Ethnological Research On History And Current Situation Of Islamic Salafiyyah In Ningxia

It is1930s that Salafiyyah has been introduced into China and the initial development was slow. In spite of its public transmission from1950s, it has faced tremendous obstruction. The real development of Salafiyyah has occurred after the reform and opening-up and it becomes the youngest Islamic faction in China. With the rapid development in the quantity of Mosques and believers, the ideology and proposition of Salafiyyah have been accepted by the Muslim young and middle-aged group. It has different scales of distribution in Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Shannxi, Yunnan, Henan and so forth.There is short of specialized field work on the development of Islam Salafiyyah in Ningxia and the attention on it is not enough. The experience of it is similar with the development of Salafiyyah in Linxia, but they have their distinct evolutive characteristics. Nowadays there are distributions of Salafiyyah Jamaat in every cities and counties in Ningxia, the mainly concentrated distribution of which are Haiyuan, Xiji, Guyuan, Tongxin, Hongsibu, etc. The number of believers is about20,000. However, Salafiyyah in Ningxia has been misunderstood and excluded for a long time. Based on long-term field work and in-depth interviews with those who were the transmitters in the early stage and witnesses of Salafiyyah in Ningxia, this research summarizes the historical development of Salafiyyah in Ningxia, analyzes its ideological features, the distributions of believers and Mosques as well as discusses the reasons, characteristics and influence of Salafiyyah in Ningxia. Finally, this paper makes an introspection on the development of Salafiyyah in China thinking that it is a kind of religious Risorgimento in Chinese Muslim society and also a manifestation of Muslim cultural self-consciousness. This research will fill in gaps in the research of the history and current situation of Islamic Salafiyyah in Ningxia and provides firsthand materials to the research of Salafiyyah in China. It is of great practical significance to the in depth research on the Islamic factions in Ningxia.