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For many years, the relatively small size of the Muslim community in China (some 25-30 million), and of the Hui population)1 in particular (about 15-20 million), meant that studies on Chinese-speaking Muslims considered these people as a homogeneous group, despite the scattered pattern of their settlement throughout the vast land mass of the Middle Kingdom. Since the pioneering and rudimentary work of Marshall Broomhall and others in the 1900s,2 little has been done to document the immense diversity of identity and practice within Chinese Islam. In his work Muslim Chinese. Ethnic Nationalism in the Peoples-Republic, D. Gladney made significant progress in establishing the identity of the Hui as distinct from other Chinese-speaking Muslims and even from Hui in different geographic locations within China.3 He showed that the concept of "Huiness" has very different connotations for different Hui communities and individuals and, in a number of his more recent works, also examined some of the religious and political consequences arising from these differing understandings of Hui identity.4
Within the Chinese Muslim community itself, there is internal division along sectarian lines that has been frequently overlooked by Western and, to a lesser extent, Chinese scholarship, despite the importance of these movements to Hui identity, especially in inland China, Over the last two decades, considerable work has been done mapping the historical background and social and religious practices of the various Chinese Islamic kinds of teaching, Jiopai, which we shall call here 'sects' only in this sense.
The word 'sect' has different meanings as it applies to different religious traditions. In Islamic scholarship, it is generally understood to indicate a movement which has moved so far from broadly accepted Islamic norms that it is properly considered heterodox. Sect can also be an uncomfortable word to use in an Islamic context, particularly in reference to Sufism, because of its underlying connotation of exclusivity and heterodoxy. Even across the vast Sunni-Shiite divide, there is sufficient commonality in theology and worship style to permit ecumenical prayer in a way difficult to conceive of in, for instance, Christianity. This is especially true among Sufi orders, where followers are frequently initiates of more than one order.
It is somewhat anomalous then, that within the generally tolerant religious atmosphere of China, Islam should take...