Religion In China Essay

Definition and History of Islam and Uighurs in China Despite how the current government may treat religion, religion has been a major driving force throughout China’s history. There is hardly a time when China wasn’t affected or influenced by religion, or peoples of a certain religious group. There are two major native religions in China that have played important roles not only cultural and socially, but within the shifting governments of the dynasties as well. The most major and influential is that of Confucianism. Confucianism is a philosophy that was founded by Kong Qiu, better known as Confucius. Confucianism expounded on order, harmony and the need for rituals and relationships for social harmony . It had an emphasis on what was considered to be acceptable behavior within a society, which was …show more content…
Muslims in China are allowed to have mosques, as markers of their communities. Most mosques had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and was repaired in the 1980s by outside funding. But these mosques weren’t allowed to show anything that depicted that the Muslims within China had “outside” origins. While they may have superficially appeared to be as their Central Asian and Middle Eastern counterparts, they were missing key internal components. Muslims groups tend to remain rather divided. Islam is largely regulated by the government’s “Chinese Islamic Association”, and require that all mosques and madrassas be properly registered or be shut down otherwise .The 1980s saw a rise in Muslim groups putting emphasis on educating its people, ranging from young children to grown men and women, in Islamic texts and the Arabic language . Muslims also now enjoy being able to do hajj to Mecca and study abroad in Muslim dominated areas such as Malaysia, Central Asia or the Middle East . With it, however, has come issues, such as the spreading of radical Islamic thought that has spread within the groups in China’s