Mustafa Umar – How Islam Came to China
AI: Summary ©
The history of theals and theals is discussed, including the United Nations releasing data on the number of Uighurs who have been detained and died from reeducation camps. The Chinese government is taking international fears of terrorism and ISIS, and the United Nations has released data on the number of Uighurs who have been detained and died. The conflict between the attention of the Chinese government and the opposition of the Chinese government in certain regions, including the conflict of opinion between the Han majority and the non-immigrant Huit groups, and the suppression of news articles and press agencies is discussed.
AI: Summary ©
Alright.
We begin in the name of Allah, God
Almighty, the Creator, the Sustainer, and we send
peace and blessings upon the final messenger of
God, Muhammad
peace be upon him. How's everyone doing?
Alright. Alright. We are ready to get started.
I wanna thank you all for taking time
out. I know it's a Friday evening. You
guys have many different options, different venues you
can be at, but you chose IIOC,
and I really appreciate that. So thank you
so much. I see a lot of new
faces. I see returning faces. So welcome to
everybody, and we thank you for taking time
out and joining us here. Behalf of Islamic
Institute of Orange County, specifically the DAO and
the outreach department,
I want to welcome you to Halal Chinese
night.
This is part of our educational series. I
think you guys have noted, What we're trying
to do is really, educate ourselves as muslims,
and even our non muslim neighbors, and family
members, and co works, etcetera,
about how Islam came to different places. Many
at times, there are many misconceptions
about Islam and how it entered different places.
So what we're trying to do is really
educate ourselves and the community at large. So
this is one of our hopes.
This is, I think, number 4 or 5
that we're doing in a long series. So
do support us as you guys are today
and I really appreciate it.
Few housekeeping things. Number 1, the kitchen will
be remained open inshallah, God willing,
until we have food. If the food runs
out, I do apologize. So if you haven't
as of yet gotten your plate, or 2,
or 3, I would suggest you go out
and just get your food. You're most welcome
to eat inside here if you want. No
worries at all. But the kitchen will be
open inshallah, god willing, until we have food
there.
Number 2, we are gonna be live streaming
this event. So in the event, if your
family members or friends or coworkers are late
because of Friday traffic here in SoCal, you
can log on right now. We'll be streaming
live right now. If you go on YouTube,
just put in our page, IIOC TV. If
you guys wanna do that, we'll be we're
streaming right now. So again, you can send
them that link, link. That'll be great. I
wanna send a very or give a very
special thanks to all the volunteers here. You
know, those that you see with these green
volunteer badges,
this is for the most part a volunteer
led initiative.
Meaning, many of the volunteers have sacrificed their
personal time, their family time to be here.
Number 1, to serve Allah, the creator, but
then to serve the community. So please, on
your way out, when you see somebody with
not me. I just have one of these
on. I don't know why. But, when you
see the real volunteers are really working hard,
make sure just to thank them and just
appreciate them if you do. Number 2, we're
very thankful to Mas Islamic Chinese.
They care this food. Brother Ibrahim, specifically, the
owner of Mas Islamic, just down the road
here in Anaheim on Orange Thorpe. They've been
working with us for a long time, and
the community, by and large, I think are
familiar with them. So do make sure you
support them. Pray for them. Pray for, you
know, Allah blesses their business and their health
and their wealth. They're doing an amazing job
specifically with the masjid here at hand.
Alright. It's a lot. Is it now, Shaykh?
Alright. Alright. I just wanna make sure I
get everything, through.
Finally, do we have any non Muslim guests
by attendance? I know I've met a number
of non Muslim guests. If you could just
raise your hand for us, I would really
appreciate it.
Alright. Alright. We wanna welcome you guys to
the Islamic Institute of Orange County. I think
for you, this might be or for many
of you, the first time you're attending. So
want, as a community, to welcome you. We
thank you for taking time out and joining
us here at IIOC.
Alright. So let's get started.
As you know, we're gonna talk about how
Islam entered China. And with us is gonna
be Sheikh Mustafa Umar, who is no stranger
to us, but a little bit by Sheikh
Mustafa. He is the director of outreach and
education here at IIOC.
He's also the founder and director of California
Islamic University or CIU, which is just down
the road. So he'll be conducting,
the presentation today. We're looking for about maybe
8 to 9, 9:15.
And possibly depending on questions and answers, we
are gonna open it for q and a.
I'll give you more instructions on that later
on. But if you do have a question,
I would encourage you to write it down
or text it to yourself so that this
way, when the QA part does come around,
we're most welcome and we're ready to go.
Is that okay with everyone?
Alright. Again, the kitchen is open. If you
wanna help yourself to a plate, you're most
welcome to do so. Without further ado, Sheikh
Mostafa'amah. Alright. Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem.
I begin in the name of God, the
Compassionate, the Merciful.
So
as is my usual
way of doing things,
let's get straight into it. Alright. So this
is about the history of Islam in China.
The first question is why should we care?
And when I say we,
I'm addressing specifically Muslims since the majority of
this audience is Muslim.
As Muslims,
we care,
and the world also cares
because there's a lot of Muslims living in
China.
Sir Thomas Walker Arnold was a missionary orientalist
who wrote in 18/96
that it is remarkable
how little attention until very recently
has been paid to Islam in China.
So he wrote that in 18 96,
and he is writing that as an orientalist,
specifically for the Western powers.
What that means is that even the western
countries were not really paying much attention to
Islam in China
during that time until
2 major rebellions
broke out around
a little bit after,
professor Arnold was actually writing these words. So
we're gonna get to that. We're gonna talk
about that. But that's when the imperial powers
imperial western powers started to take note of
Muslims in China because
they wanted to know what amount of power
and influence they had and what potential they
had especially to, you know,
affect
the Russian Empire in particular.
From the Muslim perspective,
why do we care?
Because for Muslims,
we are united by faith with all people
around the world. So there's about 1,800,000,000
Muslims in the world, and every single person
who's a Muslim is considered to be our
brother and sister in faith.
And therefore, we should learn about all different
Muslims from all different walks of life. Right?
So that's one reason why it's important, to
know. The second
is because Muslims have been in China for
1400 years, so they have a very long
history.
And today, if you look at China, that's
just that's China for you, just so you
know. I know some people, especially many Americans,
are not that familiar with, you know, where
countries are in the world. Maybe even some
states are in America. So just to remind
you exactly where in the world we're talking
about.
Hopefully, you know where America is, but, you
know, outside of that, we're on the other
side. Okay? So, we're talking about China over
here. So Muslims have been in China for
1400 years.
Today, there's an estimated number of 20 to
100000000
Muslims
living in China today.
And it's important to talk about the population
here for a moment.
Wanna open it up? Okay. That's fine. Yeah.
So it's important to talk about this population,
because these numbers are very diverse. There's a
big difference between 20,000,000 and 70,000,000 and a
100,000,000.
So what's happening is these are the official
accounts,
from the government of about how many Muslims
there are in China. If you look at
the CIA World Factbook, they will take 20,000,000
as the number as well. But what's going
on is if you count carefully and you
understand
the politics
of China, which we'll cover today inshallah,
there are people who are excluded from being
counted as Muslims
because Muslims are seen almost as a racial
category
rather than as a religious category.
So there was a,
population statistics report that took place in 1936.
And in 1936,
the official record was there were 48,000,000,104,240
Muslims living in China. That's 10.5
percent of the population
over a 100 or a 120 years ago
approximately.
Right? So what happened to that number and
how did the population statistics change? You we
have to question that. And according to and
these are not like Muslim numbers. Right? These
are like you know, this is not something
that's just a conspiracy of Muslims that are
making them up. So BBC's website religion and
ethics, they have the correct number and that
is they say there are between 20 to
100,000,000 Muslims in China. And we don't know
exactly what that number is. But that means
that they make up somewhere between 1.5
to 7.5
percent of that population. Right? This is a
little bit of an old estimate. Right? So
that's a very significant
population
that's not always being counted for in terms
of,
you know, how many Muslims there truly are
in China. Now
most Muslims,
they actually live in the Xinjiang province, which
is the northwest.
If you look over there in the northwest,
if you can see that, that's most where
most of the Muslims actually live in China
today. And what is happening over there is
many of the people over there, they are
Uighurs. There's a specific population,
and they're being persecuted
en masse in very large numbers. So we're
gonna be talking about that a little bit
towards the end of the presentation,
but that's also why it's important for us
to understand and know about the Muslim population
living in China.
So let's start from the beginning. Alright? If
you'll from the beginning,
before Islam,
before Islam meaning before even the life of
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, there
were commercial relations between Arabia
and between China. So it's not like there
was no contact,
And the actual relations that they had were
due to the what's called the silk route.
Right? So the silk route, they would be
traveling they would be transporting goods back and
forth, going all the way to the Roman
Empire. There were land routes and there were
sea routes. So on this map over here,
you can see that the red routes are
the land routes and the blue routes are
the sea routes. The way that goods would
get from China to Arabia
was through Ceylon.
And Ceylon, if you've ever had Ceylon tea
Anyone drink Ceylon tea? Do you know where
it comes from?
Exactly. It's coming from Sri Lanka. So it's
going through China from these port cities over
here. It's coming around, going through here and
then ending up in Arabia going right This
is exactly where Makkah and Madinah are. So
it's passing right through here. So what you
do is you find that there's trade taking
place. And whenever trade takes place,
it's not only trade of goods, it's not
only trade of, you know, silk or, you
know, material things, but there's also a trade
of ideas. There's also a trade of religion.
And
that is naturally going to be shared when
Islam comes on the scene.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, received
revelation in the year 610
CE, and he passed away in the year
632
CE.
So when Islam came,
it was going to reach China one way
or another
through trade at minimum
through both routes. Both through the sea route,
which is means that it's gonna reach in
the southern area, and also through the land
route.
So let's take a look at how Islam
actually arrived in China through both routes. So
the first way that it arrived, let's talk
about sea, first of all. So arriving,
Islam meaning Muslims.
Yeah. Testing. Came back? Okay.
So Islam meaning Muslims arriving and then sharing
Islam with other people. It came through the
sea route
through there's a few different theories, okay, about
what happened. I'll tell you the theories,
and I'll tell you what's agreed upon and
how we should process that information. So according
to Chinese Muslim sources and some other Arab
Muslim sources,
they say that in the year 6 a
h, which was 628,
the prophet Muhammad
signed a treaty called the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah
with
the Quraysh who were fighting against the Muslims.
The year after that or as soon as
the treaty was signed, the Prophet
started sending out delegations or sending out,
envoys
to different regions. So he sent an envoy
to the Persian emperor, he sent an envoy
to the Roman emperor, he sent an envoy
to, you know, the patriarch of Alexandria in
Egypt.
And there are records that say that he
sent a companion,
a disciple of the prophet, peace be upon
him, by the name of Wahab ibn Abi
Kashah
to China
to actually go and meet with the emperor
at the time.
When he met with the emperor of China,
he was received very warmly and he was
actually given permission to build a mosque
in China.
Now that was in the year 628 or
629.
That's a very very early date while the
Prophet
was still alive. Now these are things that
are written in sources
and what happened was when he came back
to visit the city of Medina, he returned
in the year 632.
The Prophet
had just died.
So he was very sad.
He decided he's gonna take a copy of
the Quran. He's gonna move back to China
and as soon as he got back there,
he lived a little while, but the journey
was very long for him. He passed away
and he died.
So that means that there was a Muslim
settlement at that time at a very, very
early period in the region of what's called
Canton. And Canton is Guangzhou, and we'll talk
a little bit more about that, you know,
what region that is and, where the different
regions.
I'll get to that moment. So
there was a Muslim traveler or a traveler
in the 9th century
passing through this area, and they were describing.
So what you have is you have visitors
come through, they pass through and they describe
what is the life what is life like
for the Muslims who are living in this
in this area, in this region.
So one of the visitors comes along and
says in 9th century,
the Muslims who were living in this region
of Canton, they actually had their own qadi,
meaning they had their own judge.
They did not pray for the Chinese emperor,
but they used to play pray for the
Muslim Khalifa, meaning that their loyalty and their
allegiance was actually to the caliph in the
Muslim world, but they were actually living in
China at the time. So they kind of
kept isolated communities.
And the way in which Islam spread was
through 3 main
methods. 1 was through new arrivals. People kept
arriving in these areas
and more Muslims were there. There was also
marriage. There was intermarriage between the Muslim men
who were going there and the other people
and or or maybe the women, and there
was conversion taking place as well. K? So
the
from c,
right, when the Muslims started getting into this
region a little while later, you have the
major trade centers which were already set up
in China, such as Guangzhou,
Guangzhou, and Yangtze.
They were probably already had their first mosques
built at a very early period.
We cannot trace
exactly
what dates those mosques were built or even
what happened to them because you're talking about
1400 years of history later. So we can
we can go back and we can date
some of these mosques which we're going to
be doing, but you can imagine wherever Muslims
go,
they're gonna be setting up a Masjid. Right?
They set up a mosque because they get
they need somewhere to pray. So that means
that in a very very early period, maybe
when the Prophet was alive or just a
little bit after his death, there were already
masjids
set up in China and not just on
the western province, but coming from the sea
route, they were being set up in this
region over here.
So that is the introduction,
of Islam
by sea. Now what about by land? By
land is very different. Why is sea so
easy, actually?
The reason why a lot of this trade
goes through sea is because when you're on
a boat,
you can travel a lot faster. It's a
lot cheaper to travel than traveling through land,
and you don't have to go through so
much enemy territory when it comes to, you
know, travelling
via the ocean or via the sea.
So when it comes to land, it took
a little bit longer.
So what happened was the first
contact between the Muslims and the Chinese
via land
was after the death of Yazdegirt.
So a little bit of history, a little
bit of background
is that
after, you know, after the Prophet
passed away, during the time of Abu Bakr
and Umar when they were the Khalifas,
the Muslims were actually fighting the Roman Empire
and the Persian Empire. And they were dominating
the Persian Empire very quickly.
Yazdegird
was the last Oh.
Everyone okay? Yes.
Yazdegird
was the last Kisra or the last Khosroos
of the Persian Empire.
And he was pretty much the last one
that was that was being chased out by
the Muslims. So he goes and he wants
his son, pharaohs,
to take power. So when Yazdegir dies,
pharaohs is like the last pretty much the
remnants of the Persian Empire, all that's left.
Pharaohs goes to the Chinese Emperor Gaozong
and he asks him This is in the
year 651
and he asks him look,
Persian The Persian Empire and the Chinese used
to have
an alliance for a very long period of
time because they live right next to each
other. As you can see, Persia and China
is not that far. This is, you know,
this is the map of where the Tang
dynasty
actually had their influence. So you can see
going west, they make it all the way
in the in rows of where the Persian
empire was. So there were good relations
some sometimes between the Persian empire and the
Chinese.
So what ends up happening is that pharaohs,
the last Persian Emperor
of the,
you know,
what is their what is their dynasty called?
Sassanid. Thank you. So the Sassanid dynasty,
he goes and he asked the Chinese Emperor,
you need to help us against these Muslims.
Please fight the Muslims for us so we
can reestablish the Persian empire. So what is
the emperor, Chinese emperor Gaozong, his response? He's
from the Tang dynasty.
His response is,
look, you know,
that is way too far for us to
send an army because look at his empire,
you know, it's all the way to the
east side. So he's gonna send an army
all the way over there to go and
fight the Muslims. He said, I can't do
that for you. I wanna help you out,
but I can't do that. So instead what
I'm gonna do is I'm going to directly
contact the Khalifa of the time. Does anyone
know who it was?
Othman ibn Affan.
So Othman, the 3rd Khalifa
is contacted by the Chinese Emperor
and he's basically gonna ask them, you know,
can you can you take it easy on
the Persians for a while and just let
them, you know, just let them be. They
already kind of lost their empire and everything.
So he sends
an ambassador
to the Muslim Khalifa.
The Muslim Khalifa welcomes the Chinese ambassador
very nicely, and he gives him, you know,
some presents and welcomes him nicely and everything.
And then,
I think the following year,
Othman sends another ambassador over to China just
to solidify relations, Hey, we have a good
relationship, everything's going fine. So relationship
The relationship between the Muslim or the Muslim
Empire, the Khalifa,
and the Chinese Empire at the time started
on a very good foot.
So there were very friendly
relations taking place in the year 6651.
Then from there, what ends up happening is
that in the time of the Khalifa Walid
who ruled from 705
to 715,
he sends a general by the name of
Qutayba ibn Muslim. He was the governor of
Khorasan.
Khorasan is in Central Asia. It's a northern
region province kind of, I can't see, like
up here, this region.
So he goes and he
he had captured Bukhara.
So he had captured the area where Imam
Bukhara is from, Bukhara, the city of Bukhara.
He captured
Samarkand, and they start reaching China. So once
they reach China, he sends envoys into China
and says, look. Hey, we're here at your
borders now. You know, what are we gonna
do? So the Chinese emperor decides, you know
what? Let's give him some presence
and maintain peaceful relationship with the Muslims. We
don't need to get into a fight. So
they stop,
expanding to the east because the relationship between
them is good. Now,
this
is all the history that's written in the
Muslim side.
Now if you look at what's written on
the Chinese side, we have 2 groups of
sources. Right? We have sources from the Muslim
side and we have sources from the Chinese
side. So from the Chinese side, one of
the things we have are the annals of
the year 713
to 742.
This is what is written inside one of
the historians who were writing for the,
for the empire in China.
They wrote, and I quote, the barbarians
of the West
came in crowds. K. So the Muslims are
being referred to as barbarians, but they're they're
western, because western compared to China. So the
barbarians of the west came in crowds
like a deluge
from a distance of more than 3000 miles
and from more than 100 different kingdoms,
bringing as tribute their sacred books, which were
received and deposited in the hall, set apart
for translation of sacred books or canonical books
in the imperial palace.
So what are they saying? They're saying at
the beginning of the 8th century, meaning the
early 700,
the Muslims were coming into our land
and there's so many of them coming in
and one of the things that they're bringing
is they're bringing their holy books.
They're bringing their Quran, they're bringing their other
religious books that they have, and what happened?
Because of good diplomatic relations,
they accepted them, they took them, they put
them in the hall for translations inside the
imperial palace, and they kept those books with
all the other religious books that were there.
And then he continues.
And he says, from this period, the religious
doctrines of these different countries
were thus diffused and openly practiced in the
empire.
So what is why is that quote important?
It's because the Chinese sources themselves, the official
Chinese sources are saying that at the beginning
of 8th century, early 700,
you have
Islam being practiced, you have lots of Muslims
there it's being diffused and it's being openly
practiced and there's
this is something that's known now. People know
about Islam, and it's something that not only
the government knows, the people know. Right? And
then what happens is you have more information
coming from Chinese documents,
ambassadors are coming in,
bringing presence from the Khalifa Hisham who live
from 724
to 743,
the Khalifa Mansur.
This is all during the Tang dynasty. Okay?
You guys you know you know the orange
drink Tang? Know, the the yellow stuff, right?
That has nothing to do with this. Okay?
Just wanted to make sure you understand that.
Alright, so this is
Just wanted to make sure everyone's awake. Okay?
So
the Tang dynasty from 6 18 to 907.
So all of this is happening in the
early 700
or in the 700.
So the Khalifa Hisham, he sends ambassadors
and the Chinese are sending ambassadors. So there's
diplomatic relations during this time between the Muslims
and between the Muslim government that's being run
out of, you know, Damascus at the time.
Then the caliph Mansur,
he goes and he sends an ambassador
to the Emperor
Satsang in 757.
And
what they did was they agreed upon this
trade stimulus that we're gonna go and we're
gonna keep trading with each other because this
is a good business relationship. There's a lot
of, you know, a lot of goods to
be passed through here. Right? So when goods
get passed, religion gets passed, good relations ensue.
Then you have,
in the year 758,
there were 4,000 Muslim soldiers
that were sent into China. So now keep
in mind, up until now pretty much there's
not much military
intervention going on with China and the Muslims.
But in the year 758,
what happened was
the emperor Satsang,
he wanted to crush a rebellion that was
taking place in his land. So he sends
a message to the Muslim Khalifa at the
time who was Al Mansur.
And in the year 758,
he asked for help.
So he sends 4,000 Muslim soldiers to go
and crush a rebellion.
So they crushed the rebellion,
they defeated their enemies,
and then they're told to come back.
And for some reason, I couldn't figure out
exactly why, but these 4,000 Muslim soldiers, they
just did not want to return. And they
decided, no, we're gonna stay in China, and
we're gonna live here with all the other
Muslims who are living, you know, in this
region here, where in the trading ports. Now
I don't know, maybe they like the Chinese
food,
maybe they like the Chinese women. I don't
know what the reason exactly it was that
they decided to stay, but they did not
wanna come back. So what ends up happening
now is you see that merchants who are
going and trading with China, they start going
and staying in the Muslim regions in these
port cities primarily.
And Muslims who are on the border over
here in the northwest
are coming in and they're trading from land.
So there's land trade taking place here, and
then there's sea trade
taking place
from around this entire region right here. So
Muslims start to settle and populate these areas.
And these areas start to grow, they start
to flourish. The Muslims are quite wealthy because
they're businessmen and they're doing good business,
and they have experience from that too. So
a lot of them are Persians, a lot
of them are Arabs, they're used to business,
so that everything is going fine here. One
of the other things
that we find is
that Muslims, wherever they go,
they tend to even if they don't openly
practice Islam,
their manifestation
of Islam is public.
So what does that mean? So we talked
about the Silk Road. Right? The Silk Road
has all these caravans of people going with
all of their merchandise.
It takes a very long time to travel,
and there's so many different, you know, people
from different countries travelling across that Silk Road
route. But what Muslims have to do while
they're travelling
is 5 times a day, or for some
of them when they're travelling 3 times a
day, they can combine prayers, they're gonna stop
and they're gonna pray. So they stopped and
they started praying on the roads right there
in the Silk Road, and everyone is watching
these people. They're thinking, what's going on over
here? So according to Chinese Muslim accounts,
in the beginning,
the the Muslim merchants were trading were were
praying on the Silk Road on on the
actual,
pathways.
So sometimes there were so many of them
that they would kind of almost start to
block some of the pathways. So somebody one
of the emperors came along or one of
the leaders came along and said, hey, why
don't we help you? We build a masjid
for you so you can go pray over
there and, you know, the road is gonna
be clear.
So that may have been the underlying reason
of why some of the masjids were originally
built. Those are from the Chinese Muslim sources
anyways.
Another reason why Islam spread is because these
Muslim traders were very honest. They were very
particular, they were very honest, they were upright
and because of that people started to notice,
hey, who are these new people? They're, you
know, they seem to be pretty good people
and they're honest, let's learn about who they
are. And when they explained to them who
they were, they realized that, hey, there's this
new religion called Islam, so people started learning
more about Islam.
Another thing that happened in the very early
period here is that there were a lot
of Jews who were living in China, and
they were very wealthy,
and they were actually employed by the government
as well.
So they were in the trading ports, and
they were doing good, and they were good
businessmen as well. But then it says that
by the end of 7th century
most of the Jews actually ended up converting
to Islam and they remained in China. Now
some people will maybe doubt that, so I
put the source here just in case you're
wondering. This is Clark Abell Narrative of a
Journey in the Interior of China, page 361.
This was written in London in the year
18/18.
Alright. So
in case anyone questions me, I have all
the sources, you know, for the material I'm
presenting here. So what that basically tells us
in summary is that at a very early
period,
Muslims were very well established in China.
They were somewhat segregated because they lived in
their own regions, but they're still living in
China. There were mercantile Muslim communities
that existed in the port cities that I
was mentioning, specifically in the cities of Guangzhou,
Quanzhou, and Hangzhou,
in the southeastern
seaboard region. And then they were in the
interior
of China as well in Chang'an,
Kaifeng, and Yangtze.
Alright. I know I'm probably slaughtering those names,
but that's okay. I researched some of them.
I couldn't research all of them on how
to pronounce them correctly, so you'll have to
pardon me. Alright. So
let's take a look at,
some other parts of history. So
this Masjid, this mosque is
pronounced I don't know how it's pronounced, but
the Huasheng mosque?
Huasheng?
Anybody know how to pronounce this correctly?
My one Chinese source I had? Okay. It
doesn't know either. That's okay.
So Huasheng mosque, also known as the lighthouse
mosque. Can anyone take a guess why you
think this is called the lighthouse mosque?
It looks like there's a lighthouse there. That's
actually a minaret,
but the thing is most minarets were decorated.
For some reason, they did not decorate this
minaret, and it's really thick, so people thought
it looked like a lighthouse.
So they just called it the lighthouse mosque.
Alright? So this is this is one of
the oldest mosques in the entire world.
This is this is this was
either has one of 2 dates on it.
It was either built in 6/27
by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, who is a
companion of the Prophet
and this is according to the Chinese Muslims.
They say Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas came, and
there are Chinese manuscripts saying that he actually
is the one who built this mosque. Right?
Now this could be the case,
but some people say, Well, we don't have
older documentation
proving that, and we don't know if Sa'd
really went into this land or not. So,
let's say it could be or it could
not be.
There's another story about what could have happened
afterwards. You have to understand,
the Masjid doesn't look like this from day
1. Like most masjids you know even in
America, right? The way they look now, it
didn't look like that, you know, 50 years
ago or 30 years ago or whatever. So
it gets developed and it evolves over time.
So it had an original structure,
but then the structure shifts over time. So
one account is that this was built by
Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, who's a very important
companion of the Prophet, peace be upon him,
in the year 627.
K. This is an old picture of it.
I just threw this one from 18/60.
Here's a modern picture of the Masjid. K?
The second one
the second theory is that
Emperor Gaozang,
the one that I mentioned to you before
in 651,
you know, who sent the ambassador to Uthman
was, you know, encountered by pharaohs.
When he received the Muslim envoy,
who was sent by the Khalifa
and he arrived in China,
the emperor himself said we should construct
a Masjid for these Muslims in Canton, and
Canton here is Guangzhou.
And Canton here is Guangzhou. It's one of
those port cities that I was mentioning, and
I'll show you a map in a moment.
So, actually, I'll just show you a map
right now. So that's where, no. That's a
different map. So anyways, we'll come back to
that map. So in,
the emperor himself,
according to one account, decided to build this
Masjid
in memory of the prophet Muhammad
So it's also known as the memorial mosque
in Canton.
So
the third theory is that it was reconstructed
in 742,
and that's where it got, you know, its
current you
know, style.
And they're saying that, you know, it must
have looked somewhere,
you know, somewhat a little bit different. So
the truth is somewhere in between these accounts.
We don't know exactly
who or when this was built, but we
know this was so
early it's You know, if you say a
masjid is over a 1000 years old, you're
like, Wow, a 1000 years old. No, this
is
1300
years old.
Okay? So this is a very very old
mosque or more. It's older than 1300 years
old potentially.
So this is one of the interesting mosques
to go and check out. It shows you
a little bit about the history of Muslims
in China. Now,
the chronicles of the Tang dynasty
actually talk about this mosque. So they wrote
they wrote
about this mosque themselves. K? So this is
what they have to say. They said that
in Canton,
okay, in Guangzhou,
a great number of strangers
from Medina
and several other regions
arrived in this land.
So Medina is where the Muslims are coming
from, and then they described them. They said
these strangers
these strangers
worship the heaven,
meaning they worship God. Right? And they had
neither statue,
nor idol, nor image in their temples.
No statues, no pictures, no idols, nothing.
Says, The kingdom of Madinah is close to
that of India,
from the perspective of the Chinese at least.
In this kingdom originated the religion of these
strangers,
which is different to that of the Buddha.
They do not eat pork or drink wine,
and they regard as unclean the flesh of
any animal that is not killed by themselves.
So they have to eat halal meat.
They are nowadays called the Hui Hui. Did
I pronounce that correctly?
Yes. Alhamdulillah.
Alright. So they had a temple called the
Temple of the Blessed Memory.
Okay? So they're talking about this, and they're
saying this was built at the commencement
of the Tang dynasty.
K. That could potentially mean it was built
by the Tang dynasty because of the emperor,
or it was built at the beginning of
the Tang dynasty.
At the side of the temple is a
large round tower, 160
feet high, called the Kangta.
Kangta means the undecorated
tower.
And these strangers used to go every day
to this temple to perform their ceremonies.
And aft after having asked and obtained the
emperor's permission
to reside in Canton, They built magnificent
houses
of a different style to that of our
country. They were very rich and they obeyed
a chief chosen by themselves.
So this is what's being written in the
Chinese accounts,
of the early Muslims who are living in
Canton and some of the other cities. So
this is one of the masjids over there.
That was all the way down,
where? Down here. So now we're moving up
to the North
East,
which is kind of like closer to modern
day capital Beijing.
Here, we see city called
Xian.
The Great Mosque of Xian was built in
the 8th century, which means the 700. So
it's also one of the oldest mosques
inside China, and it's all the way in
the mainland, it's not just near the ports.
So to today, this is the largest physical
mosque in China. There's a courtyard complex,
it's a very popular site.
It has,
5 courtyards,
20 buildings, and is 12,000 square meters in
size. Right? So this is kind of like
a tourist attraction
for people in China,
specifically for Muslim delegations who go and visit
China.
So
it's very beautiful. Here's some different pictures.
Right? And then here is the entrance to
the prayer area. I couldn't find a picture
of inside the prayer area, and here's some
other, of the courtyards that are out there.
So this is really interesting because if you
look at it now, this has Chinese
architectural form mixed in with some Islamic functionality.
And there's a history behind that. The original
mosque,
which over 1300 years old, was not exactly
like this. So we're gonna talk hopefully a
little bit about the history of how that
evolution came to be
and what it means. Okay?
Alright. So
moving on to,
the Song dynasty. K? So with the reason
why I put this under dynasties
is because
the change of political power in any country
affects the people of that country. Right? As
we saw with the election of different presidents,
you know, even in America. So it affects
the people, so it's the same way it
affected the Muslims. So under the Song dynasty
around now we're hitting, like, the year 1000
approximately,
Muslims were playing a major role in the
import export industry in particular because they were
living on the seacoast, there was a lot
of trading going on, and the director general
of shipping at this time was a post
that was consistently held by Muslims year after
year. The person who's in charge of shipping
and receiving in these ports was always a
post held by Muslims because they were very
good merchants and traders.
In the year 10/70,
the emperor
Shenzong
invited
5,300
Muslim mercenaries from the region of Bukhara.
Mercenaries are soldier for hire, basically.
So when they invited them, he wanted them
to settle in China.
Why? Because in the northeast of China, there
was a Lao empire who was giving him
some problems.
So he wanted Muslim help for the second
time. Right? So they come,
and they start to move right
near where modern day Beijing is, and they
settle there,
and they protect the borders,
by being paid off by the Chinese emperor.
So
these men settled in that area. This is
Kaifeng and Yanqing, which is modern day Beijing.
10 years later,
10,000
more Muslims from Bukhara
go and resettle in exactly the same era,
in the same area over here. And they
were led by a man by the name
of Amir Sayed,
and his Chinese name was
Sofeir
or su feir.
Right? So
he's a very popular man.
He's called the father of the Muslim community
in China. So he's very well known among
the Chinese
and before him
in in China, under the Tang dynasty and
even under the Song dynasty prior to the
year 10/80,
Islam used to be called Dashifa
or Tashifa,
which basically means law of the Arabs.
That was the name of Islam.
After he comes in, he's so popular and
he's so influential,
he renamed the religion to Hui Hui Zhao.
Zhao? Is that right?
Jo?
Jo. Alright. Hui Hui Hui Hui Hui.
Khos? Alright. Which means the religion of the
Hui Hui. Hui Hui basically means Muslim. Hui
is being identified as being Muslim
at that time and even nowadays. So it's
a type of people now, but it's
identification
of being Muslim. So he renamed the religion
among the Chinese people as well. So there
was a type of respectability
that shifted
because of these immigrants who are coming from
Bukhara at the time. So now what happens
is
you have more mosques coming around.
Alright? So some quick facts about masjids in
China. Today,
officially,
there's 39,000
mosques in China.
25,000
of those mosques are in Xinjiang, which are
in the northwest
region where all the persecution is taking place.
The mosques are called,
They are known as,
Pure Truth Temples.
K. That's what it means, basically,
and which is interesting because the name for
the masjid at the time is the same
name that Jews gave to their synagogues. So
they both had the same name.
So now a little bit about the masjids,
or the mosques in China.
There's 2 there's different styles. So what you're
gonna find in some masjids is that they
resemble the central Asian
Persian style of masjids, where they have very
tall,
slender, skinny minarets.
They have these curvy arches.
They have dome shaped roofs, you know, many
that we're kind of used to seeing. And
then you have some masjids, which combine
the Chinese and the, you know, traditional Islamic
styles, where they have these flared
Buddhist style roofs. They have walled courtyards.
They have architecture
with these miniature domes and small minarets.
So there's a reason for that. We're gonna
talk about it, but since we're gonna see
some right now, I'm gonna mention it to
you. This masjid right here is the
Nui Nui ji mosque.
Yes? No?
Nui
ji mosque?
Alright.
Nui ji. Nui ji? In Beijing. In Beijing.
Yes.
Nui
ji. Nui ji.
Okay.
New Jie. There.
The Ox Street.
Right. Right. Right. Yes. I I I read
about that. Yes. So this is one of
the oldest mosque in Beijing, which was built
in the year 996.
Today, there are 10,000 Muslims living
in the vicinity of this, and the mosque
itself is about 10,000 square meters in size.
So it's a very large mosque, and you
can see it's
got a very different architecture than the average
mosque does. That's the outside, that's the entrance.
This is the inside. This is what the
masjid looks like on the inside. So pretty
interesting,
pretty unique, and you can see the style.
Right?
This is the Idkha mosque.
Alright? This is in Kashkar, which is in
the Xinjiang province. This is the old province
northwest area.
This is the largest attended mosque in China.
Every Friday, there's at least 10,000 people attending
the Masjid, and they can actually hold up
to 20,000. Alright? Sometime it gets much larger.
It was built by Saqqis Mirza in the
year 1442,
but the original structure going all the way
back dates from 996
or maybe even earlier than that.
This is in, Kashgar.
Kashgar. Alright? 16,800
square meters, and this is where the persecution
is happening. So I'm gonna return back to
this, in in a little bit.
Alright. This masjid, right, as you can see,
looks very different.
This doesn't look like a Chinese masjid, but
it is. So this is in Kwanzu,
which is in Fujian area.
This was built in the year
1,009.
Right? And the reason why it has an
Arab style is because it's near the coastal
cities. And what was happening is not only
the Muslims who live in the coastal cities,
but you have all these visiting people coming
from different parts of the Muslim world
and they wanna see their own style of
architecture.
So they said we're gonna make it into
like this more arabesque
style rather than this Chinese style whereas you
find a shift in styles taking place. K?
So it is maintained,
that style as well. That's, that's the insight.
One of the other things,
the Chinese have developed or Chinese Muslims have
developed is what's called sini.
This is a calligraphic style, whereas it looks
kind of like Chinese characters, but if you
read carefully,
that's actually Arabic.
So they're writing Arabic. This is the 99
names of God, the 99 names of Allah
written in a style which is actually in
written in Arabic, but from the from a
from a distance it looks it looks different.
So it kind of fits in there. So
you'll find on a lot of masjids, it's
got
that style actually built into some of the
masjids.
Now again, a lot of this has to
do with ethnicity,
and I'm gonna try to get to that
in a moment. Alright.
So then, that was for that period. Then
the Mongols come. So if anyone has heard
about the Mongols, or if you just watch
the Ertugrul TV show, you know, you watch
season 2, you'll know a little bit about
the Mongols. So what's happening is they came
and started destroying
much of the Muslim
lands at the time.
So that Masjid that I showed you, the
Nuji mosque in Beijing, was destroyed by the
armies of Genghis Khan in the year 12/15.
They rebuilt the Masjid in 14/43.
What does that tell you?
Yes.
That they didn't like Islam, and you can't
even rebuild it until after they're gone. Right?
Exactly.
Right? So there is a lot of issues
here. So they're known as the Yuan dynasty,
and they're the Mongols basically, Genghis Khan and
his his descendants.
So
the emperors
forbade a lot of Islamic practices, and other
religions as well. So what happened was the
Jews were not allowed to slaughter their own
animals for, like, kosher, kashrut.
The Muslims were not allowed to slaughter their
own animals. They had to hide and just
just just to slaughter a sheep, you would
have to hide and do it because if
you get caught, you could be killed.
They're not allowed to circumcise their children.
The sharia is banned
on so many different levels,
and they would try to force Muslims to
eat the meat of the Mongols, and they
say, what's wrong with you people? And there's
a whole letter from some of the early
khans who were saying, you know, these we
need to force these people to eat, but
they're refusing.
Muslims would refuse to eat the meat because
they're not Jews and Christians, and they're not
slaughtering correctly. The way that they kill their
animals is not in line with Islamic principles.
They were killed
because they refused to eat the meat or
not, you know, non zabiha meat in China
at the time under the Mongols.
What's really interesting about the time when the
Mongols were conquer or were controlling China
is they
their empire was expanding so fast because they
were conquering so much territory
that what ends up happening is that somebody
needs to administer this territory.
They're very good
warriors, the Golden Horde and they're decimating everybody,
but who's going to control all of this
land?
So now they go to the Muslims and
they say, well these Muslims are very technologically
advanced, they're scientifically developed, they have good administration,
We need to bring them in
to run this place.
So they started
recruiting,
quote unrecruiting, meaning forcing
Muslims to migrate from Central Asia and from
Iraq region and move into China to administer
these lands.
1, because they're skilled,
and 2, because they're not Chinese.
So the Mongol policy was
take minorities,
put them in positions of power so that
they can dominate the people who are the
majority of the population to keep them in
check and keep them under control. So what
ends up happening is Islam is being pers
Muslims are being persecuted under the Mongols,
but at the same time,
they're being put into positions of power
because they wanna make sure that they control
the population in China
at the time. So what ends up happening
is hundreds of thousands of Muslims were forcibly
relocated
from their Muslim lands into China to help
the Mongols administer
all of these lands that they had conquered.
So what ends up happening is they're put
into a lot of high posts. Like, for
example, under Khubalai Khan, he's one of the
main,
you know, early
leaders here in the Yuan dynasty.
He puts Muslims in high posts like,
he puts them in charge of taxation and
finance.
Muslim scholars are brought in to make calendars
to be the astronomers of the region. In
the year 12/64,
just a little bit before this, they were
bringing people in anyways. There was an architect
by the name of,
Yahaidah
Erding.
Muslim name was Arab name was Amiruddin.
He led the construction of a new capital
for Kublai Khan, who's actually in charge of
this region, and that new capital is called
the Khanbaliq
or Dadu.
Right? So this was the entire capital which
is now in Beijing today.
He actually designed it and he was building
it
for the emperor of the Yuan dynasty over
here. There were 30 Muslims who were high
court officials.
There were 12 governors in the entire region.
8 out of the 12 governors were Muslims.
Among them were Sayid Adjal, Shamsuddin, Amur, Nasruddin,
Mahmoud Yalavakh, and other names. Right?
You have construction
of observatories
in Shanxi,
you have astronomers like Jamal al Din, they
introduced 7 new instruments,
that actually corrected the Chinese calendar and balanced
it out. Muslim cartographers were brought in, and
they were told to make maps of the
entire silk road to the exact detail. These
were the best maps that were available.
And what this did was it helped the
Mongols to dominate trade throughout this entire region.
So what they're doing is they're bringing basically,
after destroying the Muslim empire,
they're bringing all these Muslims in, they're forcibly
making them work, but then they're also rewarding
them with high positions,
And
there there's a lot of progress in science
and technology in China
because
the Muslims already have that previously, but now
they're being forced to do this under the
Mongols.
So Muslim physicians started building hospitals,
they had their institutes of medicine,
in Beijing and Chengdu.
The works of Ibn Sina or Avicenna, they
were published. They were being taught in the
schools over there. Muslim mathematicians
introduced Euclidean geometry,
spherical trigonometry,
and Arabic numerals into China,
and then there was military
inventions as well. So the Mongols
had a problem taking 2 cities from the
Chinese.
One was Fansheng
and one was Xinyang.
So they could not take these 2 cities.
They were trying for years and they kept
failing. So what did they do? They bring
in Ismail and Allah ad Din, who are
2 master siege engineers
from Iraq
who build this new counterweight catapult for them
to go and destroy
these towns so that the Mongols can take
over. And what was it named?
The catapult was named the
Alright?
So which is interesting. So what does Hui
Hui mean? Muslim.
Pao
sounds like catapult.
So it's actually named the catapult. Right? So
they named the catapult after them, and it's
called the Muslim catapult. That's that's actually the
name that was given to it. Right? So
they start to develop all of this technology.
What ends up happening near the end of
the Yuan empire, I'll summarize all of this,
the corruption starts going up, persecution starts to
increase. The Muslims,
even though they have positions of power, they're
tired of this persecution,
so are the Han Chinese. The Han are
the majority of Chinese, they're also tired of
the persecution.
They team up together and they rebel against
the Mongols finally,
and they managed to overthrow the Mongols. So
the the next dynasty that comes is called
the Ming dynasty.
The founder of the Ming dynasty is Zhu
Yuanzhang,
and he led Muslim generals
like,
Lan Yu against the Mongols. So the Muslims
and the Han Chinese were fighting together against
the Mongols to actually get them out of
China.
Right? So there was this rebellion that took
place, they overthrew them,
and you know, the Muslims say until today
that the people who know their history, this
is why they have some respect for the
Muslims because they teamed up together to actually
overthrow the Mongols because they were persecuting everyone.
So by the beginning of 14th century,
all the inhabitants of the region of Yunnan
had already become Muslim, and Islam was spreading
even more because of the Mongol presence, surprisingly.
Because they're putting them in positions of power.
Right? So even though they're suppressing them on
one side, they're also forcibly
making them migrate, and they're also giving them
positions of authority.
When the Ming dynasty comes,
the Ming dynasty's founder, I just mentioned his
name, I'll try not to pronounce it again
for the second time. Alright. So he did
something very nice.
He wrote
a praise of Islam.
Because he saw that, you know, the Muslims
are cooperating, we work together and everything. So
he wrote what's called the 100 word eulogy.
This is a
100 character praise of Islam
and praise of the Prophet Muhammad
in Chinese officially
written by
the the Empire at the time. So it
started out very good in the Ming dynasty.
Relations were good with Muslims, things were going
well.
The Yongle Emperor hired a very famous
admiral, his name was Zheng He or Zheng
He, not sure exactly how you pronounce it.
He was a Muslim, a sailor.
He led 7 expeditions through the Indian Ocean
from 1405
to 1433,
very famous explorer as well. So things were
going well,
but the only problem during this time, you
can see it as a problem or you
can see it as something good.
During this this region under the Ming dynasty,
they took an isolationist policy, perhaps because of
what happened with the Mongols.
So they're isolated
internally and the Muslims are isolated as well.
So all those Muslims that were brought into
China,
now they're cut off from the rest of
the Muslim world. So what ends up happening?
They start to assimilate
and adopt Chinese culture. So that's when they
start to start speaking Chinese dialects. Up until
this point,
the Muslims were retaining their original culture. They
were living independently but they were dressing differently,
they were speaking differently, they were eating their
own food, their masjids were looking like the
masjids of Central Asia or Arabia or Damascus
or wherever it was.
During this region, because they were cut off
from the Muslim world,
they start to take more Chinese names instead
of the Arabic names that I was mentioning
before. They start to adopt the culture of
the Chinese.
They start to integrate the architecture of the
Chinese into their masjids.
Their dress and their their style of clothing
changes. They start to wear the pigtail. They
start to grow out the long mustaches just
like the Chinese.
They still in the masjid, they put on
the turban, they put on the kufi, you
know, the topi, the cap and everything, but
that's only in the masjid. As soon as
they walk out, they go start looking back
exactly like the Chinese and they try to
blend in and fit in.
They start to
restrict certain practices because they don't want to
cause any problems because they saw the persecution
of the Mongols. So they don't want to
do anything to mess with the Ming dynasty.
They want to keep good,
relationships,
insha'Allah with them.
So,
this is something that's
battery? No, it's back. Okay. So this is
something that some people view as a good
thing.
Should we
try to make Muslims as indigenous as possible
and assimilate into the society? Or should we
maintain a certain level of, you know, cultural
independence
so that we can maintain our own individual
identity?
That's a very loaded question. And if we
have time like in a more detailed history
class,
we actually reflect upon lessons like this. So
I was told to put a little plug
in for my school. So, we have, California
Islamic University,
enrollment is open for the next quarter. We're
actually teaching a class, a 10 week class
on the history of Islam all the way
from the beginning of the Umayyads to the
fall or the sack of Baghdad,
by the Mongols. So we're gonna be covering
a lot of this history and we get
it's a 30 hour class, so so we
get a lot more time to reflect upon
lessons
and wisdom and things that, you know, we
can get out of that. So if you're
interested or any other classes, you know, we
have a table outside.
You can check outside, Insha'Allah,
or visit the website kalislamic.com.
Alright. That was the message from our sponsors.
And now back to our
regularly scheduled program.
So,
the Muslims at this period now, they start
to assimilate,
and sometimes they assimilate a little bit too
much. Right? So for example,
you find that some Muslim officials who are
employed by the government, they start to do
the
3 time forehead
bow prostration to the picture of the Emperor.
So you had to go and prostrate your
head 3 times in front of a picture
or something like that. So they do things
like that. And this is a practice that
has continued among some of the Chinese Muslims
at the time. And another thing that they
did was, they started
to try to show the Chinese that we're
we're kind of just like you. Islam is
directly in line with the teachings of Confucius.
So that becomes more acceptable and more, you
know,
palatable for them. So these are some of
the things that happened during the Ming dynasty.
Then we move to the Qing dynasty
Qing Qing dynasty. Thank you. Alright. So 1644
to 1911.
Alright. So,
basically these people were from the Manchu, they
were a minority, and they took power, and
they were ruling.
This period was not good for Muslims at
all. They also prohibited Muslims from slaughtering their
animals, they prohibited them from building masjids, they
prohibited them from going and performing the hajj,
they were not allowed to go on the
hajj even.
And what happens here now is that they
started even putting
like, tablets inside the the masjid outside. They
said the Emperor may the Emperor live forever,
like outside the masjid. So they started exerting
more and more control
over the masjids, over the Muslims lifestyle in
different regions like Yunnan, Ningbo and different places.
So what happens is because of this repression,
now all of this plays into what's happening
today.
Because of this repression,
there were 5
*
rebellions that took place from the Muslims.
And these are primarily the Hui rebellions taking
place. So there's the Panthai rebellion in Yunnan,
which is South China,
right there. Okay? This was a major rebellion
from 1855
to 1873.
What did the Chinese do or what did
this empire do in response?
The
Qing.
The Qing dynasty.
So what did the Qing dynasty do? They
responded with the policy that they called the
washing of the Muslims policy.
Just exterminate them and wipe them out. So
in the Panthi rebellion in Yunnan, 2,000,000 Muslims
were slaughtered.
Then there was a Dungen revolt in
Xinjiang,
in Shaanxi and Gansu in 18/62
to 18/77.
This was one of them was led by
a man by the name of Yaqub Beg,
he's a very famous Muslim.
They slaughtered
millions of Muslims across the board, they cut
off his head, and you remember that masjid
that I showed you, the largest one that's
attended? They put his head up on the
masjid
to show everyone
this is what's gonna happen
if anyone even tries to resist any of
our policies that's happening. So this has been
going on for a very long time. They
engage in genocide
at a mass level.
Right? And what's really interesting is
that some of the Muslims,
they defected to the other side and they
joined the Qing dynasty in actually persecuting
their own Muslim brothers and sisters.
Right? So why did they do this? There's
a lot of reasons why they did it.
Obviously, there's money, there's power, they're gonna get
rewarded,
but also part of the reason was is
that a lot the Chinese Muslims, a lot
of them, they belong to different groups in
terms of the way they view their religion.
And they're part of the Nakshbandiya
Sufi orders.
And within those orders, there were two main
ones at the time. 1 is called the
kafiyyah and one is called the jahriyah.
Originally,
the kafiyyah are people who do silent zikr.
SubhanAllah, SubhanAllah, quietly.
The jahariyah do it out loud. Obviously, that's
not why they're killing each other. Right? I'm
sure it's a lot more
involved in that, but it ends up becoming
identity politics for them. So what ends up
happening is, the people who belong to the
kafiyyah group, they actually said, well most of
these people who rebelled, they're all from the
jahriyah group, so we're gonna go ahead and
join the army and, you know, we're gonna
get our reward and we might as well,
you know, get rid of these people which
we disagree with anyways and we get in
positions of power. So this was where Muslims
started dividing amongst each other. Right? So some
of them are supporting the government
against the rebels,
and the rebels are trying to, you know,
get get their freedom because they're being persecuted.
So
the situation got really bad, you cannot publicly
even talk about Islam at the time.
Here is a letter,
that was sent.
There was a report that was sent to
the emperor in the year 17/83.
There was a governor,
of the province of Huangshai.
He says that I have the honor respectfully
to inform your majesty
that an adventurer named Han Foyun
of the province of Huangshai
has been arrested on a charge of vagrancy.
So they arrested some Chinese Muslim guy. So
this adventurer, when interrogated as to his occupation,
confessed that for the last 10 years he's
been travelling through different provinces of the empire
in order to obtain information about his religion.
So he said, Yeah, I'm a student of
knowledge.
I'm going around, I'm studying the religion. K?
He said, In one of his boxes,
we found 30 books.
Some of them he wrote by himself, his
own notebooks,
and some of them were in a language
that nobody understands.
K, probably Arabic.
And then he says, these books praise
in an extravagant and ridiculous
manner a western king called Muhammad.
The above mentioned
pho yun, when put to torture,
finally confessed
that the real object of his journey was
to propagate the false religion taught in these
books and that he remained in the province
of Shenzi for a longer time than anywhere
else.
So he's not allowed to talk about Islam
propagate anywhere, even in these regions.
And then he says, I've examined these books
myself,
some are written in a foreign language, I'm
not able to understand them. The others that
are written in Chinese are very bad. I
may add even ridiculous
because there's exaggerated
praise for people
who don't deserve that praise
because I've never even heard of them.
Not a very eloquent argument to the emperor
anyways, but so so it continued. So basically
you're not even allowed to talk about Islam,
you're not in these regions, they're being arrested,
things like that.
So all of this comes into play in
18/84,
very important date.
What happens at the Qing dynasty,
they establish
a place or a region that's called Xinjiang,
which is here.
Xinjiang means the new frontier.
K? This was not called this before. This
is the region where the persecution is taking
place. And they said this is a province
of China. It's part of the empire. It
used to be called,
Zumbu or the Zungar region or Hui Hui
Zheng,
right, which means Muslim land. So they renamed
it and they said, no. This is our
land and we're gonna take it. So all
of this is gonna play a role here.
So we move on to the modern era.
The Republic of China is established in 1911.
There's a second Sino Japanese war. The Japanese
come in, start destroying
everything. They destroyed 220
mosques. They killed so many Muslims and massacred
them. By 1941,
there was a incident called the * of
Nanking, if you've heard about that.
This was in western China. It was basically
the mosque were flowing with dead bodies. And
what they did was this isn't see, I'm
trying to show you that this is not
like
a American,
European unique thing. The Japanese came and they
were taking pork fat and they were smearing
pork fat onto the masjids.
Right? So the way that Muslims are being
persecuted, it's the same around different parts of
the world. It's not like a white man's
thing or black man's thing or something.
People come up with the same ideas. They
forced the Muslim girls to become * slaves,
they destroyed the cemeteries of the Muslims in
which they were buried, and so many other
atrocities took place. It's been very very difficult
for the Muslims of this era. Then the
People's Republic of China is established.
The cultural revolution,
the socialist communist revolution
happened from 1966
to 1976.
What you have is all the religions are
being persecuted.
Masjids are being destroyed, they're being defaced, they're
being shut down, Qurans are being burnt, Qurans
are being destroyed, all these Red Guard soldiers
are coming in and destroying everything. The government
accuses Muslims and others of being anti socialist.
So your practice of Islam
is anti
okay. Your practice it needs a break sometimes,
you know, 100.
So your practice of Islam is antisocialist.
It's against our beliefs,
so we need
to prevent this from manifesting itself. So
the State
Administration of Religious Affairs today officially says there's
21,000,000 Muslims in China, There's 36,000
mosques. There's 45,000
Imams,
which is strange for me. So 45,000
Imams and 36,000
mosques. If only America had that problem. Right?
So and and there's 10 Islamic schools.
Something's weird about that number. Okay. So 36,000
mosque, 45,000
imams, and 10 Islamic schools in China today.
That's that's the official
statistics.
Most of the Muslims
live
in
the Xinjiang region, Gansu, and Ningxia,
Ningxia province. K? There's large populations of Muslims
living in the south in Yunnan
and in Henan in Central China as well.
K? So
there in China, you have to understand things
are split
along ethnic lines.
So the majority
of Chinese are called Han. The Han make
up 90%
of the Chinese population.
There are 55 officially
recognized
minority
peoples who live in China,
and 10 out of the 55
are Muslim. K? They're mainstream Sunni Muslim. The
Hui
constitute 9,800,000
according to the official,
census.
The Uighur
are 8,400,000.
So almost 5050 split.
The Uighur are the ones who are living
in the Xinjiang region, the northwest the ones
who are being persecuted, and then the third
is Kazakh at 1,250,000.
So
what's happening is that Islam is suppressed in
China for a lot of the Muslims,
but the people who come from the background
of
the
Uighur,
from the Xinjiang region specifically,
those are the ones who are going to
be persecuted the most. And the reason why
is, because this is known as the Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region,
but according to many of them, they call
it East East Turkestan.
They don't consider themselves a lot of them
don't consider themselves to be Chinese. They don't
wanna be under the Chinese empire or the
Chinese, you know, country of China in the
first place. So what happened was that China
has been trying to get rid of these
Muslims for a very long time, and they
treat Muslims who are from the nationality of
Hui
different from the Uyghurs,
because they're different people and they're given different
status and a lot of this has to
do with ethnicity.
So
there is a massive state sponsored
migration
of Han Chinese from the 19 fifties to
19 seventies
into the Xinjiang province in order to dilute
the population
of the Uighur Muslims that are living there
so that they don't have so much control,
they don't have so much power. So what's
going on in China?
For many Muslims
who as but particularly for the Uighurs. Ramadan
comes, you're forced to break your fast. Here's
some food, the state has given you a
gift of a free lunch on the state,
and you have to eat it. And if
you don't eat it, you will be taken
to jail. And I'm gonna tell you what
the jail is. You cannot name your children
Muslim names like Muhammad. You cannot even name
your child Muhammad. It's a crime. Not for
Huiyh,
but for the Uighur Muslims. There's 2 different
standards being applied to the 2 different types
of Muslims. You cannot grow a long beard,
you could be potentially arrested for that. If
you wear a veil or hijab or niqab,
you can be arrested. If you're wearing your
long robe clothes,
you can also be arrested.
All vehicle owners among the Uighurs, they have
to install a GPS into their vehicle so
that they can be tracked. You have to
have a GPS in your vehicle.
There is facial recognition cameras all around the
entire area, so they know exactly who's going
in and out, and they can see exact
this is high-tech persecution.
K? Way more high-tech than we're seeing in
any other parts of the world.
Under doors is a QR code. You guys
know what a QR code is? That little
thing you scan? So there's QR code on
the door of every single house if you're
a Uighur.
What is that for? If the police wanna
do a check, they're gonna scan the QR
code and they're gonna see the pictures of
everyone who's supposed to be living in this
house.
If there's someone missing or if there's someone
additionally being hosted in there, you're in big
trouble, you're gonna be taken. So what's happened
now
is that in 2018,
the United Nations has released data, and according
to American
government as well, say, 1,000,000
Uighurs
have been detained
into these quote unquote reeducation
camps.
These are not really reeducation camps. What they
are is they're either internment camps or they're
concentration camps.
United Nations is saying that this is very
we haven't seen anything like this at this
level
since the time of the Nazis.
K. That's how bad it's actually gotten. And
what the Chinese government is generally doing, in
this region especially,
is they are taking these international fears of
terrorism and ISIS and Daish and all of
that stuff, And they're saying, you know what?
They might be in this region too, so
we have to crack down.
We put 1,000,000 people in detention. Many of
them are dying in the camps, when they
get released they end up dying, their family
doesn't even know that they're missing.
And what are they doing? Reporters are banned.
No reporters are allowed to see what is
actually going on. So there are people who
are actually capturing, trying to capture satellite images,
and there was 1,
young university student
who actually broke the story on this. He
actually traced
the bids that were taking place by the
Chinese government of what type of structures they
were gonna be building, and he back traced
based upon the bids and the materials that
they were doing and what type of construction
was gonna happen, he could figure out what
is in these detention
facilities. And then it was verified and confirmed
later on. So very very interesting,
but very sad story. So what's happening? Once
they take them in prison,
they make them recite political propaganda.
I don't know what it is, you know,
praise be to China or something like that,
and they have to renounce their Islam.
They're
convinced to renounce their Islam, they're being tortured,
but some have died, and they have to
come out and they want to brainwash them
and program them into being something completely different.
This is what Uyghur justhurs look like, militaries
there. That masjid that I showed you, this
is the population as well, the Uyghur population
living over there. Now what's happening is, you
have massive influx of Hui Muslims coming into
the Xinjiang province for the last decades.
And unfortunately, because you have you have a
500%
increase
in the number of Hui Muslims
versus a 1%
increase
in the number of,
Uighur Muslims.
Sometimes even tension comes in between
the different groups. Right? Because one of them
is gonna be serving in the state, one
of them is gonna have access to positions,
one of them is gonna have access to
wealth, and the other ones are gonna be
persecuted as minorities.
This is only one region, even in Tibet
there's a lot of persecution
happening between
the Tibetans and between the Muslims as well.
I'll leave that for another day, but it's
very important for us to understand this history
and also know the politics of what's taking
place today Insha'Allah. So I'll open it up
to questions Insha'Allah.
We decided to go ahead and just make
a single file line. It's gonna be a
lot easier. Are you gonna explain it, insha'Allah?
Yes. Assalamu alaikum, peace
be upon you all. Thank you so much,
Sheikh Mustafa. I really appreciate it. So at
this time, it's,
of course. Thank you so much.
It takes a lot of work, all the
research and, right?
So we really appreciate that. Thank you so
much. Of that. So what we're gonna do
at this time is we have a we're
gonna have a mic set up in the
back. If you have questions, I would encourage
you all to start forming a line here
to ask a question. I would ask you
to please keep your questions under 10 seconds
because if it's more than 10 seconds, then
you should be sitting over here conducting the
presentation. So just out of courtesy and respect,
if we can have everybody stand there, number
1, that'll be great for the questions. The
mic will be coming soon.
Number 2,
please make sure the questions are relevant to
the topic at hand. Right? If there are
questions outside of this topic, I'll ask you
to full check most of it to the
side to ask those questions. But just out
of courtesy to everyone, we make sure we'll
try to, do our best to ask questions
relevant to the topic that we're covering today.
Number 3, I've got word from the kitchen
that, we still have food left, so what
we're gonna do is a little special for
everyone. You guys ready?
So same meal, everything, except we're gonna drop
it down to $8 for those of you
if you haven't as of yet got a
chance yet. But if you've already supported the
masjid, you wanna support it again, you're most
welcome to do so. It just doesn't include
the drink. Right? But it's $8 for the
meal. So if you wanna do it, just
purchase your ticket then make your way to
the kitchen,
that'll be after the q and a is
over, inshallah. Okay? Is that okay with everyone?
And I wanna thank you all for taking
time out. Let's go ahead and, continue with
the question and answer session, Shalom. Alright. So
let me just begin by saying, first of
all, so I'm not an expert in the
history of, Islam in China, so
just go easy on your questions. Just letting
you know.
I have I have researched it.
The microphone needed a break again. So I've
researched it, but just keep in mind, if
it's something really, really detailed, I may not
be able to answer it. I'm hopefully, I
get to ask you questions because I think
you know probably more than me. Go ahead.
My name is Ali
Taixiang Wang.
Wang is a very common Chinese name.
You look at me, you might get a
first impression I'm a regular Chinese.
But
if you get more detail about me, and
then you I'll share with you,
I'm not a not a 80% population
named the Han tribe. I'm Hui.
And I'm Hui in a sense, not from
Northwest China, Xinjiang,
but it is the from the
Central East Coast,
traditional Muslim family,
which which is a very, very minority
in in the in in in the Chinese
heartland.
This kind of topic, it attract me from
Glendale.
I'm very glad No. No. Jamal. I want
Jamal. I want Jamal. Jamal. Let him. I
wanna say something real quick. Yeah, please. So
it's a continuation
of the today's beautiful lecturing. I enjoyed my
very much.
Since
1978,
Greater Los Angeles Chinese Muslim community,
not all, but let's say 5%,
they formed a association
registered with the federal government and the state
government as a nonprofit organization.
And the
our activity up and down, the peak time,
those on the mailing list kinda amount to
80 families. Now, probably a little bit less,
but
those having interest to know more about the
the the the the the Muslim
Muslim in China historically
as l as well as nowaday,
I especially, they're nowaday, they are evidence,
people like me and even those coming fresh
out of China in the last 30 years.
We have a gathering
on the 1st Sunday of every month
at the Las Tuna's Masjid in Saint Gabriel.
Hours run between 2 PM till 5 PM.
No appointment necessary.
If you have interest to know us
and any question to ask,
come to see us. We got a plenty
of brother Caesar to entertain you. Hamdurella.
Alright?
And I personally
because
by nature
and,
you know you know, and I've grown up
by interest
from my parents.
You know, I got to know a lot
about their hometown in Central East Valley of
China.
And I personally, in the last 10 years,
we turned there to visit more than twice.
It was so moving, and I rode the
bus to the downtown terminal. I came out
came down.
I broke into tears.
So make the story short,
if you want to know about more,
we have a plenty of things to entertain
you free of charge, and you'll be very,
very happy. Thank you very much. Alright. Thanks
a lot. Thank you.
Again,
remember my name,
Ali Wong,
w a n g. Thank you. Thank you.
And thank you.
So I actually had the pleasure
to live with your son for 6 months
in Egypt because he was my roommate. So
I've learned a lot about,
China from him. Alhamdulillah.
So alhamdulillah.
Okay. So anybody want for questions? Most welcome
to come on up and ask your questions.
Yes, we will have to make you guys
come here and ask questions.
Thank you.
Yeah.
You can tell me the question and I
can ask it on your behalf.
Yeah. I can't pronounce that.
If
you can, it'd be great. I don't wanna
butcher the name.
That was my way to get you.
Alright. Assalamu alaikum. Alright.
I just had some questions, a little bit
more questions on the on the we Muslims
and the Uighur Muslims. What was I know
you were talking about it, but why is
one being more persecuted than the other? Okay.
Because of their ethnicity. So the Hui Muslims
are seen as like native Chinese.
Right? So they are considered to be more
native. They're closer to the Chinese, whereas the
Uighur Muslims are actually Turks. They're not even
technically Chinese. They themselves are identifying as Turks.
So there's a lot of immigrant there's a
lot of, you know, movement immigration that has
happened, but nationality is such an important thing
in China. That's why they're being single out.
1, because of their nationality, and 2, because
they are calling for independence because they're all
the way on the border over there. So
they want to be independent from China. They
wanna be part they wanna be called East
Turkestan. They have their own flag. It's a
blue flag. It's got a crescent. It's got
a star. So all of that plays a
role into it as well. And and and
nationality is such a big thing among for
the Han, Han Chinese specifically. They even do
genetic tests to actually see who is,
you know, genetically going back to original Chinese
or coming from a different region. So the
Muslims, what's really interesting
is that the Muslims, most of the Hui
Muslims,
they show their genetic records to say, look,
we can prove
that we're more native Chinese to this land,
then we don't even have the blood coming
in from the Middle East or Central Asia
region.
So that's one of their ways that they
can show, like, credibility to You can say,
oh, well, you are just from the people
of Bukhara who came in here from that
history that we talked about. But actually, no.
A lot of them had actually
accepted and converted into Islam and have the
genetics to prove it as well.
You can.
Please. Hey, why don't you grab the microphone?
Okay. Or not.
The the 2nd largest group is a Hui,
people like me.
One good example I can think of is
a Muslim man,
it's it's the minority.
He married
a a Chinese girl.
Or
the father gave away the the daughter
to a a non Muslim man, but the
conditions that you you
got to convert into Islam.
And I bear a very common Chinese family
name, Wang. That means king.
It's a typical Han people,
but I'm Muslim.
Okay.
The
okay. Because of the intermarriage
in China over a 1000 years between
Muslim and the non Muslim,
they are really bolted down. So so
regarding the communist rule in the last
68 years,
probably the the the the communist government,
you know, they are concerned about the, you
know, you know, mostly against the
the communist government
is lesser came from
the way people like me.
But they are more concerned about the UGG
in Northwest China,
Xinjiang bordering, you know, you know, all the
Central Asia,
Russian Central Asia.
So that's that's the difference. Yeah. Thanks.
I'm there.
So I had a question. So,
you know, for people in the west and
even people, like, from South Asia, like you
and I, we look at people above the
Himalayas as sort of just being monolithic. They're
all sort of Chinese in a way. Right?
Recently I read a bit of the Muqaddama
by Ibn Khaldun
and he actually refers to Tibet.
Right? And it seems, I don't remember specifically,
but he he might also,
refer to what is now Xinjiang.
But, so there's a clear idea of distinction.
Kashkari. Yeah. Mentioned. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. So he
there's a sense of distinction
for things that are, like, beyond the Himalaya
the region beyond the Himalayas. Right? So,
why would it be that the Tibetans,
and the and the Wirs would not, like,
get along when they have a sense of
solidarity in that they're different ethnic groups and,
like, people who have different languages
and different religious practices against the sort of
Han majority or the
the Chinese majority? Okay. So it's not so
much the,
Tibetans and the Uyghurs that are not getting
along. It's the Tibetans and the Hui that
are not getting along. So the reason is
because the Tibetans are saying that they're being
persecuted by China,
and the Hui are actually being supported by
the government in those regions. So they're getting
access to power, they're getting access to wealth.
So when the Tibetans are protesting against the
Chinese government, they'll go and attack the Hui
because they're being backed by the Chinese government.
So that's their way of lashing out and
there happened to be Muslims who are living
there. So that's reason number 1. Reason number
2 is the clash of religions.
So just like you have, you know, the
Buddhist monks who are persecuting in Myanmar,
you know, the,
Burmese, you know, people over there, the Rohingya.
You find the same thing happening over there
as well. So you do have extremist groups
who are persecuting over their Muslims. So it's
it's not the Uyghurs, it's more the Huit,
because they're being backed by the Chinese versus
the Tibetans.
Okay.
Cool.
Thank
you.
I I guess we we know that the
Uighur Muslims are being persecuted.
What do you suggest,
American Muslims or at least American
in this country be able to help them
in any way? What do you suggest in
terms
of politically how we can help them or
or in any type of
of is there any organization out there that
can help bring attention to the persecution of
Muslims in China?
So
what my general advice is is to the
organizations who are already
doing relief
work in different regions
is that we need to expand
our
mentality
to include
the persecuted Muslims living in China as well.
So this this is kind of like, what
ends up happening is we focus on a
lot of regions,
but we also overlook some regions. So I
think if instead of building a new organization
I'm sure there are other organizations out there,
but they're not that large or that established.
If those other regions can somehow
those other organizations,
like, I'm not gonna name them, but if
they can start
getting
their foot into those regions, start having more
appeals as well, like, they're having appeals for
all different places, I think that would be
the ideal. So what I what I would
recommend rather than just saying, well, let's just
give a few bucks here, a few bucks
there, and somehow get it. I think giving
nasiha or advice
and guidance to those large Muslim organizations,
or large relief organizations who are already doing
all this work in so many other places,
because they have the resources, because they have
the infrastructure,
ask them that they need to really expand,
if they're able to, into this region and
put some, you know, advice
to to get them to do that. And
once they do that, we can continue supporting
the same organizations that we're supporting, but they
can have an expanded reach into these regions.
I think that would be the best way
to go about it.
One more follow-up question. Is there any political
opportunities or political pressure
of any sort that you recommend?
Perhaps, like calling the your congressman
or reaching out to to,
the State Department
and talk about the Uighur Muslims and making
an issue of it in some way? So
the only one who's done that, or at
least a little while ago, was Marco Rubio.
He actually had a big panel on that,
and he was calling for it. So regardless
of what all his all his other policies
are and everything, I think that was a
good step and he actually brought some awareness,
to the American community. And because of America's
relations with China, it's a lot easier to
kind of team up with America on an
issue like this. Because they're also trying they
have their own political interests in the region,
so they they they don't wanna see this,
suppression happening either. So, yeah. I think,
I think
I don't know exactly who to call, but
I think getting involved politically for it and
also not just having the media report more
on it. So, when the New York Times
put out an article on it, when, the
Guardian put an article out on it, there
should be follow-up with these press agencies saying,
hey, we're very happy that you put this
out. We support you. We give you more
subscriptions. The more people who do that, the
more likely they are to actually continue,
releasing,
articles and writing things like this.
Could you put some light on current demographics
in Xinjiang province?
In terms of the people? Yeah. The Muslim
versus the migration
have,
have started like seventies. Right?
In Xinjiang? This migration.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So in terms of the
numbers, I don't have the statistics on me.
So I can't I don't I don't recall
them off the top of my head.
I believe though,
the ratio
It was either the ratio of Han
to
Uighur or Hui to Uighur was 5050
in the Xinjiang region. I forgot which one,
to be honest with you. But that's all
I can recall off the top of my
head. Thank you.
I just need a bit of a clarification.
Before the prophet Mohammed
was called upon, peace be upon
him,
he was his the main reason he was
called upon was to because there was a
lot of confusion with a lot of different
beliefs.
Because, Islam
existed before he was called upon. Correct?
Yep. So the main reason the prophet Mohammed
was called upon
was
to spread word of Islam where? In other
places other than,
China?
I'm not not following the question. Okay. The
prophet Muhammad, he he was the last messenger
called upon
for what main reason?
What why was he the last prophet, is
you're saying? Yes. Ah, okay. So,
part of it is because the communication in
the world had developed to an extent where
one prophet is able to go and spread
the message around everywhere else. Other than that,
we are closest to the end of time.
So these are the two main reasons why
he was the last prophet. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. I think you can tell him directly.
I think he can hear you inshallah.
You can you can replan.
Sure. I'll
Who became a Muslim?
No. His grandson.
His grand his grandson. Yeah. Not him.
I just do announcement for food. You have
a
question?
So someone like to go for the lecture.
I have a question. Does the Hui is
more like a Shihi, Sunni, or is this
more like ethnic city, tribe? And then that
was my first question. The second question, is
there any some sort of like, in terms
of politics, is there any more like Islamophobia
played into role about the prosecution of Hui
in China?
And then the third one, is there any
sort of sentiment the way the Middle East
is the Saudi and then Israel against the
Iran or the Xi? Is there some sort
of, like, those kind of conflict? I didn't
get fully the second and third question. I
got the first one.
The first one is about Hui Hui is
an ethnicity. It's not Sunni Shia. It's not
a group. It's not a, it's not a
sect. It's ethnicity. So And almost all of
them are Sunni. Almost all of them are
Sunni.
Is there an Islamophobia
element playing the role in the persecution of
Hui? Of the Hui? Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. So just to give you an example,
like,
Ibrahim who is my was my roommate in
Egypt. I remember, you know, when we were
there, his wife was actually
coming, or I think Were you married at
the time or your wife was coming to
marry you? 1 of the 2. You were
married. Yeah. He was he was married, and
then I had to, you know, leave his
apartment because his wife took the place of
myself. So,
that was okay. But, I remember hearing that,
his wife who is Hway as well in
the region, she's going to university, and in
Ramadan,
they're forcing her if she wants to go
for her exams, they're forcing her to eat
before she can walk into the university. That
was her. Right? Or her brother? Her brother.
Her brother. Her brother. Right? So I was
just shocked. I'm like, you have to you're
forcibly forced to break your fast. So these
are not Uighurs.
These are Hwe Muslims. So Islamophobia is definitely
there. You're being forced to break your fast.
If you're living If you're in the government,
some of them get to fast, some of
them don't even get to fast in Ramadan.
You have to do certain rituals which are
totally against Islam. So, there is
suppression of all religions, many religions in China,
but specifically for Muslims, yes. There's absolutely Islamophobia
and suppression as well. So there's On one
side, it's a little bit better than the
the the communist era that I mentioned, the
Cultural Revolution. It's better than it was before,
but it's still not where it should be.
What was your third question?
Okay. Alhamdulillah.
Alright. I think that's,
Yes. You guys
Okay.
Ibrahim, you wanna just
pronounce it?
How to pronounce? How to pronounce Han.
Oh, I don't know. That's but when he's
saying
sorry. When he's saying Han, he he he's
referring to the majority ethnicity.
Yeah. Yeah. When
oh, so she's talking about Han.
K. He's gonna pronounce it for you. No.
What I'm saying what I'm saying is,
Yeah. Khan and Khan are not the same.
They're different. So he's saying Han, the people,
the Han people, had nothing to do with
the Khan. Khan is a different title that's
given to people, and Khan are the majority
Chinese population in China.
Oh, you're asking about how you pronounce Khan
in Chinese?
Yeah. We can we can do it on
a private level, Insha'Allah. He can
he can give you a a private demo,
inshallah.
Okay?
So
Alright. Inshallah.
You wanna conclude? Yeah. I'll make announcements.
Okay. Alright. I wanna thank you Oh, okay.
A little
louder. I wanna thank you all for taking
time out. I know most of you are
getting your way out. So what we're gonna
do is we have to stop it here.
Inshallah, at the end, you can you're most
welcome to talk to Sheikha Mustafa. Just as
a quick announcement, the kitchen is open. Food
is $8, so it's just a little small
special we have for everyone. Again, all the
proceeds are going back to the masjid to
take care of the expenses and hopefully invest
in more projects like this. May Allah bless
you all. If I can have everyone's assist,
if you can just maybe fold your chair
and the and the volunteers here, if you
guys can help us out, we're just gonna
fold the chairs and put them on the
racks. And again, the kitchen is open. May
Allah bless you all. Sheikh Mustafa is available
here. We have a blessed day. Thank you.