ABSTRACT
Unceasing convulsions, chaos and troubles have shaken China, as it is well known, during the first half of the twentieth century: the Boxer rebellion in 1900, the overthrow of the Qing dynasty at the turn of 1912, the xenophobic anti-Christian (more precisely anti-Protestant) outburst in 1925, the breaking of a tactical alliance between Guomindang1 and Communists in 1927, the rapid militarization of the politics and so on.2 While intellectuals were contending without end about the significance of the past, the throwing out of their so-called ossified spiritual legacy, the invention of a new way of life and thought, their political commitment, there were other groups of intellectuals who unostentatiously and unnoticed were conducting their own revolution, on the fringe of the main currents, especially in the coastal big cities. These intellectuals were Chinese believers in Islam.3
