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Hui people

Chinese-speaking ethnoreligious group

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The Hui were referred to as Hanhui to be distinguished from the Turkic Muslims, which were referred to as Chanhui. The Republic of China (1912–1949) government also recognised the Hui as a branch of the Han Chinese rather than a separate ethnic group. In the National Assembly of the Republic of China, the Hui were referred to as Nationals in China proper with special convention. The Hui were referred to as Muslim Han people by Bai Chongxi, the Minister of National Defense of the Republic of China at the time and the founder of the Chinese Muslim Association. Some scholars refer to this group as Han Chinese Muslims, Han Muslims, Chinese Muslims or Sino-Muslims. While others call them Chinese-speaking Muslims or Sinophone Muslims.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, although the Hui didn't meet the Stalinist criteria for recognition of an ethnicity, the Hui was still recognised as a separate ethnicity from Han Chinese in 1954. The government defines the Hui people as all Muslim populations not included in China's other ethnic groups; they are therefore distinct from other Muslim groups such as the Uyghurs.

The Hui predominantly speak Chinese, while using some Arabic and Persian phrases. The Hui ethnic group is unique among Chinese ethnic minorities in that it is not associated with a non-Sinitic language. The Hui have a distinct connection with Islamic culture. For example, they follow Islamic dietary laws and reject the consumption of pork, the most commonly consumed meat in China, and have therefore developed their own variation of Chinese cuisine. Hui traditional dress includes white caps (taqiyah) worn by some men and headscarves worn by some women, similar to customs in many Islamic cultures.

Definition

Ancestry

Hui people descend from Han Chinese and Silk Road immigrants. Their ancestors were of primarily East Asian and Central Asian origin, with some Middle Eastern ancestry from ethnic groups such as Arabs and Iranians, who spread Islam. 6.7 percent of Hui peoples' genetics have a Middle Eastern origin, however most Hui samples have very similar characteristics to other East Asian populations, revealing a common genetic makeup. They show significant genetic homogeneity with the Han Chinese population in Linxia and with other East Asian populations rather than European or Middle Eastern, supporting a simple cultural diffusion as the origin of the Hui in China. Several medieval Chinese dynasties, particularly the Tang, Song and Mongol Yuan dynasties, encouraged immigration from predominantly Muslim Central Asia, with both dynasties welcoming traders from these regions and appointing Central Asian officials. In subsequent centuries, the immigrants gradually mixed with the Han Chinese, eventually forming the Hui.

Included among the Hui in Chinese census statistics (and not officially recognized as separate ethnic groups) are members of a few small non-Chinese-speaking communities. These include several thousand Utsuls in southern Hainan Province, who speak an Austronesian language (Tsat) related to the language of the Vietnamese Champa Muslim minority, who according to anthropologist Dru Gladney, descend from Champa people who migrated to Hainan. A small Muslim minority among Yunnan's Bai people are classified as Hui as well, although they speak Bai. Some groups of Tibetan Muslims are classified as Hui as well.

Genetics

A study in 2004 calculated that 6.7 percent of Hui peoples' matrilineal genetics have a West-Eurasian origin and 93.3% are East-Eurasian, reflecting historical records of the population's frequent intermarriage, especially with Mongol women. Studies of the Ningxia and Guizhou Hui also found only minor genetic contributions from West-Eurasian populations. Analysis of the Guizhou Hui's Y chromosomes showed a high degree of paternal North or Central Asian heritage, indicating the population formed through male-dominated migration, potentially via a northern route, followed by massive assimilation of Guizhou aborigines into Han Chinese and Hui Muslims.

The East Asian Y-chromosome haplogroup O-M122 is found in large quantities, about 24–30%, in other Muslims groups close to the Hui like the Dongxiangs, Bo'an, and Salar people. While the Y chromosome haplogroup R1a (found among Central Asians, South Asians and Europeans) are found among 17–28% of them. Western mtDNA makes up 6.6% to 8%. Other haplogroups include D-M174, N1a1-Tat, and Q, commonly found among East Asians and Siberians. The majority of Tibeto-Burmans, Han Chinese, and Ningxia and Liaoning Hui share paternal Y chromosomes of East Asian origin which are unrelated to Middle Easterners and Europeans. In contrast to distant Middle Easterners and Europeans with whom the Muslims of China are not significantly related, East Asians, Han Chinese, and most of the Hui and Dongxiang of Linxia share more genes with each other. This indicates that native East Asian populations were culturally assimilated, and that the Hui population was formed through a process of cultural diffusion.

An overview study in 2021 estimated that West Eurasian-related admixture among the average Northwestern Chinese minority groups was at ~9.1%, with the remainder being dominant East-Eurasian ancestry at ~90.9%. The study also showed that there is a close genetic affinity among these ethnic minorities in Northwest China (including Uyghurs, Huis, Dongxiangs, Bonans, Yugurs and Salars) and that these cluster closely with other East Asian people, especially in Xinjiang, followed by Mongolic, and Tungusic speakers, indicating the probability of a shared recent common ancestor of "Altaic speakers". A genome study, using the ancestry-informative SNP (AISNP) analysis, found only 3.66% West-Eurasian-like admixture among Hui people, while the Uyghurs harbored the relative highest amount of West-Eurasian-like admixture at 36.30%.

Official

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the term "Hui" was applied by the Chinese government to one of China's ten historically Islamic minorities. Today, the Chinese government defines the Hui people as an ethnicity without regard to religion, and includes those with Hui ancestry who do not practice Islam.

Chinese census statistics count among the Hui (and not as officially recognized separate ethnic groups) the Muslim members of a few small non-Chinese-speaking communities. These include several thousand Utsuls in southern Hainan Province, who speak an Austronesian language (Tsat) related to the language of the Vietnamese Champa Muslim minority. According to anthropologist Dru Gladney, they descend from Champa people who migrated to Hainan. A small Muslim minority among Yunnan's Bai people are classified as Hui as well, although they speak Bai. Some groups of Tibetan Muslims are classified as Hui as well.

Huihui

Huihui (回回) was the usual generic term for China's Muslims (White Hui), Persian Christians (Black Hui) and Jews (Blue Hui) during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is thought to have had its origin in the earlier Huihe (回紇) or Huihu (回鶻), which was the name for the Uyghur State of the 8th and 9th centuries. Although the ancient Uyghurs were not Muslims the name Huihui came to refer to foreigners, regardless of language or origin, by the time of the Yuan (1271–1368) and Ming dynasties (1368–1644). The use of Hui to denote all foreigners—Muslims, Nestorian Christians, or Jews—reflects bureaucratic terminology developed over the Yuan and Ming dynasties. Arab were white cap, Persians black cap and Jews blue cap Huihui. Islamic mosques and Jewish synagogues at the time were denoted by the same word, Qīngzhēnsì (清真寺: Temple of Purity and Truth).

Kublai Khan called both foreign Jews and Muslims in China Huihui when he forced them to stop halal and kosher methods of preparing food:

"Among all the [subject] alien peoples only the Hui-hui say "we do not eat Mongol food". [Cinggis Qa'an replied:] "By the aid of heaven we have pacified you; you are our slaves. Yet you do not eat our food or drink. How can this be right?" He thereupon made them eat. "If you slaughter sheep, you will be considered guilty of a crime." He issued a regulation to that effect ... [In 1279/1280 under Qubilai] all the Muslims say: "if someone else slaughters [the animal] we do not eat". Because the poor people are upset by this, from now on, Musuluman [Muslim] Huihui and Zhuhu [Jewish] Huihui, no matter who kills [the animal] will eat [it] and must cease slaughtering sheep themselves, and cease the rite of circumcision."

The widespread and rather generic application of the name Huihui in Ming China was attested to by foreign visitors as well. Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit to reach Beijing (1598), noted that "Saracens are everywhere in evidence ... their thousands of families are scattered about in nearly every province" Ricci noted that the term Huihui or Hui was applied by Chinese not only to "Saracens" (Muslims) but also to Chinese Jews and supposedly even to Christians. In fact, when the reclusive Wanli Emperor first saw a picture of Ricci and Diego de Pantoja, he supposedly exclaimed, "Hoei, hoei. It is quite evident that they are Saracens", and had to be told by a eunuch that they actually weren't, "because they ate pork". The 1916 Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, Volume 8 said that Chinese Muslims always called themselves Huihui or Huizi, and that neither themselves nor other people called themselves Han, and they disliked people calling them Dungan. French army Commandant Viscount D'Ollone wrote a report on what he saw among Hui in 1910. He reported that due to religion, Hui were classed as a different nationality from Han as if they were one of the other minority groups.

Huizu is now the standard term for the "Hui nationality" (ethnic group), and Huimin, for "Hui people" or "a Hui person". The traditional expression Huihui, its use now largely restricted to rural areas, would sound quaint, if not outright demeaning, to modern urban Chinese Muslims.

Other nomenclature

Islam was originally called Dashi Jiao during the Tang dynasty, when Muslims first appeared in China. "Dashi Fa" literally means "Arab law" in Old Chinese. Since almost all Muslims in China were exclusively foreign Arabs or Persians at the time, it was rarely mentioned by the Chinese, unlike other religions like Zoroastrism or Mazdaism, and Nestorian Christianity, which gained followings in China. As an influx of foreigners, such as Persians, Jews and Christians, the majority of whom were Muslims who came from western regions, were labelled as Semu people, but were also mistaken by Chinese for Uyghur, due to them coming from the west (Uyghur lands). The name "Hui Hui" was applied to them, and eventually became the name applied to Muslims.

Another, probably unrelated, early use of the word Huihui comes from the History of Liao, which mentions Yelü Dashi, the 12th-century founder of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, defeating the Huihui Dashibu (回回大食部) people near Samarkand—apparently, referring to his defeat of the Khwarazm ruler Ahmed Sanjar in 1141. Khwarazm is referred to as Huihuiguo in the Secret History of the Mongols as well.

While Huihui or Hui remained a generic name for all Muslims in Imperial China, specific terms were sometimes used to refer to particular groups, e.g. Chantou Hui ("turbaned Hui") for Uyghurs, Dongxiang Hui and Sala Hui for Dongxiang and Salar people, and sometimes even Han Hui (漢回) ("Chinese Hui") for the (presumably Chinese-speaking) Muslims more assimilated into the Chinese mainstream society.

In the 1930s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defined the term Hui as indicating only Sinophone Muslims. In 1941, this was clarified by a CCP committee comprising ethnic policy researchers in a treatise entitled "On the question of Huihui Ethnicity" (回回民族问题, Huíhui mínzú wèntí). This treatise defined the characteristics of the Hui nationality as an ethnic group associated with, but not defined by, Islam and descended primarily from Muslims who migrated to China during the Mongol-founded Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), as distinct from the Uyghur and other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in Xinjiang. The Nationalist government by contrast recognised all Muslims as one of "the five peoples"—alongside the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, and Han Chinese—that constituted the Republic of China.

A traditional Chinese term for Islam is "回教" (pinyin: Huíjiào, literally "the religion of the Hui"). However, since the early days of the PRC, thanks to the arguments of such Marxist Hui scholars as Bai Shouyi, the standard term for "Islam" within the PRC has become the transliteration "伊斯蘭教" (pinyin: Yīsīlán jiào, literally "Islam religion"). The more traditional term Huijiao remains in use in Singapore, Taiwan and other overseas Chinese communities.

Qīngzhēn: (清真, literally "pure and true") has also been a popular term for Muslim culture since the Yuan or Ming dynasty. Gladney suggested that a good translation for it would be the Arabic tahára. i.e. "ritual or moral purity" The usual term for a mosque is qīngzhēn sì (清真寺), i.e. "true and pure temple", and qīngzhēn is commonly used to refer to halal eating establishments and bathhouses.

In contrast, the Uyghurs were called "Chan Tou Hui" ("Turban Headed Muslim"), and the Turkic Salars called "Sala Hui" (Salar Muslim), while Turkic speakers often referred to Hui as "Dungan".

Zhongyuan ren: During the Qing dynasty, the term Zhongyuan ren (中原人; 'people from the Central Plain') was the term for all Chinese, encompassing Han Chinese and Hui in Xinjiang or Central Asia. While the Hui are not Han, they consider themselves to be Chinese and include themselves in the larger group of Zhongyuan ren. The Dungan people, descendants of Hui who fled to Central Asia, called themselves Zhongyuan ren in addition to the standard labels Lao Huihui and Huizi. Zhongyuan ren was used by Turkic Muslims to refer to ethnic Chinese. When Central Asian invaders from Kokand invaded Kashgar, in a letter the Kokandi commander criticised the Kashgari Turkic Muslim Ishaq for allegedly not behaving like a Muslim and wanting to be a Zhongyuan ren (Chinese).

Some Uyghurs barely see any difference between Hui and Han. A Uyghur social scientist, Dilshat, regarded the Hui as the same people as Han, deliberately calling Hui people Han and dismissing the Hui as having only a few hundred years of history.

Pusuman: Pusuman was a name used by Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. It could have been a corruption of Musalman or another name for Persians. It means either Muslim or Persian. Pusuman Kuo (Pusuman Guo) referred to the country where they came from. The name "Pusuman zi" (pusuman script), was used to refer to the script that the Huihui were using.

Muslim Chinese: The term Chinese Muslim is sometimes used to refer to Hui people, given that they speak Chinese, in contrast to, e.g., Turkic-speaking Salars. During the Qing dynasty, Chinese Muslim (Han Hui) was sometimes used to refer to Hui people, which differentiated them from non-Chinese-speaking Muslims. However, not all Hui are Muslims, nor are all Chinese Muslims, Hui. For example, Li Yong is a famous Han Chinese who practices Islam and Hui Liangyu is a notable atheist Hui. In addition, most Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Dongxiang in China are Muslims, but are not Hui.

John Stuart Thomson, who traveled in China, called them "Mohammedan Chinese". They have also been called "Chinese Mussulmans", when Europeans wanted to distinguish them from Han Chinese.

Non-Muslim Hui

Throughout history, the identity of Hui people has been fluid, often changing as was convenient. Some identified as Hui out of interest in their ancestry or because of government benefits. These Hui are concentrated on the southeast coast of China, especially Fujian province.

Some Hui clans around Quanzhou in Fujian, such as the Ding and Guo families, identify themselves by ethnicity and no longer practice Islam. In recent years, more of these clans have identified as Hui, increasing the official population. They provided evidence of their ancestry and were recognized as Hui. Many clans across Fujian had genealogies that demonstrated Hui ancestry. These clans inhabited Fujian, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. None of these clans were Muslims but they do not offer pork during their ancestral worship.

In Taiwan, the Hui clans who followed Koxinga to Formosa to defeat the Dutch settlers no longer observe Islam and their descendants embrace the Chinese folk religion. The Taiwanese branch of the Guo (Kuo in Taiwan) clan with Hui ancestry does not practice Islam, yet does not offer pork at their ancestral shrines. The Chinese Muslim Association counts these people as Muslims. Also on Taiwan, one branch of the Ding (Ting) clan that descended from Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar resides in Taisi Township in Yunlin County. They trace their descent through him via the Quanzhou Ding family of Fujian. While pretending to be Han Chinese in Fujian, they initially practiced Islam when they came to Taiwan 200 years ago, but their descendants have embraced Buddhism or Taoism.

An attempt was made by the Chinese Islamic Society to convert the Fujian Hui of Fujian back to Islam in 1983, by sending four Ningxia imams to Fujian. This futile endeavour ended in 1986, when the final Ningxia imam left. A similar endeavour in Taiwan also failed.

Until 1982, a Han could "become" Hui by converting to Islam. Thereafter, a converted Han counts instead as a "Muslim Han". Symmetrically, Hui people consider other Hui who do not observe Islamic practices as still Hui, and that their Hui nationality cannot be lost. For both of these reasons, simply calling them "Chinese Muslims" is no longer accurate, strictly speaking, just as with Bosniaks in former Yugoslavia.

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