Plausibility check: Muslim China

  • Thread starter Deleted member 67076
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Is it plausible for the ERE and WRE to switch fates? ERE gets destroyed within a century or two, the WRE survives for a similar length as OTL ERE. Emphasis on 'survive'.

You can post your own thread for that you know, you'll get more responses.
 

scholar

Banned
It was still top-down though. Pretty much every major religion in Chinese society was promoted from top, if mostly not coercively.
Taoism was for a long time the true religion of the masses in China, but the Confucian gentry had mixed views towards it and a number of Emperors were downright hostile towards the practice. Buddhism and Taoism both seeped into the ruling classes and were absorbed into a greater Confucian ethic which reinvented itself every few centuries or so.

Its interesting to note that China very nearly became Christian at least in part. During the Ming the religion had a tremendous amount of popularity, but political tensions and the fall of the empire to the Qing ended that even though the Emperors and his court converted to Catholicism towards the end in the hopes of attaining European aid. Christianity also grew immensely under the Qing, but after it became apparent that some forms of Christianity would have the Emperor's subjects serving two masters (the Pope of Rome) it was banned once again until Europeans forced its ports open.

I don't believe that Islam couldn't be integrated into Confucianism, some synecretic outcome is more than possible given the right set of circumstances. If Islam became popular both from the top and from the masses, even if only in the capital region, then it is more than possible for Confucianism to change alongside Islam in order to create a Muslim China.
 
It was still top-down though. Pretty much every major religion in Chinese society was promoted from top, if mostly not coercively.
As mentioned before, Daoism definitely appealed to the masses. Buddhism did as well. It's correct to say that the Chinese government supported Buddhism and Daoism (and Confucianism), but that wasn't intrinsic to the success of those religions, since those religions already had a considerable amount of adherents already. Rather, it was the case of the imperial family betting on the right horse. By Sui and Tang times, they already came from the same religious milieu as the rest of China, so there was also the aspect of personal devotion as well. Looking at the Yuan and Qing periods, when China was conquered, I should point out that the specifically Tibetan style of Buddhism that the Emperors followed was never more than a niche amongst the Chinese population as a whole.

There would never have been such lavish patronage of Chinese Buddhism and Daoism if not for the presence of those faiths amongst the Chinese masses, in part or as a whole. That's why it's unlikely for any new religion to be established in China by fiat. The most likely scenario would be for Sufi missionaries to gain a beach-head in China, probably after a conquest. Sufism works best because it's a bit more compatible than, say, Salafism, due to the existence of saints. If the faith then gets enough supporters in the higher levels of society, you might see more government support which leads to even more followers, in a positive feedback loop. But it's all rather doubtful to me.
 
I was just reading something that brought me back to this idea... Zheng He was a Hui, and his father and grandfather had apparently made the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

I'm imagining a Chinese emperor (possibly a Muslim Yuan emperor) doing the hajj with grandeur comparable to Mansa Musa's famous journey.
 

Deleted member 67076

I was just reading something that brought me back to this idea... Zheng He was a Hui, and his father and grandfather had apparently made the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

I'm imagining a Chinese emperor (possibly a Muslim Yuan emperor) doing the hajj with grandeur comparable to Mansa Musa's famous journey.

That would be interesting and might put China on the map in Europe. Could that foster relations between the Islamic world and China?
 
That would be interesting and might put China on the map in Europe. Could that foster relations between the Islamic world and China?
There were already relations between the two, but I could see it strengthening relations and possibly lead to a China more interested in the affairs of the Indian Ocean.

But if the Yuan dynasty is overthrown in a way similar to OTL, then Islam might actually be banned in China under the Ming because it will be seen as a religion of foreign oppressors.
 
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