We All Love the PRC

What a wonderful National Day present! We got a silver medal! Well done Wang Yuegu, Feng Tianwei and Li Jiawei! Our first Olympic medals in over half a century.

Since we're all watching the Olympics, and should be patriotically proud of our national table tennis team's silver medal achievement, I thought it would be good to also know a little bit more about the state of Islam in China.
After all, we are all so focused on the rising dragon in all other aspects, we should also keep track of this aspect.

I found a blog about China Muslims that is not the usual fundamentalist rant about how they are being oppressed, etc.
You know, just like how most Muslims from majority-Muslim countries always seem to think that we Singaporean Muslims are all suffering, oppressed and in need of liberation from Satanic non-Muslim governments who are killing us with better democratic rights, religious freedom and economic opportunities than their own "Islamic" countries? (I know that they mean well, but it is no different from when the Europeans "modernised" us for our own good, to be like them).

So before we jump on the "oppressed Muslim" bandwagon with the rest of the jihadi bunch, I suggest that we hear something about China Islam from China Muslims, instead of people in the Mideast.

islaminchina.wordpress.com

Hey, the Chinese gave us some of the greatest Muslims in history - Admiral Cheng Ho (ZhengHe), remember?

Of interest in this blog is an article on the hadith "Seek knowledge even to China" - we've heard that it is not authentic, right? Really? Think again.

Did you know that the Chinese Muslims could write Chinese with Arabic letters, like we write Malay in Jawi? They call it Xiao'erjing. Here's an example -

Here's an old kitab in Xiao'erjing Chinese translation of Arabic on the left -


Also, I bet you did not know that in Chinese, halal is called qīngzhēn cài (清真菜) or "pure truth food." A mosque is called qīngzhēn sì (清真寺) or "pure truth temple.".

How beautiful.