Hui People - Ethnic Tensions

Ethnic Tensions

Hatred of foreigners from Chinese Muslim officers stemmed from the arrogant way foreigners handled Chinese affairs, rather than for religious reasons, the same reason other non-Muslim Chinese hated foreigners. Promotion and wealth were other motives among Chinese Muslim military officers for anti-foreignism.

The Dungan Revolt and Panthay revolts by the Hui were also set off by racial antagonism and class warfare, rather than the mistaken assumption that it was all due to Islam that the rebellions broke out. During the Dungan revolt fighting broke out between Uyghurs and Hui.

In 1936, after Sheng Shicai expelled 20,000 Kazakhs from Xinjiang to Qinghai, the Hui led by General Ma Bufang massacred their fellow Muslims, the Kazakhs, until there were 135 of them left.

The Hui people have had a long presence in Qinghai and Gansu, or what Tibetans call Amdo, although Tibetans have historically dominated the local politics. The situation was reversed in 1931 when the Hui general Ma Bufang inherited the governorship of Qinghai, stacking his government with Hui and Salar and excluding Tibetans. In his power base in Qinghai's northeastern Haidong Prefecture, Ma compelled many Tibetans to convert to Islam and acculturate into the Hui community. When Hui started migrating into Lhasa in the 1990s, racist rumors circulated among Tibetans in Lhasa about the Hui, such as that they were cannibals or ate children. On February 2003, Tibetans rioted against Hui, destroying Hui-owned shops and restaurants. With Islamophobic sentiments high following the Taliban's demolition of two Buddha statues, local Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders lead a regional boycott movement that encouraged Tibetans to boycott Hui-owned shops, spreading the myth that Hui put the ashes of cremated imams in the cooking water they use to serve Tibetans food, in order to convert Tibetans to Islam.

Occasionally tensions result in scuffles between Hui communities and the native Tibetans and some Muslims have stopped wearing the traditional white caps that identify their religion, and many women now wear a hairnet instead of a scarf in order to better assimilate into the community. The Hui community usually support the Chinese government in anti Tibetan separatism. In addition, Chinese speaking Hui have problems with Tibetan Hui (the Tibetan speaking Kache minority of Muslims).

Tensions with Uyghurs arose because Qing and Republican Chinese authorities used Hui troops and officials to dominate the Uyghurs and crush Uyghur revolts. Xinjiang's Hui population increased by over 520 percent between 1940 and 1982, an average annual growth of 4.4 percent, while the Uyghur population only grew at 1.7 percent. This dramatic increase in Hui population led inevitably to significant tensions between the Hui and Uyghur Muslim populations. Some old Uyghurs in Kashgar remember that the Hui army at the Battle of Kashgar (1934) massacred 2,000 to 8,000 Uyghurs, which causes tension as more Hui moved into Kashgar from other parts of China. Some Hui criticize Uyghur separatism, and generally do not want to get involved in conflict in other countries over Islam for fear of being perceived as radical. Hui and Uyghur separate from each other, praying and attending different mosques.