and government inefficiency and corruption
have also had detrimental effects on children
in Muslim countries. International agencies
and relief organizations, including a number of
Islamic ones, have sometimes intervened to help
children faced with the harmful effects of such
developments, but the resources of these organi-
zations are limited.
See also abortion; biography; birth rites; cir-
cUmcision; FUnerary ritUals; kuttab.
Further reading: Hamid Ammar, Growing Up in an Egyp-
tian Village: Silwa, Province of Aswan (1954. Reprint,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966); Elizabeth
Warnock Fernea, ed., Children in the Muslim Middle East
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995); Avner Giladi,
Children of Islam: Concepts of Childhood in Medieval
Muslim Society (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).
China
The People’s Republic of China includes within
its borders a substantial Muslim population.
According to the 1990 census, there were
17,587,370 Muslims in China. Chinese-speaking
Muslims, or Hui, numbered 8,602,978 and are
the largest percentage of the Muslim population.
The Hui can be found throughout China—there
are large communities on the southern Chi-
nese coast, in Guangdong and Fujian provinces,
which had very early contact with Muslim sea
traders. In Yunan province in southeast China,
there is also a sizeable Muslim population. There
are some quite different variations of belief
and practice between these and the other Hui
communities that live in close proximity with
Han Chinese society and the Hui of Gansu and
Ningxia provinces in the north. In these two
provinces, Muslims constitute the majority of
the population, and therefore Islamic social and
cultural characteristics are stronger and more
visible. Xinjiang, in Chinese Central Asia, is also
a majority Muslim province. However, the Hui
constitute a minority there, while mostly Turkic-
speaking peoples dominate. In this last group,
the majority are the Uyghurs, who numbered
about 7,214,431 in 1990. There are also a large
number of Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uzbek, and other
Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang.
The influence of islam spread in China fol-
lowing the conversion of the Mongol rulers of the
13th century. With the rise of the Qing dynasty in
the 18th and 19th centuries, discrimination and
persecution increased along with greater outside
political, economic, and social control. During
this period, there were prominent Muslim rebel-
lions and attempts to create an Islamic state in
Yunan as well as Xinjiang and Gansu. Sufi broth-
erhoods, in particular the Naqshabandis, played
a large role in the rebellions. With the end of any
central state control following the Nationalist
Revolution in 1911, there were once again large-
scale uprisings in Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia,
often pitting one Muslim ethnic group against
another, with the Hui allying more often with the
Han than with other Muslims. These uprisings
ended as the Chinese Communist Party consoli-
dated control over the region in the late 1940s and
1950s. The Communist state has recognized 10
separate Muslim nationalities that enjoy a greater
degree of autonomy in areas where they are a
minority. However, in Xinjiang, Han immigration
has increased significantly, which has hindered
the economic development of the indigenous
population. This has brought some unrest to the
region, leading to increased repression by the Chi-
nese Communist authorities in their “war against
terrorism.”
See also central asia and the caUcasUs; com-
mUnism; naqshabandi sUFi order.
David ReevesFurther reading: Linda Benson, The Ili Rebellion: The
Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in Xinjiang
1944–1949 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1990); Dru C.
Gladney, Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Mus-
lim Minority Nationality (Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt
Brace College Publishers, 1998).K 138 China