More Chinese Muslims To Join Haj
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Daily Telegraph: They were a drop in the ocean among the two million Muslims who converged on Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca this week, but 10,700 Chinese joined this year's Haj pilgrimage - representing a significant gamble by Beijing.The number of Chinese allowed to join their fellow religionists is a sign of how the estimated 20-35 million Muslims in the country are being welcomed back into the Islamic fold after years of isolation.Those who made the pilgrimage, a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for every Muslim who can afford it, walked seven times around the Kaaba, a cube-like building in the centre of the city's Great Mosque to which pilgrims flock every day of the year.The decision by China's government to allow its Muslim population to forge closer links with Saudi Arabia is part of a deliberate drive to forge stronger economic links with the fast-growing oil-rich states of the Middle East.Thousands more now go to study in Muslim countries each year, while hundreds of Arabic language schools have opened in the Muslim regions of China.But the relaxation of restrictions on the right of Chinese Muslims to worship, and their increasing sense of community with Muslims elsewhere in the world, has raised the spectre of fundamentalism taking hold in China.Ma Wanyun has made the haj, the pilgrimage all Muslims must make at least once in their lives, on two occasions. The imam of the Wunan Mosque in Wuzhong in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of north-west China, he spent three years studying in Libya, and has witnessed the rise of Muslim orthodoxy in China over the last 10 years."When I first made the haj in 1998, there were just 48 people who went from Wuzhong," he said. "This year, about 500 are going.""With so many Hui people going abroad to study Islam, it's natural that they'll come back with some different views to what they've learned here. The basis of our religion is peace, but what's going on in the world now obviously contradicts that."Some people might say that it is the Americans who are the terrorists, but everyone has different opinions."Ningxia is home to 1.8 million Muslims of the Hui minority group, who worship in more than 3,000 mosques. The nine million Hui across China are the descendants of Arab traders who started to arrive in China in the 7th Century.After hundreds of years of inter-marriage they are indistinguishable from the majority Han Chinese population, apart from their adherence to Islam. Now more are re-discovering their roots by learning Arabic and adopting Islamic customs.Accompanying that is a rising distrust of America and its role in Iraq.On the dusty streets of Tongxin, a small town in the heart of Ningxia, the evidence of the region's religious revival is plain to see. Nearly every woman has her head covered with a hijab, while the men wear white skullcaps.Outside Tongxin's 600 year-old Grand Mosque, a massive stone slab bears a quotation from Mao Zedong. But inside, young men study the Koran in Arabic and strangers are greeted with "Salaam aleikum" rather than "Nihao", the Chinese for "hello".China's trade with the Middle East is worth more than £25 billion a year, and the government expects it to double by 2015.With Ningxia one of China's poorest regions, the Hui are seen by the authorities as a useful tool in developing links with the Arab world."The government encourages us to learn Arabic because China and the Arab countries have a good relationship, and it's getting better," said Hei Yuze, 20, a student at an Arabic school attached to the Xiguan Mosque in Ningxia's capital, Yinchuan, who hopes to become a translator."Everyone here wants to learn Arabic to get a better job. But for me it's not just about the money. I'm a Muslim, and Arabic is the language of my religion."
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