In 756, some 4,000 Arab mercenaries, sent by Caliph Abu Ja'far al-Mansur, assisted the Chinese Emperor in suppressing a Tartar revolt and were rewarded with land and permission to settle in the Empire. Later, Arab traders settled in some of the southern seaports, notably at Canton, and established a rich commerce with the Middle Kingdom. In that year an embassy from the Caliph Uthman was graciously received at the capital of the T'ang dynasty. 651 is usually accepted as the date for the first official contact between the Caliphate and the Chinese Empire. The beginnings of Islam in mainland China are obscure, but the year A.D. Muslims also hold important posts in the diplomatic service, among them the Republic's present envoy to Kuwait, Ambassador Wang Shi-ming. Ma Ching-chiang, formerly Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Service Forces and now one of the top advisers of President Chiang Kai-shek. There are Muslims serving as ranking officers in the armed forces of the Republic of China, notably Lt. They are, like the other mainlanders, mostly soldiers and government employes, though there are now many shopkeepers and teachers among them.Ī few Muslim leaders hold seats in the Legislative Yuan and the Nationsal Assembly. They came from all over China-which has 20,000,000 Muslims in all-but many of them had been born in the provinces where Islam was especially strong: Yunnan, Sinkiang, Ninghsia and Kansu-all in the western and northern regions of China.
Practically all of them are recent converts, many because of marriage to Muslim mainlanders.Īmong those who came over from the mainland with the Nationalists in 1949, however, were an estimated 20,000 Muslims.
Today not more than 200 out of some 10 million native Taiwanese (as the descendants of the early Chinese settlers are called) are Muslims. These traces and others of a similar nature are about all that is left of the Islamic presence on Taiwan introduced in Koxinga's time. Two or three families in Tainan observe funeral customs of Islamic origin including the ceremonial washing of the body and wrapping it carefully in white cloth-though in all other respects they are culturally Taiwanese. The present owners are not Muslims and do not read Arabic, but they honor a book held sacred by their forebears. Two families in Keelung place copies of the Holy Koran before the tablets of their ancestors. The Kuo family in Lukang, for example, does not include pork among its offering at the family shrine even though the family is not Muslim. In his History of Taiwan, written in 1918, Professor Lien Ya Tang said, "The spread of Islam in Taiwan is nil believers are few, mostly from other provinces hence there is no mosque in Taiwan as yet." Still, interesting traces of Islamic practices are preserved by the present-day descendants of the Muslim followers of Koxinga. If there were a few Muslims on Taiwan under the Japanese, they were not native to the place and they practiced their faith as individuals and not as a community. The half century (1895-1945) of Japanese rule on the island provided the coup de grace-the Taiwanese were discouraged from practicing "foreign" religions. Cut off from effective contact with the large and vigorous Muslim community on the mainland, the Islamic faith on Taiwan simply atrophied.
As one generation followed another, they became almost totally assimilated into Taiwanese society, adopting Taiwanese customs and the Taiwanese religion (an eclectic mixture of local spiritism, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism). They were the first Muslims to settle on the island, and in the course of time their descendants drifted away from Islam. The records suggest that there were only a few families, all of them from Fukien Province. It is not known exactly how many Muslims accompanied Koxinga to Taiwan in the 17th century. The second invasion took place nearly three centuries later, in 1949, when Nationalist President Chiang Kaishek, after his defeat by the Communists, led more than a million followers into exile on the island of Formosa, a Portuguese name meaning "beautiful." The first invasion occurred in 1661, after the fall of the Ming dynasty, when a legendary hero called Koxinga (Cheng Cheng-kung) led 25,000 followers from the southern coast of China and seized Taiwan from the Dutch. Twice in its history the island of Taiwan has been invaded by Chinese refugees fleeing the collapse of a mainland regime.
GowingPhotographed by Max AbellanedaAdditional photographs by Ray Cranbourne This article was taken from Saudi Aramco World (print edition July/August 1970-pages 22-27)Ĭut off from its roots, Taiwan's small community of Chinese Muslims struggles to survive.
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