ABSTRACT
In view of the basic demand of Islam that Muslims should live, to the greatest possible extent, under Islamic rulers, there are many problems surrounding the survival of Muslim minorities under non-Islamic rule. We are not only talking about majority-minority and host culture-guest culture relationships, but also about some basic requirements, short of which a Muslim minority is bound to rebel against the ruling government and even to try to secede from the state institutions. This issue, which has repeatedly recurred in the history of many Muslim minorities throughout the world, is perhaps more acute in China these days due to the extraordinary convergence of several major factors:
Chinese society and culture, which has a long tradition of assimilating foreign cultures, had to contend in this case with a self-confident guest culture which does not lend itself to acculturation;
Chinese Communism, which has been until recently unitarian and strictly anti-religious, has been opening up of late, thus possibly creating a more accommodating environment for the reassertion of Islamic norms;
The current revival of Islam throughout the world, coupled with the growing interest of the Islamic core in the minorities of the periphery, have raised the probability of Islamic renewal in these remote fringes of the Islamic world.
