The Muslim Midwest in Modern China

For several centuries now the Muslim Midwest, notably the Northwest and the Southwest, had been the "Muslim country" of China. Although Muslims only sporadically constituted local majorities in some towns, villages, counties, and neighborhoods, they remained overall a minority in the overwhelming Han landscape of China. Nonetheless, in those areas the Muslim-Hui culture has had its greatest impact and visibility. It was in those areas in mid-nineteenth-century China that major Muslim rebellions took place with the stated purpose of seceding from the Kingdom and establishing independent Muslim states.

Almost two centuries later, those areas still bear the traumas of the past--crushed Muslim rebellions with massive massacres of Muslims, who lost their predominance and are reluctant to invoke past glories. The result has been a multitude of sects and sub sects, notably the Menhuan, which has no parallel in other parts of China, and even a new hybrid--the Xidaotang.