Investigation On Kaifeng Jews Converted To Islam

With five thousand years history, Jewry is one of the greatest nations in the world, whose development is full of roughness and tortuousness. Though two thousand years wandering, countless persecution and banishment, Jews is still survival. One of these branches scattered to Kaifeng, China, almost one thousand years assimilation with native nations, due to subjective and impersonal reason, these descendent of Jaws lost their original culture and nation characters, becoming one part of Han or Hui nationality.Based on Chinese ancient literatures, articles kept by Kaifeng Jaws and newspapers and periodicals related, this article reviews, analyzes and recovers the evolvement of religious life and faith of the Kaifeng Jaws. After conducting various investigation and resorting to their current living conditions, some factors of subjective and impersonal reason on faith variance were discussed, and some ideas of self-identity on nation and religion were presented also. Considering the similarity of doxy and dogmata of Islam and Jew-dom, this article put forward some personal ideas on why the Kaifeng Jaws would convert to Islam.This article is devoted to using anthropologic method and theory to study the converted-to-Islam descendant of Kaifeng Jews, presenting a different view to other scholars on this field.