
"We (had been) taught not to learn from God, that God is a fake," said Wang Qingying, a 37-year-old member of Jin's church who grew up the daughter of a Communist Party member.
"After I started to believe, I realized everything that happens is a part of God's design."
After a stint of studying in the United States, Jin returned to China last year but felt constrained by the official church.
The Zion Church opened its doors in May 2007 with just 20 people. Within a year its membership surged to 350 worshippers. Nine out of 10, Jin estimates, are younger than 40.
Unlike their parents, these young Christians are coming of age at a time when Christianity is slowly shedding the stigma of illegality.
Western religion even has a touch of glamour because of high-profile converts in recent years. Retired Olympic soccer goalkeeper Gao Hong is a Christian, as is television actress Lu Liping and pop star Zheng Jun.
Moreover, young Christians are more accustomed than their parents to life outside the official church. The notion that a pastor would need official approval in order to preach puzzles Ma Junyan, a 25-year-old singer in the troupe.
"Jesus tells us to preach to everyone, so they all can follow his words,' she said.
"He never said, "You have to have this certificate in order to preach.' I disagree with that practice. Why follow people, not God?"
Subject: Fw: Parallel Diplomacy: Beijing Courts the Aga Khan in Paris
> A free-hand English gist of the earlier French article.
>
> The tension increases as the Olympics approach. But China
> had anticipated possible social unrest and had sent, in
> secret, a delegation of Chinese Ismaili [government]
> officials from the Uyghur [Xinjiang] Autonomous Region to
> visit the Spiritual Leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims in
> France to calm the waters.
>
> In the Spring of 2008, a delegation of Chinese Ismaili
> [government] officials of the Autonomous Uyghur Region of
> Xinjiang (north-west), where unrest seems to be taking
> place, visited France to meet the Spiritual Head of the Shia
> Ismaili Muslims. What did they ask of the Aga Khan IV, a
> respected personage in the sphere of parallel diplomacy?
> This is a genuine first for Beijing.
>
> The [Chinese] Delegation evoked much pleasant surprise by
> the abundance of gifts they brought for the Aga Khan and his
> entourage. This diplomacy of gift-giving practiced by
> Beijing undoubtedly proves the importance of this
> last-minute visit.
>
> But the Chinese did not come to see just anyone. Grandson
> of [Sir] Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, who once Chaired the
> League of Nations, the current Aga Khan is the Chairman of
> the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan Development
> Network, a group of Agencies dedicated to assisting
> disadvantaged communities in the field of education and
> health. But also because of his influence in diplomatic
> affairs. Since July 2000, he presides over the l'Academie
> Diplomatique Internationale (ADI) founded in Paris in 1926.
> The Secretary General of the ADI is none other than
> Jean-Claude Cousseran, the former boss of the DGSE [French
> Foreign Intelligence Agency]. Their first initiative was to
> create a "Forum for a New Diplomacy" in
> partnership with the
> International Herald Tribune, "Cousseran said in his
> welcome message.
> A free-hand English gist of the earlier French article.
>
> The tension increases as the Olympics approach. But China
> had anticipated possible social unrest and had sent, in
> secret, a delegation of Chinese Ismaili [government]
> officials from the Uyghur [Xinjiang] Autonomous Region to
> visit the Spiritual Leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims in
> France to calm the waters.
>
> In the Spring of 2008, a delegation of Chinese Ismaili
> [government] officials of the Autonomous Uyghur Region of
> Xinjiang (north-west), where unrest seems to be taking
> place, visited France to meet the Spiritual Head of the Shia
> Ismaili Muslims. What did they ask of the Aga Khan IV, a
> respected personage in the sphere of parallel diplomacy?
> This is a genuine first for Beijing.
>
> The [Chinese] Delegation evoked much pleasant surprise by
> the abundance of gifts they brought for the Aga Khan and his
> entourage. This diplomacy of gift-giving practiced by
> Beijing undoubtedly proves the importance of this
> last-minute visit.
>
> But the Chinese did not come to see just anyone. Grandson
> of [Sir] Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, who once Chaired the
> League of Nations, the current Aga Khan is the Chairman of
> the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan Development
> Network, a group of Agencies dedicated to assisting
> disadvantaged communities in the field of education and
> health. But also because of his influence in diplomatic
> affairs. Since July 2000, he presides over the l'Academie
> Diplomatique Internationale (ADI) founded in Paris in 1926.
> The Secretary General of the ADI is none other than
> Jean-Claude Cousseran, the former boss of the DGSE [French
> Foreign Intelligence Agency]. Their first initiative was to
> create a "Forum for a New Diplomacy" in
> partnership with the
> International Herald Tribune, "Cousseran said in his
> welcome message.
October 19, 2008
Wary of Islam, China Tightens a Vise of Rules
By EDWARD WONG
KHOTAN, China — The grand mosque that draws thousands of Muslims
each week in this oasis town has all the usual trappings of piety:
dusty wool carpets on which to kneel in prayer, a row of turbans and
skullcaps for men without headwear, a wall niche facing the holy
city of Mecca in the Arabian desert.
But large signs posted by the front door list edicts that are more
Communist Party decrees than Koranic doctrines.
The imam's sermon at Friday Prayer must run no longer than a half-
hour, the rules say. Prayer in public areas outside the mosque is
forbidden. Residents of Khotan are not allowed to worship at mosques
outside of town.
One rule on the wall says that government workers and nonreligious
people may not be "forced" to attend services at the mosque — a
generous wording of a law that prohibits government workers and
Communist Party members from going at all.
"Of course this makes people angry," said a teacher in the mosque
courtyard, who would give only a partial name, Muhammad, for fear of
government retribution. "Excitable people think the government is
wrong in what it does. They say that government officials who are
Muslims should also be allowed to pray."
To be a practicing Muslim in the vast autonomous region of
northwestern China called Xinjiang is to live under an intricate
series of laws and regulations intended to control the spread and
practice of Islam, the predominant religion among the Uighurs, a
Turkic people uneasy with Chinese rule.
The edicts touch on every facet of a Muslim's way of life. Official
versions of the Koran are the only legal ones. Imams may not teach
the Koran in private, and studying Arabic is allowed only at special
government schools.
Two of Islam's five pillars — the sacred fasting month of Ramadan
and the pilgrimage to Mecca called the hajj — are also carefully
controlled. Students and government workers are compelled to eat
during Ramadan, and the passports of Uighurs have been confiscated
across Xinjiang to force them to join government-run hajj tours
rather than travel illegally to Mecca on their own.
Government workers are not permitted to practice Islam, which means
the slightest sign of devotion, a head scarf on a woman, for
example, could lead to a firing.
The Chinese government, which is officially atheist, recognizes five
religions — Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism and Buddhism —
and tightly regulates their administration and practice. Its
oversight in Xinjiang, though, is especially vigilant because it
worries about separatist activity in the region.
Some officials contend that insurgent groups in Xinjiang pose one of
the biggest security threats to China, and the government says
the "three forces" of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism
threaten to destabilize the region. But outside scholars of Xinjiang
and terrorism experts argue that heavy-handed tactics like the
restrictions on Islam will only radicalize more Uighurs.
Many of the rules have been on the books for years, but some local
governments in Xinjiang have publicly highlighted them in the past
seven weeks by posting the laws on Web sites or hanging banners in
towns.
Those moves coincided with Ramadan, which ran from September to
early October, and came on the heels of a series of attacks in
August that left at least 22 security officers and one civilian
dead, according to official reports. The deadliest attack was a
murky ambush in Kashgar that witnesses said involved men in police
uniforms fighting each other.
The attacks were the biggest wave of violence in Xinjiang since the
1990s. In recent months, Wang Lequan, the long-serving party
secretary of Xinjiang, and Nuer Baikeli, the chairman of the region,
have given hard-line speeches indicating that a crackdown will soon
begin.
Mr. Wang said the government was engaged in a "life or death"
struggle in Xinjiang. Mr. Baikeli signaled that government control
of religious activities would tighten, asserting that "the religious
issue has been the barometer of stability in Xinjiang."
Anti-China forces in the West and separatist forces are trying to
carry out "illegal religious activities and agitate religious
fever," he said, and "the field of religion has become an
increasingly important battlefield against enemies."
Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, accounting for 46
percent of the population of 19 million. Many say Han Chinese, the
country's dominant ethnic group, discriminate against them based on
the most obvious differences between the groups: language and
religion.
The Uighurs began adopting Sunni Islam in the 10th century, although
patterns of belief vary widely, and the religion has enjoyed a surge
of popularity after the harshest decades of Communist rule.
According to government statistics, there are 24,000 mosques and
29,000 religious leaders in Xinjiang. Muslim piety is especially
strong in old Silk Road towns in the south like Kashgar, Yarkand and
Khotan.
Many Han Chinese see Islam as the root of social problems in
Xinjiang.
"The Uighurs are lazy," said a man who runs a construction business
in Kashgar and would give only his last name, Zhao, because of the
political delicacy of the topic.
"It's because of their religion," he said. "They spend so much time
praying. What are they praying for?"
The government restrictions are posted inside mosques and elsewhere
across Xinjiang. In particular, officials take great pains to
publicize the law prohibiting Muslims from arranging their own trips
for the hajj. Signs painted on mud-brick walls in the winding
alleyways of old Kashgar warn against making illegal pilgrimages. A
red banner hanging on a large mosque in the Uighur area of Urumqi,
the regional capital, says, "Implement the policy of organized and
planned pilgrimage; individual pilgrimage is forbidden."
As dozens of worshipers streamed into the mosque for prayer on a
recent evening, one Uighur man pointed to the sign and shook his
head. "We didn't write that," he said in broken Chinese. "They wrote
that."
He turned his finger to a white neon sign above the building that
simply said "mosque" in Arabic script. "We wrote that," he said.
Like other Uighurs interviewed for this article, he agreed to speak
on the condition that his name not be used for fear of retribution
by the authorities.
The government gives various reasons for controlling the hajj.
Officials say that the Saudi Arabian government is concerned about
crowded conditions in Mecca that have led to fatal tramplings, and
that Muslims who leave China on their own sometimes spend too much
money on the pilgrimage.
Critics say the government is trying to restrict the movements of
Uighurs and prevent them from coming into contact with other
Muslims, fearing that such exchanges could build a pan-Islamic
identity in Xinjiang.
About two years ago, the government began confiscating the passports
of Uighurs across the region, angering many people here. Now
virtually no Uighurs have passports, though they can apply for them
for short trips. The new restriction has made life especially
difficult for businessmen who travel to neighboring countries.
To get a passport to go on an official hajj tour or a business trip,
applicants must leave a deposit of nearly $6,000.
One man in Kashgar said the imam at his mosque, who like all
official imams is paid by the government, had recently been urging
congregants to go to Mecca only with legal tours.
That is not easy for many Uighurs. The cost of an official trip is
the equivalent of $3,700, and hefty bribes usually raise the price.
Once a person files an application, the authorities do a background
check into the family. If the applicant has children, the children
must be old enough to be financially self-sufficient, and the
applicant is required to show that he or she has substantial savings
in the bank. Officials say these conditions ensure that a hajj trip
will not leave the family impoverished.
Rules posted last year on the Xinjiang government's Web site say the
applicant must be 50 to 70 years old, "love the country and obey the
law."
The number of applicants far outnumbers the slots available each
year, and the wait is at least a year. But the government has been
raising the cap. Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that from
2006 to 2007, more than 3,100 Muslims from Xinjiang went on the
official hajj, up from 2,000 the previous year.
One young Uighur man in Kashgar said his parents were pushing their
children to get married soon so they could prove the children were
financially independent, thus allowing them to qualify to go on the
hajj. "Their greatest wish is to go to Mecca once," the man, who
wished to be identified only as Abdullah, said over dinner.
But the family has to weigh another factor: the father, now retired,
was once a government employee and a Communist Party member, so he
might very well lose his pension if he went on the hajj, Abdullah
said.
The rules on fasting during Ramadan are just as strict. Several
local governments began posting the regulations on their Web sites
last month. They vary by town and county but include requiring
restaurants to stay open during daylight hours and mandating that
women not wear veils and men shave their beards.
Enforcement can be haphazard. In Kashgar, many Uighur restaurants
remained closed during the fasting hours. "The religion is too
strong in Kashgar," said one man. "There are rules, but people don't
follow them."
One rule that officials in some towns seem especially intent on
enforcing is the ban on students' fasting. Supporters of this policy
say students need to eat to study properly.
The local university in Kashgar adheres to the policy. Starting last
year, it tried to force students to eat during the day by
prohibiting them from leaving campus in the evening to join their
families in breaking the daily fast. Residents of Kashgar say the
university locked the gates and put glass shards along the top of a
campus wall.
After a few weeks, the school built a higher wall.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
Wary of Islam, China Tightens a Vise of Rules
By EDWARD WONG
KHOTAN, China — The grand mosque that draws thousands of Muslims
each week in this oasis town has all the usual trappings of piety:
dusty wool carpets on which to kneel in prayer, a row of turbans and
skullcaps for men without headwear, a wall niche facing the holy
city of Mecca in the Arabian desert.
But large signs posted by the front door list edicts that are more
Communist Party decrees than Koranic doctrines.
The imam's sermon at Friday Prayer must run no longer than a half-
hour, the rules say. Prayer in public areas outside the mosque is
forbidden. Residents of Khotan are not allowed to worship at mosques
outside of town.
One rule on the wall says that government workers and nonreligious
people may not be "forced" to attend services at the mosque — a
generous wording of a law that prohibits government workers and
Communist Party members from going at all.
"Of course this makes people angry," said a teacher in the mosque
courtyard, who would give only a partial name, Muhammad, for fear of
government retribution. "Excitable people think the government is
wrong in what it does. They say that government officials who are
Muslims should also be allowed to pray."
To be a practicing Muslim in the vast autonomous region of
northwestern China called Xinjiang is to live under an intricate
series of laws and regulations intended to control the spread and
practice of Islam, the predominant religion among the Uighurs, a
Turkic people uneasy with Chinese rule.
The edicts touch on every facet of a Muslim's way of life. Official
versions of the Koran are the only legal ones. Imams may not teach
the Koran in private, and studying Arabic is allowed only at special
government schools.
Two of Islam's five pillars — the sacred fasting month of Ramadan
and the pilgrimage to Mecca called the hajj — are also carefully
controlled. Students and government workers are compelled to eat
during Ramadan, and the passports of Uighurs have been confiscated
across Xinjiang to force them to join government-run hajj tours
rather than travel illegally to Mecca on their own.
Government workers are not permitted to practice Islam, which means
the slightest sign of devotion, a head scarf on a woman, for
example, could lead to a firing.
The Chinese government, which is officially atheist, recognizes five
religions — Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism and Buddhism —
and tightly regulates their administration and practice. Its
oversight in Xinjiang, though, is especially vigilant because it
worries about separatist activity in the region.
Some officials contend that insurgent groups in Xinjiang pose one of
the biggest security threats to China, and the government says
the "three forces" of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism
threaten to destabilize the region. But outside scholars of Xinjiang
and terrorism experts argue that heavy-handed tactics like the
restrictions on Islam will only radicalize more Uighurs.
Many of the rules have been on the books for years, but some local
governments in Xinjiang have publicly highlighted them in the past
seven weeks by posting the laws on Web sites or hanging banners in
towns.
Those moves coincided with Ramadan, which ran from September to
early October, and came on the heels of a series of attacks in
August that left at least 22 security officers and one civilian
dead, according to official reports. The deadliest attack was a
murky ambush in Kashgar that witnesses said involved men in police
uniforms fighting each other.
The attacks were the biggest wave of violence in Xinjiang since the
1990s. In recent months, Wang Lequan, the long-serving party
secretary of Xinjiang, and Nuer Baikeli, the chairman of the region,
have given hard-line speeches indicating that a crackdown will soon
begin.
Mr. Wang said the government was engaged in a "life or death"
struggle in Xinjiang. Mr. Baikeli signaled that government control
of religious activities would tighten, asserting that "the religious
issue has been the barometer of stability in Xinjiang."
Anti-China forces in the West and separatist forces are trying to
carry out "illegal religious activities and agitate religious
fever," he said, and "the field of religion has become an
increasingly important battlefield against enemies."
Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, accounting for 46
percent of the population of 19 million. Many say Han Chinese, the
country's dominant ethnic group, discriminate against them based on
the most obvious differences between the groups: language and
religion.
The Uighurs began adopting Sunni Islam in the 10th century, although
patterns of belief vary widely, and the religion has enjoyed a surge
of popularity after the harshest decades of Communist rule.
According to government statistics, there are 24,000 mosques and
29,000 religious leaders in Xinjiang. Muslim piety is especially
strong in old Silk Road towns in the south like Kashgar, Yarkand and
Khotan.
Many Han Chinese see Islam as the root of social problems in
Xinjiang.
"The Uighurs are lazy," said a man who runs a construction business
in Kashgar and would give only his last name, Zhao, because of the
political delicacy of the topic.
"It's because of their religion," he said. "They spend so much time
praying. What are they praying for?"
The government restrictions are posted inside mosques and elsewhere
across Xinjiang. In particular, officials take great pains to
publicize the law prohibiting Muslims from arranging their own trips
for the hajj. Signs painted on mud-brick walls in the winding
alleyways of old Kashgar warn against making illegal pilgrimages. A
red banner hanging on a large mosque in the Uighur area of Urumqi,
the regional capital, says, "Implement the policy of organized and
planned pilgrimage; individual pilgrimage is forbidden."
As dozens of worshipers streamed into the mosque for prayer on a
recent evening, one Uighur man pointed to the sign and shook his
head. "We didn't write that," he said in broken Chinese. "They wrote
that."
He turned his finger to a white neon sign above the building that
simply said "mosque" in Arabic script. "We wrote that," he said.
Like other Uighurs interviewed for this article, he agreed to speak
on the condition that his name not be used for fear of retribution
by the authorities.
The government gives various reasons for controlling the hajj.
Officials say that the Saudi Arabian government is concerned about
crowded conditions in Mecca that have led to fatal tramplings, and
that Muslims who leave China on their own sometimes spend too much
money on the pilgrimage.
Critics say the government is trying to restrict the movements of
Uighurs and prevent them from coming into contact with other
Muslims, fearing that such exchanges could build a pan-Islamic
identity in Xinjiang.
About two years ago, the government began confiscating the passports
of Uighurs across the region, angering many people here. Now
virtually no Uighurs have passports, though they can apply for them
for short trips. The new restriction has made life especially
difficult for businessmen who travel to neighboring countries.
To get a passport to go on an official hajj tour or a business trip,
applicants must leave a deposit of nearly $6,000.
One man in Kashgar said the imam at his mosque, who like all
official imams is paid by the government, had recently been urging
congregants to go to Mecca only with legal tours.
That is not easy for many Uighurs. The cost of an official trip is
the equivalent of $3,700, and hefty bribes usually raise the price.
Once a person files an application, the authorities do a background
check into the family. If the applicant has children, the children
must be old enough to be financially self-sufficient, and the
applicant is required to show that he or she has substantial savings
in the bank. Officials say these conditions ensure that a hajj trip
will not leave the family impoverished.
Rules posted last year on the Xinjiang government's Web site say the
applicant must be 50 to 70 years old, "love the country and obey the
law."
The number of applicants far outnumbers the slots available each
year, and the wait is at least a year. But the government has been
raising the cap. Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that from
2006 to 2007, more than 3,100 Muslims from Xinjiang went on the
official hajj, up from 2,000 the previous year.
One young Uighur man in Kashgar said his parents were pushing their
children to get married soon so they could prove the children were
financially independent, thus allowing them to qualify to go on the
hajj. "Their greatest wish is to go to Mecca once," the man, who
wished to be identified only as Abdullah, said over dinner.
But the family has to weigh another factor: the father, now retired,
was once a government employee and a Communist Party member, so he
might very well lose his pension if he went on the hajj, Abdullah
said.
The rules on fasting during Ramadan are just as strict. Several
local governments began posting the regulations on their Web sites
last month. They vary by town and county but include requiring
restaurants to stay open during daylight hours and mandating that
women not wear veils and men shave their beards.
Enforcement can be haphazard. In Kashgar, many Uighur restaurants
remained closed during the fasting hours. "The religion is too
strong in Kashgar," said one man. "There are rules, but people don't
follow them."
One rule that officials in some towns seem especially intent on
enforcing is the ban on students' fasting. Supporters of this policy
say students need to eat to study properly.
The local university in Kashgar adheres to the policy. Starting last
year, it tried to force students to eat during the day by
prohibiting them from leaving campus in the evening to join their
families in breaking the daily fast. Residents of Kashgar say the
university locked the gates and put glass shards along the top of a
campus wall.
After a few weeks, the school built a higher wall.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
Aga Khan referes to Ismailis in China
Are there other references besides this one to Ismailis of China in the sayings of the present or past Imams? [Except the reference in the Memoirs of Mowlana Sultan Muhammad Shah]
Sixty years ago as I took up my responsibilities, the problems of the developing world, for many observers, seemed intractable. It was widely claimed that places like China and India were destined to remain among the world’s “basket cases” — incapable of feeding themselves let alone being able to industrialize or achieve economic self-sustainability. If this had been true, of course, then there would have been no way for the people of my community, in India and China and in many other places, to look for a better future.
Aga Khan.
Nov. 12, 2015 Jodidi speech at Harvard. Boston, USA.
Sixty years ago as I took up my responsibilities, the problems of the developing world, for many observers, seemed intractable. It was widely claimed that places like China and India were destined to remain among the world’s “basket cases” — incapable of feeding themselves let alone being able to industrialize or achieve economic self-sustainability. If this had been true, of course, then there would have been no way for the people of my community, in India and China and in many other places, to look for a better future.
Aga Khan.
Nov. 12, 2015 Jodidi speech at Harvard. Boston, USA.
Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown
KASHGAR, China — Families sundered by a wave of detentions. Mosques barred from broadcasting the call to prayer. Restrictions on the movements of laborers that have wreaked havoc on local agriculture. And a battery of ever more intrusive ways to monitor the communications of citizens for possible threats to public security.
A recent 10-day journey across the Xinjiang region in the far west of China revealed a society seething with anger and trepidation as the government, alarmed by a slow-boil insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives, has introduced unprecedented measures aimed at shaping the behavior and beliefs of China’s 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that considers this region its homeland.
Driving these policies is the government’s view that tougher security and tighter restraints on the practice of Islam are the best way to stem a wave of violence that included a knife attack at a coal mine that killed dozens of people in September.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/world ... eslideshow
KASHGAR, China — Families sundered by a wave of detentions. Mosques barred from broadcasting the call to prayer. Restrictions on the movements of laborers that have wreaked havoc on local agriculture. And a battery of ever more intrusive ways to monitor the communications of citizens for possible threats to public security.
A recent 10-day journey across the Xinjiang region in the far west of China revealed a society seething with anger and trepidation as the government, alarmed by a slow-boil insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives, has introduced unprecedented measures aimed at shaping the behavior and beliefs of China’s 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that considers this region its homeland.
Driving these policies is the government’s view that tougher security and tighter restraints on the practice of Islam are the best way to stem a wave of violence that included a knife attack at a coal mine that killed dozens of people in September.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/world ... eslideshow
At the special ceremony to award MHI an honorary degree for his service to humanity, David Mulroney, President of the University of St Michael’s College and a former Canadian Ambassador to China, delivered the citation.
"President Mulroney concluded his remarks by recounting an experience from his time as Ambassador to China between 2009–12. Having learnt of the existence of an Ismaili community established the west of the country, he decided to travel to the Chinese city of Tashkurgan to meet them.
“It was a deeply moving experience, and one that resonated with me as a Catholic,” he recalled. “I met people of faith and hope and tremendous goodwill. They readily acknowledged the sorrow of being physically separated from their Ismaili brothers and sisters and from His Highness. But they displayed a profound and confident spiritual connection to their global community.”
“They possess a faith that refuses to be hemmed in or isolated by man-made barriers, a conviction that owes much to their very real and justified sense of being in communion with their spiritual leader.”"
https://www.theismaili.org/news-events/ ... ary-degree
"President Mulroney concluded his remarks by recounting an experience from his time as Ambassador to China between 2009–12. Having learnt of the existence of an Ismaili community established the west of the country, he decided to travel to the Chinese city of Tashkurgan to meet them.
“It was a deeply moving experience, and one that resonated with me as a Catholic,” he recalled. “I met people of faith and hope and tremendous goodwill. They readily acknowledged the sorrow of being physically separated from their Ismaili brothers and sisters and from His Highness. But they displayed a profound and confident spiritual connection to their global community.”
“They possess a faith that refuses to be hemmed in or isolated by man-made barriers, a conviction that owes much to their very real and justified sense of being in communion with their spiritual leader.”"
https://www.theismaili.org/news-events/ ... ary-degree
CHINA NEWS 100 MILLION Muslims in China - Islam is growing among Chinese
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=y ... pp=desktop
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=y ... pp=desktop
As received...
NICE TO KNOW ABOUT ISMAILIS IN CHINA
Ismailis living in Xinjiang China: There is about 60000 ismailis 54 jamatkhana Tashkurgan JK is located at 10,000 feet above sea level in the province of Xin Jiang, China. Actually every village has its own JK, but foreigners are not welcome--govt orders. Therefore, although the local Ismailis, who call themselves Tajik, visit everyday, it is kept locked when not in use. This town used to be entirely Ismaili when it was isolated for centuries, but now there are many Uyghurs and Han living, working and running businesses there. Ismaili women are easily identified by their hats with a cloth tied from the top and around the chin. If you see blond people, chances are that they would be Ismaili, because everybody else has black hair. They recite the same salwat as we do, and once a year the clans like to visit their own 'kabr'--burial ground or cemetery. They make a picnic of it and remember their dead and pray for them and greet and exchange news and catch up and contribute some food as well as take some home. A good meeting spot for Ismailies is a restaurant called ROOF OF THE WORLD, run by 4 Ismailis, two local and two from the northern areas of Pakistan. Pakistani men do come across the border, looking for opportunities to do business etc.
Love
Mona
NICE TO KNOW ABOUT ISMAILIS IN CHINA
Ismailis living in Xinjiang China: There is about 60000 ismailis 54 jamatkhana Tashkurgan JK is located at 10,000 feet above sea level in the province of Xin Jiang, China. Actually every village has its own JK, but foreigners are not welcome--govt orders. Therefore, although the local Ismailis, who call themselves Tajik, visit everyday, it is kept locked when not in use. This town used to be entirely Ismaili when it was isolated for centuries, but now there are many Uyghurs and Han living, working and running businesses there. Ismaili women are easily identified by their hats with a cloth tied from the top and around the chin. If you see blond people, chances are that they would be Ismaili, because everybody else has black hair. They recite the same salwat as we do, and once a year the clans like to visit their own 'kabr'--burial ground or cemetery. They make a picnic of it and remember their dead and pray for them and greet and exchange news and catch up and contribute some food as well as take some home. A good meeting spot for Ismailies is a restaurant called ROOF OF THE WORLD, run by 4 Ismailis, two local and two from the northern areas of Pakistan. Pakistani men do come across the border, looking for opportunities to do business etc.
Love
Mona
China Is Detaining Muslims in Vast Numbers. The Goal: ‘Transformation.’
HOTAN, China — On the edge of a desert in far western China, an imposing building sits behind a fence topped with barbed wire. Large red characters on the facade urge people to learn Chinese, study law and acquire job skills. Guards make clear that visitors are not welcome.
Inside, hundreds of ethnic Uighur Muslims spend their days in a high-pressure indoctrination program, where they are forced to listen to lectures, sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party and write “self-criticism” essays, according to detainees who have been released.
The goal is to remove any devotion to Islam.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/worl ... 3053090909
HOTAN, China — On the edge of a desert in far western China, an imposing building sits behind a fence topped with barbed wire. Large red characters on the facade urge people to learn Chinese, study law and acquire job skills. Guards make clear that visitors are not welcome.
Inside, hundreds of ethnic Uighur Muslims spend their days in a high-pressure indoctrination program, where they are forced to listen to lectures, sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party and write “self-criticism” essays, according to detainees who have been released.
The goal is to remove any devotion to Islam.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/worl ... 3053090909
The Leaders Who Unleashed China’s Mass Detention of Muslims
BEIJING — Rukiya Maimaiti, a local propaganda official in China’s far west, warned her colleagues to steel themselves for a wrenching task: detaining large numbers of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
The Chinese government wanted to purge the Xinjiang region of “extremist” ideas, she told her co-workers, and secular Uighurs like themselves had to support the campaign for the good of their people.
“Fully understand that this task is in order to save your relatives and your families,” wrote Ms. Maimaiti, a Communist Party functionary who works on the western edge of Xinjiang, in a message that was preserved online. “This is a special kind of education for a special time.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/worl ... 3053091014
BEIJING — Rukiya Maimaiti, a local propaganda official in China’s far west, warned her colleagues to steel themselves for a wrenching task: detaining large numbers of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
The Chinese government wanted to purge the Xinjiang region of “extremist” ideas, she told her co-workers, and secular Uighurs like themselves had to support the campaign for the good of their people.
“Fully understand that this task is in order to save your relatives and your families,” wrote Ms. Maimaiti, a Communist Party functionary who works on the western edge of Xinjiang, in a message that was preserved online. “This is a special kind of education for a special time.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/worl ... 3053091014
China Locks Up Ethnic Minorities in Camps. It Says So Itself.
NOTTINGHAM, England — “Citizens, please remain calm and relax, no one in the re-education camps will starve, be left in the cold, be punished or be forced to work.” With these words, an official from China’s Communist Youth League tried to reassure relatives and friends of members of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities who had been taken to internment centers. The detainees were “infected by an ideological illness,” the official said, and the camps would “cleanse the virus from their brain.”
When the speech was delivered in October 2017, the camps were unknown even to some of the people they targeted, the roughly 11 million ethnic Uighurs and one million Kazakhs of Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region in northwestern China. A year later, the network of indoctrination centers is widely known even outside China: first revealed by inmates’ families and then confirmed, perhaps unwittingly, by the government’s public call for bids on procurement contracts to build camp infrastructure — and now by an official justification of sorts.
A couple of weeks ago, the Xinjiang People’s Congress passed legislation that for the first time provides an explicit basis for the “transformation” of people influenced by “extremism” in “education institutions” through “ideological education, psychological counseling, behavioral correction, Chinese language training” and other programs. Last week, the chairman of Xinjiang’s government described the camps as air-conditioned boarding schools that offer cultural programs for people suspected of minor offenses to help them realize that “life can be so colorful.”
Yet former participants have described a system of forced detention and abuse, with military-style discipline, solitary confinement, beatings and in some cases torture.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opin ... dline&te=1
NOTTINGHAM, England — “Citizens, please remain calm and relax, no one in the re-education camps will starve, be left in the cold, be punished or be forced to work.” With these words, an official from China’s Communist Youth League tried to reassure relatives and friends of members of predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities who had been taken to internment centers. The detainees were “infected by an ideological illness,” the official said, and the camps would “cleanse the virus from their brain.”
When the speech was delivered in October 2017, the camps were unknown even to some of the people they targeted, the roughly 11 million ethnic Uighurs and one million Kazakhs of Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region in northwestern China. A year later, the network of indoctrination centers is widely known even outside China: first revealed by inmates’ families and then confirmed, perhaps unwittingly, by the government’s public call for bids on procurement contracts to build camp infrastructure — and now by an official justification of sorts.
A couple of weeks ago, the Xinjiang People’s Congress passed legislation that for the first time provides an explicit basis for the “transformation” of people influenced by “extremism” in “education institutions” through “ideological education, psychological counseling, behavioral correction, Chinese language training” and other programs. Last week, the chairman of Xinjiang’s government described the camps as air-conditioned boarding schools that offer cultural programs for people suspected of minor offenses to help them realize that “life can be so colorful.”
Yet former participants have described a system of forced detention and abuse, with military-style discipline, solitary confinement, beatings and in some cases torture.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opin ... dline&te=1
Nasir-i Khusraw initiated Ismailism in China
Posted by Nimira Dewji
Islam has a long history in China dating back to the seventh century when the earliest Muslim traders came to the south-eastern ports as part of the Indian Ocean trade as well as along the Silk Route. In 651, the Prophet’s maternal uncle Sa’ad b. Ali Waqqas (d. 674) led a mission to the court of the Tang Emperor Gaozon (r. 650-683). The emperor “endowed Islam with legitimacy by drawing parallels between Islamic thought and Confucius, and allowed Muslims to practise their faith within the Chinese empire” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 77). Several monuments such as the Great Mosque in the Tang capital Chang’an (present-day Xi’an) date to this early period.
Mosque of Xi'an China
Great Mosque of Xi’an, having undergone several restorations. Source: Archnet
Muslims of China are generally divided into two groups. The first group consists of descendants of Arab, Persian, and Mongol traders who married Chinese women and settled in small communities around a central mosque; they are known as the Hui.
The second group consists of Muslims belonging to minority communities whose homelands are located in the territories of the former Soviet Union, such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and Kazakhs. They are predominantly Sunnis with the exception of the Tajiks in Xinjiang region (officially Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region), the westernmost part of the country, who follow the Shia Ismaili interpretation of Islam. Xinjiang was once the hub of the Silk Road and the region through which Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam entered China. Sufism also has a long history in China since the seventeenth century and has played an important role in sustaining Islam for many centuries.
China
Although the history of the Ismaili tradition in Xinjiang is obscure, the religious rituals open to observation as well as the Persian language texts that are referenced confirm their origin in the tradition of Nasir-i Khusraw (d. ca. 1077), suggesting a history stretching over a millennium.
Nasir-i Khusraw led a mission into the region with four of his close disciples, namely Sayyid Hassan Zarrabi, Sayyid Surab Wali, Sayyid Jalal Bukhari, and Jahan Malikshah. He instructed them to settle down and continue the Ismaili da’wa among the new converts. Many pirs in Xinjiang claim descent from those early Ismaili preachers.
The first jamatkhana was built in Tashkorgan around the end of the nineteenth century with the help of an official envoy from Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. “The name of the envoy is unclear. Some suggest it was Samad Shah, the British agent in Tashkorghan, while others think it was Pir Sabzali, the envoy sent to Xinjiang by Sultan Muhammad Shah in the 1920s” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 92 n 17).
The few existing written communications “from an Imam addressed to the Ismaili community in Xinjiang province were the farmans of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. The last of such farmans, nominating five mukhis in Xinjiang, was received in 1948, just before the closing of the border by the Chinese” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 81).
The government “kept religious institutions closed for over three decades, only allowing some limited practices to resume after the death of Chairman Mao [d. 1976]. By the early 1980s the regime had rectified its past intolerant attitude towards religion by removing the outright ban on all religious practices … During the short-lived period of leniency, many damaged and appropriated places of worship were repaired and restored to their original purpose. The state even initiated various restoration projects, and many abandoned jama’atkhanas benefited from this opportunity, with the result that the number of functioning jama’atkhanas increased to over 40, although the number of worshippers attending religious congregations barely increased in the same period” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 83).
Mawlana Hazar Imam is the only known Ismaili Imam to have visited Xinjiang province.
Aga Khan X'ian China
Mawlana Hazar Imam with the Imam of the X’ian Mosque, China, 1981. Photo: 25 Years in Pictures, Islamic Publications Ltd, London
Aga Khan Great Wall China
Mawlana Hazar Imam at the Great Wall of China in October 1981. Photo: AKDN/Gary Otte
Sources:
Amier Saidula, “The Nizari Ismailis of China in Modern Times,” A Modern History of the Ismailis Edited by Farhad Daftary, I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, 2011
Michael Dillion “Islam in China,” The Muslim Almanac, Gale Research Inc. Detroit, 1996
Photos of MHI in China
nimirasblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/21/nasir-i-khusraw-initiated-ismailism-in-china/
Posted by Nimira Dewji
Islam has a long history in China dating back to the seventh century when the earliest Muslim traders came to the south-eastern ports as part of the Indian Ocean trade as well as along the Silk Route. In 651, the Prophet’s maternal uncle Sa’ad b. Ali Waqqas (d. 674) led a mission to the court of the Tang Emperor Gaozon (r. 650-683). The emperor “endowed Islam with legitimacy by drawing parallels between Islamic thought and Confucius, and allowed Muslims to practise their faith within the Chinese empire” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 77). Several monuments such as the Great Mosque in the Tang capital Chang’an (present-day Xi’an) date to this early period.
Mosque of Xi'an China
Great Mosque of Xi’an, having undergone several restorations. Source: Archnet
Muslims of China are generally divided into two groups. The first group consists of descendants of Arab, Persian, and Mongol traders who married Chinese women and settled in small communities around a central mosque; they are known as the Hui.
The second group consists of Muslims belonging to minority communities whose homelands are located in the territories of the former Soviet Union, such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and Kazakhs. They are predominantly Sunnis with the exception of the Tajiks in Xinjiang region (officially Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region), the westernmost part of the country, who follow the Shia Ismaili interpretation of Islam. Xinjiang was once the hub of the Silk Road and the region through which Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam entered China. Sufism also has a long history in China since the seventeenth century and has played an important role in sustaining Islam for many centuries.
China
Although the history of the Ismaili tradition in Xinjiang is obscure, the religious rituals open to observation as well as the Persian language texts that are referenced confirm their origin in the tradition of Nasir-i Khusraw (d. ca. 1077), suggesting a history stretching over a millennium.
Nasir-i Khusraw led a mission into the region with four of his close disciples, namely Sayyid Hassan Zarrabi, Sayyid Surab Wali, Sayyid Jalal Bukhari, and Jahan Malikshah. He instructed them to settle down and continue the Ismaili da’wa among the new converts. Many pirs in Xinjiang claim descent from those early Ismaili preachers.
The first jamatkhana was built in Tashkorgan around the end of the nineteenth century with the help of an official envoy from Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. “The name of the envoy is unclear. Some suggest it was Samad Shah, the British agent in Tashkorghan, while others think it was Pir Sabzali, the envoy sent to Xinjiang by Sultan Muhammad Shah in the 1920s” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 92 n 17).
The few existing written communications “from an Imam addressed to the Ismaili community in Xinjiang province were the farmans of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. The last of such farmans, nominating five mukhis in Xinjiang, was received in 1948, just before the closing of the border by the Chinese” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 81).
The government “kept religious institutions closed for over three decades, only allowing some limited practices to resume after the death of Chairman Mao [d. 1976]. By the early 1980s the regime had rectified its past intolerant attitude towards religion by removing the outright ban on all religious practices … During the short-lived period of leniency, many damaged and appropriated places of worship were repaired and restored to their original purpose. The state even initiated various restoration projects, and many abandoned jama’atkhanas benefited from this opportunity, with the result that the number of functioning jama’atkhanas increased to over 40, although the number of worshippers attending religious congregations barely increased in the same period” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 83).
Mawlana Hazar Imam is the only known Ismaili Imam to have visited Xinjiang province.
Aga Khan X'ian China
Mawlana Hazar Imam with the Imam of the X’ian Mosque, China, 1981. Photo: 25 Years in Pictures, Islamic Publications Ltd, London
Aga Khan Great Wall China
Mawlana Hazar Imam at the Great Wall of China in October 1981. Photo: AKDN/Gary Otte
Sources:
Amier Saidula, “The Nizari Ismailis of China in Modern Times,” A Modern History of the Ismailis Edited by Farhad Daftary, I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, 2011
Michael Dillion “Islam in China,” The Muslim Almanac, Gale Research Inc. Detroit, 1996
Photos of MHI in China
nimirasblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/21/nasir-i-khusraw-initiated-ismailism-in-china/
Last edited by kmaherali on Thu Feb 10, 2022 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Ismailies in china
Nasir-i Khusraw and his disciples spread Ismailism to China
BY NIMIRA DEWJI POSTED ON FEBRUARY 9, 2022
Islam has a long history in the People’s Republic of China, dating to the seventh century. The earliest Muslims in China were traders who came to the south eastern ports as part of the Indian Ocean trade as well as along the Silk Route, an ancient network of routes stretching for over six thousand miles from China across Central Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Similar to the World Wide Web, the Silk Route connected diverse communities across long distances for centuries, exchanging commodities as well as music, poetry, and art, resulting in an incredible blend of cultures.
After the spread of the Islamic dynastic empires, a large-scale network of shipping facilitated the travel of goods between east and west. Chinese porcelains, textiles, and high-quality paper were shipped from China while glass, spices, and minerals were imported into China; artistic styles and craftsmen also travelled widely.
The interconnections between the Chinese and Muslim empires and evidence of the maritime routes are confirmed by the lost dhow found in 1998 at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The lost Arab ship, also termed as The Belitung wreck – because it was discovered off Belitung Island, Indonesia – had its complete cargo of more than 50,000 domestic and luxury items including spice-filled jars, vessels of silver and gold, and ceramic bowls and ewers. Luxury items from China were in great demand, particularly items made during the Tang dynasty (618-906), ranked as the classical period of Chinese art and literature.
An extremely rare dish, one of three found in the Belitung wreck . They are believed to be the earliest known complete Chinese blue-and-white ceramics, ca 825. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery/The New York Times
The travelogue of Ma Fuchu (d. 1874), a prominent Muslim scholar, attests to the several trade networks that existed between China and the Islamic regions. In this travelogue, Chaom Jin Tu Ji (‘Record of the Pilgrimage Journey’) he recounts his journey to Mecca and subsequent travel to Cairo, where he studied at the Al-Azhar (founded by the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Mu’izz in 969), before returning home. Ma Fuchu, a remarkable Hui scholar, is well-known for his five-volume translation of the Qur’an into Chinese, and for writing over thirty-five works on metaphysics and history in Chinese and Arabic.
Travelogue of Ma Fuchu titled Chao Jin Tu Ji. Image: Aga Khan Museum
Muslims of China are broadly divided into two groups. The first group consists of descendants of Arab, Persian, Central Asian, and Mongol traders who married Chinese women and settled in small communities around a central mosque; they are known as the Hui. Culturally diverse, the largest concentration of Hui can be found in north-western China.
The second group consists of Muslims belonging to minority communities whose homelands are located in the territories of the former Soviet Union, such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and Kazakhs. They are predominantly Sunnis with the exception of the Tajiks in Xinjiang region (officially Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region), the westernmost part of the country, who follow the Shia Ismaili interpretation of Islam. Xinjiang was once the hub of the Silk Road and the region through which Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam entered China. Sufism also has a long history in China since the seventeenth century and has played an important role in sustaining Islam for many centuries.
Map Wikipedia
The earliest mosques
The first mosques in China were established in the coastal ports in the seventh century by Sa’d bin Abi Waqqas, the maternal uncle of the Prophet, and several of his companions. Abi Waqqas, who visited China around 632, is said to have asked permission from the Tang Emperor for mosques to be built in Xian, Guangzhou, and Jianning (present day Nanjing). The Great Mosque of Guangzhou, known also as Huaisheng Mosque (Memorial of the Holy Prophet), is believed to be the earliest surviving mosque in China.
Great Mosque of Xiang. Image: Archnet
The Great Mosque of Xi’an is thought to have existed as early as the seventh century although the mosque that stands today was begun in 1392 during the reign of the Ming Dynasty. It was founded by the naval admiral Cheng Ho (d. 1433), the son of a prestigious Muslim family and responsible for clearing the China Sea of pirates. Since the fourteenth century, the mosque has undergone numerous reconstructions; most of the buildings that exist today are from the Ming and Qing Dynasties of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Great Mosque of Xi’an is the largest and best preserved of the early mosques of China (Archnet).
A form of Arabic script unique to China had been developed, known as Sini, which simply means Chinese. Although this word can be used to describe any distinctly Chinese forms of Arabic script, Chinese calligraphers argue that it refers to a rounded, flowing script, often with great variation between thick and thin strokes, which is ultimately descended from thuluth.
Chinese Qur’an Anthology, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Image: Aga Khan Museum
As a script it is often used for striking set pieces, such as the calligraphic phrase Subhan Allah (‘Glorious is God’) seen on the right hand page of the above manuscript, rather than for long texts. The adaptation of symbols common to Chinese art and culture is also evident in their decoration, such as the round good luck symbol embedded into the middle of the star illumination on the opposite page (Arts of the Book & Calligraphy, Aga Khan Trust for Culture, p 183).
Ismailism
Although the history of the Ismaili tradition in Xinjiang is obscure, the religious rituals open to observation as well as the Persian language texts that are referenced confirm their origin in the tradition of Nasir-i Khusraw (d. ca. 1077), suggesting a history stretching over a millennium.
According to popular legends, “Nasir-i Khusraw led a mission into the region with four of his close disciples, namely Sayyid Hassan Zarrabi, Sayyid Surab Wali, Sayyid Jalal Bukhari, and Jahan Malikshah. He instructed them to settle down and continue the Ismaili da’wa among the new converts” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 77). Many pirs in Xinjiang claim descent from those early Ismaili preachers.
The first jamatkhana was built in Tashkorgan around the end of the nineteenth century with the help of an official envoy from Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. “The name of the envoy is unclear. Some suggest it was Samad Shah, the British agent in Tashkorghan, while others think it was Pir Sabzali, the envoy sent to Xinjiang by Sultan Muhammad Shah in the 1920s” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 92 n 17).
[Tashkorgan was a major stop on the Silk Road where caravan routes converged leading to Kashgar in the north, Yecheng to the east, Badakhshan and Wakhan to the west, and Chitral and Hunza to the southwest, in Pakistan].
The few existing written communications “from an Imam addressed to the Ismaili community in Xinjiang province were the farmans of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. The last of such farmans, nominating five mukhis in Xinjiang, was received in 1948, just before the closing of the border by the Chinese” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 81).
The government “kept religious institutions closed for over three decades, only allowing some limited practices to resume after the death of Chairman Mao [d. 1976]. By the early 1980s the regime had rectified its past intolerant attitude towards religion by removing the outright ban on all religious practices … During the short-lived period of leniency, many damaged and appropriated places of worship were repaired and restored to their original purpose. The state even initiated various restoration projects, and many abandoned jama’atkhanas benefitted from this opportunity, with the result that the number of functioning jama’atkhanas increased to over 40, although the number of worshippers attending religious congregations barely increased in the same period” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 83).
Mawlana Hazar Imam is the only known Ismaili Imam to have officially visited Xinjiang province. He first visited China in 1981 to preside over the sixth seminar of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture held in Beijing October 19-22.
Mawlana Hazar Imam with the imam of the Xi’an Mosque, China, 1981. Image: 25 Years in Pictures, Islamic Publications Ltd, London
His Highness the Aga Khan on the Great Wall while in China
Mawlana Hazar Imam on the Great Wall of China, October 1981. Image: AKDN/Gary Otte
In 2012, Mawlana Hazar Imam paid an official visit to Urumxi, at the invitation of the Governor of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, to discuss collaboration between the Aga Khan Development Network and the Government of Xinjiang.
Mawlana Hazar Imam, Governor Nur Bekri, members of the government of Xinjiang, and members of the Aga Khan Development Network delegation. Image: Xinjiang Foreign Affairs Office
Hazar Imam delivered the keynote address at a UNESCO conference in Hangzhou in 2013.
Mawlana Hazar Imam delivered the keynote address at the Hangzhou International Congress “Culture: Key to Sustainable Development” organised by UNESCO, the People’s Republic of China and the Hangzhou Municipal Government. Image: Katharina Hesse/AKDN
During the Diamond Jubilee Darbar in Paris, France, on June 23, 2018, Mawlana Hazar Imam was gifted a fifteenth-century manuscript transcribed by Rashad ibn ‘Ali al-Sini, one of the earliest copies of the Qur’an to have been written in Khanbaliq (modern-day Beijing), China. A Qur’an section signed by Rashad ibn ‘Ali al-Sini, copied in modern-day Beijing, dated 1401.
Sources:
Michael Dillion “Islam in China” The Muslim Almanac. Detroit: Gale Research Inc. 1996
Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop Ancient Arab Shipwreck Yields Secrets of Ninth-Century Trade, The New York Times
Department of Asian Art. “Tang Dynasty (618–906),” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Islam in China, The David Collection
Record of the Pilgrimage (Chao jin ti ji), Aga Khan Museum
Contributed to Ismailimail by Nimira Dewji. Nimira is an invited writer although she has contributed several articles in the past (view previous articles). She also has her own blog – Nimirasblog – where she writes short articles on Ismaili history and Muslim civilisations. When not researching and writing, Nimira volunteers at a shelter for the unhoused, and at a women’s shelter. She can be reached at [email protected].
ismailimail.blog/2022/02/09/nasir-i-khusraw-and-his-disciples-spread-ismailism-to-china/
BY NIMIRA DEWJI POSTED ON FEBRUARY 9, 2022
Islam has a long history in the People’s Republic of China, dating to the seventh century. The earliest Muslims in China were traders who came to the south eastern ports as part of the Indian Ocean trade as well as along the Silk Route, an ancient network of routes stretching for over six thousand miles from China across Central Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Similar to the World Wide Web, the Silk Route connected diverse communities across long distances for centuries, exchanging commodities as well as music, poetry, and art, resulting in an incredible blend of cultures.
After the spread of the Islamic dynastic empires, a large-scale network of shipping facilitated the travel of goods between east and west. Chinese porcelains, textiles, and high-quality paper were shipped from China while glass, spices, and minerals were imported into China; artistic styles and craftsmen also travelled widely.
The interconnections between the Chinese and Muslim empires and evidence of the maritime routes are confirmed by the lost dhow found in 1998 at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The lost Arab ship, also termed as The Belitung wreck – because it was discovered off Belitung Island, Indonesia – had its complete cargo of more than 50,000 domestic and luxury items including spice-filled jars, vessels of silver and gold, and ceramic bowls and ewers. Luxury items from China were in great demand, particularly items made during the Tang dynasty (618-906), ranked as the classical period of Chinese art and literature.
An extremely rare dish, one of three found in the Belitung wreck . They are believed to be the earliest known complete Chinese blue-and-white ceramics, ca 825. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery/The New York Times
The travelogue of Ma Fuchu (d. 1874), a prominent Muslim scholar, attests to the several trade networks that existed between China and the Islamic regions. In this travelogue, Chaom Jin Tu Ji (‘Record of the Pilgrimage Journey’) he recounts his journey to Mecca and subsequent travel to Cairo, where he studied at the Al-Azhar (founded by the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Mu’izz in 969), before returning home. Ma Fuchu, a remarkable Hui scholar, is well-known for his five-volume translation of the Qur’an into Chinese, and for writing over thirty-five works on metaphysics and history in Chinese and Arabic.
Travelogue of Ma Fuchu titled Chao Jin Tu Ji. Image: Aga Khan Museum
Muslims of China are broadly divided into two groups. The first group consists of descendants of Arab, Persian, Central Asian, and Mongol traders who married Chinese women and settled in small communities around a central mosque; they are known as the Hui. Culturally diverse, the largest concentration of Hui can be found in north-western China.
The second group consists of Muslims belonging to minority communities whose homelands are located in the territories of the former Soviet Union, such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and Kazakhs. They are predominantly Sunnis with the exception of the Tajiks in Xinjiang region (officially Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region), the westernmost part of the country, who follow the Shia Ismaili interpretation of Islam. Xinjiang was once the hub of the Silk Road and the region through which Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam entered China. Sufism also has a long history in China since the seventeenth century and has played an important role in sustaining Islam for many centuries.
Map Wikipedia
The earliest mosques
The first mosques in China were established in the coastal ports in the seventh century by Sa’d bin Abi Waqqas, the maternal uncle of the Prophet, and several of his companions. Abi Waqqas, who visited China around 632, is said to have asked permission from the Tang Emperor for mosques to be built in Xian, Guangzhou, and Jianning (present day Nanjing). The Great Mosque of Guangzhou, known also as Huaisheng Mosque (Memorial of the Holy Prophet), is believed to be the earliest surviving mosque in China.
Great Mosque of Xiang. Image: Archnet
The Great Mosque of Xi’an is thought to have existed as early as the seventh century although the mosque that stands today was begun in 1392 during the reign of the Ming Dynasty. It was founded by the naval admiral Cheng Ho (d. 1433), the son of a prestigious Muslim family and responsible for clearing the China Sea of pirates. Since the fourteenth century, the mosque has undergone numerous reconstructions; most of the buildings that exist today are from the Ming and Qing Dynasties of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Great Mosque of Xi’an is the largest and best preserved of the early mosques of China (Archnet).
A form of Arabic script unique to China had been developed, known as Sini, which simply means Chinese. Although this word can be used to describe any distinctly Chinese forms of Arabic script, Chinese calligraphers argue that it refers to a rounded, flowing script, often with great variation between thick and thin strokes, which is ultimately descended from thuluth.
Chinese Qur’an Anthology, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Image: Aga Khan Museum
As a script it is often used for striking set pieces, such as the calligraphic phrase Subhan Allah (‘Glorious is God’) seen on the right hand page of the above manuscript, rather than for long texts. The adaptation of symbols common to Chinese art and culture is also evident in their decoration, such as the round good luck symbol embedded into the middle of the star illumination on the opposite page (Arts of the Book & Calligraphy, Aga Khan Trust for Culture, p 183).
Ismailism
Although the history of the Ismaili tradition in Xinjiang is obscure, the religious rituals open to observation as well as the Persian language texts that are referenced confirm their origin in the tradition of Nasir-i Khusraw (d. ca. 1077), suggesting a history stretching over a millennium.
According to popular legends, “Nasir-i Khusraw led a mission into the region with four of his close disciples, namely Sayyid Hassan Zarrabi, Sayyid Surab Wali, Sayyid Jalal Bukhari, and Jahan Malikshah. He instructed them to settle down and continue the Ismaili da’wa among the new converts” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 77). Many pirs in Xinjiang claim descent from those early Ismaili preachers.
The first jamatkhana was built in Tashkorgan around the end of the nineteenth century with the help of an official envoy from Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. “The name of the envoy is unclear. Some suggest it was Samad Shah, the British agent in Tashkorghan, while others think it was Pir Sabzali, the envoy sent to Xinjiang by Sultan Muhammad Shah in the 1920s” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 92 n 17).
[Tashkorgan was a major stop on the Silk Road where caravan routes converged leading to Kashgar in the north, Yecheng to the east, Badakhshan and Wakhan to the west, and Chitral and Hunza to the southwest, in Pakistan].
The few existing written communications “from an Imam addressed to the Ismaili community in Xinjiang province were the farmans of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. The last of such farmans, nominating five mukhis in Xinjiang, was received in 1948, just before the closing of the border by the Chinese” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 81).
The government “kept religious institutions closed for over three decades, only allowing some limited practices to resume after the death of Chairman Mao [d. 1976]. By the early 1980s the regime had rectified its past intolerant attitude towards religion by removing the outright ban on all religious practices … During the short-lived period of leniency, many damaged and appropriated places of worship were repaired and restored to their original purpose. The state even initiated various restoration projects, and many abandoned jama’atkhanas benefitted from this opportunity, with the result that the number of functioning jama’atkhanas increased to over 40, although the number of worshippers attending religious congregations barely increased in the same period” (Saidula, A Modern History of the Ismailis p 83).
Mawlana Hazar Imam is the only known Ismaili Imam to have officially visited Xinjiang province. He first visited China in 1981 to preside over the sixth seminar of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture held in Beijing October 19-22.
Mawlana Hazar Imam with the imam of the Xi’an Mosque, China, 1981. Image: 25 Years in Pictures, Islamic Publications Ltd, London
His Highness the Aga Khan on the Great Wall while in China
Mawlana Hazar Imam on the Great Wall of China, October 1981. Image: AKDN/Gary Otte
In 2012, Mawlana Hazar Imam paid an official visit to Urumxi, at the invitation of the Governor of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, to discuss collaboration between the Aga Khan Development Network and the Government of Xinjiang.
Mawlana Hazar Imam, Governor Nur Bekri, members of the government of Xinjiang, and members of the Aga Khan Development Network delegation. Image: Xinjiang Foreign Affairs Office
Hazar Imam delivered the keynote address at a UNESCO conference in Hangzhou in 2013.
Mawlana Hazar Imam delivered the keynote address at the Hangzhou International Congress “Culture: Key to Sustainable Development” organised by UNESCO, the People’s Republic of China and the Hangzhou Municipal Government. Image: Katharina Hesse/AKDN
During the Diamond Jubilee Darbar in Paris, France, on June 23, 2018, Mawlana Hazar Imam was gifted a fifteenth-century manuscript transcribed by Rashad ibn ‘Ali al-Sini, one of the earliest copies of the Qur’an to have been written in Khanbaliq (modern-day Beijing), China. A Qur’an section signed by Rashad ibn ‘Ali al-Sini, copied in modern-day Beijing, dated 1401.
Sources:
Michael Dillion “Islam in China” The Muslim Almanac. Detroit: Gale Research Inc. 1996
Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop Ancient Arab Shipwreck Yields Secrets of Ninth-Century Trade, The New York Times
Department of Asian Art. “Tang Dynasty (618–906),” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Islam in China, The David Collection
Record of the Pilgrimage (Chao jin ti ji), Aga Khan Museum
Contributed to Ismailimail by Nimira Dewji. Nimira is an invited writer although she has contributed several articles in the past (view previous articles). She also has her own blog – Nimirasblog – where she writes short articles on Ismaili history and Muslim civilisations. When not researching and writing, Nimira volunteers at a shelter for the unhoused, and at a women’s shelter. She can be reached at [email protected].
ismailimail.blog/2022/02/09/nasir-i-khusraw-and-his-disciples-spread-ismailism-to-china/
@The Ismaili in China || The Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center in China
@The Ismaili in China || @The Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center in China
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0TzeWlqkg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0TzeWlqkg