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China's Muslims look to Middle East as ties grow http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyID=2006-11-27T161745Z_01_PEK62224_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-MIDEAST-ISLAM.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-In+Depth+NewsNews-2
Mon Nov 27, 2006
By Lindsay Beck
BEIJING (Reuters) - Hai dreams of learning Arabic and hopes one day to study in the Middle East.
For now, the 25-year-old is stuck in Beijing.
It's thousands of miles from Mecca, but more and more Chinese Muslims are fulfilling their dreams of learning about their faith as the government relaxes controls over Islam to win hearts in the Middle East, where it seeks to strengthen trade and oil ties.
Hai goes to the mosque every day to pray as he did growing up in the northwestern Chinese region of Ningxia, home to a majority of the country's estimated 20 million Muslims -- as many as live in Syria or Yemen.
"Not everyone was like that but my family was, and now more and more people are. Our religion is developing very quickly," said Hai, who declined to give his full name.
Pottering around his "Muslim products" shop, which sells everything from Islamic skullcaps and headscarves to dried figs and beaded handbags, Hai says his customers include a growing number of visitors from the Middle East.
The increase in Muslim visitors to China -- tourists, businessman and expatriates -- is causing a rise in religious observance among China's Hui, a Muslim group that traces its heritage to the Middle East and Central Asia. "There is a strong influence of radical theology imported from the Middle East," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch and a specialist on China's Muslims.
"It's been very noticeable speaking to people in mosques across China. Whereas before they were completely cut off from the mainstream Muslim community, they're not anymore," he said.
CHARM OFFENSIVE
That could pose a challenge for China's Communist -- and officially atheist -- rulers, who seek to control organized religion to prevent potential challenges to their rule.
China cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, leaving its Catholic community split between an underground church loyal to the Holy See and the official, state-backed church.
The government has also been cracking down on Christian "house churches", congregations of people who worship in private homes, away from the glare of officialdom.
But Christianity does not come with an economic or energy element, key for China's rapidly expanding economy.
"The relationship with the Muslim Hui has always been a stake of international diplomacy, part of a charm offensive by China," said Bequelin. "This to a certain extent explains why the authorities have been more lenient."
The leniency extends only as far as the Hui.
China's other Muslim group, the Uighurs, live mainly in the northwestern region of Xinjiang and have close linguistic and cultural links with Central Asia. With aspirations for greater autonomy, Uighurs are seen as an ethnic problem and subject to much tighter controls.
In dusty Tongxin, a Hui Muslim-majority county in Ningxia, the area's mosques, devastated in the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, have been rebuilt with surprising splendor for one of the country's poorest regions. One religious leader, who runs an Islamic girls school, in the town of 300,000 was vague about funding for the rebuilding.
"We rely on introductions from friends coming here and giving a bit of money or help," said the woman, who asked not to be named.
MINARETS AND DOMES
The minarets and domed roofs of Tongxin's new mosques could be mistaken for any in the Middle East and are a stark contrast to the main mosque in Beijing, whose courtyard architecture and low, sloping roofs reflect a more traditional Chinese style.
The religious leader says she has 68 students in her school. The youngest is 15, despite an official ban on religious education for anyone under 18. "When I graduated from high school, in 1986, the situation was very difficult," said the woman. "Now the religious policies are more relaxed. We can go ahead without fear."
Most of her students wear headscarves, although it is rare to see women wearing the Islamic headdress in the area.
A record 9,600 Chinese Muslims are expected to leave for a pilgrimage to Mecca this year, escorted by China's Patriotic Islamic Association. Many more will likely go independently, through a third country.
China's Religious Affairs Bureau did not respond to faxed questions on numbers of Chinese making the pilgrimage, funding links and student exchanges.
The government is betting on its unspoken compromise with China's Hui that the community will steer clear of political engagement in exchange for greater religious freedom.
"They're banking on the fact that China's Muslims are aware of the limits and the rules and they know how to play the game," said Dru Gladney, an expert at Pomona College in California.
For now, it's a compromise that seems to be working. The religious leader in Ningxia says she's happy to be able to worship in peace and teach her community freely, after enduring a lifetime of much stricter controls.
"The national policies are opening up and as long as you don't go against the country's religious policies and regulations, you can freely progress," she said.
(Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison in Ningxia)
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