WI: Islam banned in China, 1724

In 1724, the magistrate Chen Shiguan submitted the following memorial to Beijing:
[Islam] is a perverse doctrine that deceives the people and should be banned by law. Those who enter it do not respect Heaven and Earth and do not worship the gods, instead setting up their own cultic deity [...] They aid evil and harm the people. Please force them from their teaching and destroy their mosques.​
The emperor's views, however, were rather different:
All over the direct provinces, the Muslim people, having resided there from old, are enumerated as part of the population and are all still children of our country. It follows that they cannot be regarded as separate [from the Han] [...] The Muslims have their religion because their ancestors bequeathed them their family traditions and local customs [...] As long as they live peacefully they are not to be compared with traitors, lawbreakers, or those who seek to delude or lead people astray [...] Our court looks on them with the same benevolence as in all.​
What if the Yongzheng emperor had a change of heart and ordered all Muslims to leave either their religion or their country under pain of death? What would be the most likely result? It seems likely that the Zunghars could manipulate this event to further consolidate control over the Uyghurs, for one.
 
What event would prompt him to change his mind? He'd need a reason. Muslims forcing conversions or sharia law over the Han?
 
Same question. Muslims in China have always tended to be a peaceful people, it's why the Emperor didn't share the Magistrate's opinion of them. So, what have the Chinese-Muslims done to bring about this anti-Muslim sentiment?
 
Same question. Muslims in China have always tended to be a peaceful people, it's why the Emperor didn't share the Magistrate's opinion of them. So, what have the Chinese-Muslims done to bring about this anti-Muslim sentiment?

You know, things...
Maybe they were a bit too positive about the Yuan, or a major Hui speaker declared the Manchus as usurpers.
 
You know, things...
Maybe they were a bit too positive about the Yuan, or a major Hui speaker declared the Manchus as usurpers.

I really don't but thank you.

Okay well if the Chinese-Muslims supported the Yuan dynasty on a larger scale then we saw in our timeline then banning Islam would come down to dynastic struggle and likely lead to a civil war. If the Muslims win, I can guarantee Islam would be the majority religion by the modern era, or the Chinese Muslims get there own country. If the Muslims loose, Muslims flee China into friendly nearby Muslim countries.

Same thing if an influential Hui speaker comes around.

The fact is as much as Chinese Muslims have been peaceful they are not a ethno-religious group that would submit to the Chinese establishment. Give a wide support of the Yuan, an influential Hui speaker or likely both. You're going to have a revolution or civil war of some kind either leading to Islam having a more dominant presence in China, or an independent Hui country.
 
I really don't but thank you.

If the Muslims win, I can guarantee Islam would be the majority religion by the modern era, or the Chinese Muslims get there own country.
No they clearly wouldn´t be, not in 2 centuries, not even in 5 or few more by that matter..
 
Maybe the Afghans who descended on Persia, turned their gaze to China and used Islam as a part of attack on the periphery of the Chinese Empire.
 
It would be interesting to see what effect if any this scenario would have on the OTL third Dzungar-Qing war and the later conquest of Dzungaria as well as on the Xinjiang area.
 
The fact is as much as Chinese Muslims have been peaceful they are not a ethno-religious group that would submit to the Chinese establishment. Give a wide support of the Yuan, an influential Hui speaker or likely both. You're going to have a revolution or civil war of some kind either leading to Islam having a more dominant presence in China, or an independent Hui country.

I mean, they've been pretty influential as a minority as is, but none of them have ever had the inclination to make Islam the majority religion.
 
You're going to have a revolution or civil war of some kind either leading to Islam having a more dominant presence in China, or an independent Hui country.
There is always third option, that being Hui end up massively slaughtered by emperors armies, and most of those who flee die during their travel.

Mongols killed, directly and indirectly, like half of Hungarians, most of Persians and Pashtuns, and so on, and so on. I don't think that Manchu descended Qing, or even native Han dynasty, would recoil at the though of slaughtering rebellious Hui.
 

BuNejm

Banned
Maybe the Afghans who descended on Persia, turned their gaze to China and used Islam as a part of attack on the periphery of the Chinese Empire.
"Lets fight a superpower who have more manpower and more technological advantages" Great idea m8
Also, Why would china force convert muslim who have no connection to enemy. That is just giving other muslim nation more reasons to stop trading with china which wont be good for economy.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Of course it makes little sense for the emperor to go about hating one religion in particular. Giving him an objectively good reason is actually tricky because good reasons for such things are, you know... hard to come by. But then again, did the magistrate Chen Shiguan have good reason for his apparent hatred towards islam? Probably not. People aren't all that rational all the time, so really, all it takes is one ATL instance of one Chinese muslim (or a group of Chinese muslims) doing something or expressing some view that really ticks off the emperor, which then leads him to become ever more suspicious of islam in general. These things happen in real life, unfortunately.

So, really, we can just assume something like that, thus avoiding the need for a sensible motivation on the grounds that hatred isn't sensible. Which would allow us to just explore the consequences of islam being banned in China in 1724...
 
@Skallagrim, thank you. Anyhow, from the late imperial Chinese perspective there is a valid reason for banning Islam even if Muslims do nothing wrong. To quote Waley-Cohen's Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty:
Qing emperors saw no clear delineation between the realms of religion and of politics. Thus they identified religion, unless it was absolutely subject to their control, as a potential menace to their sovereignty - in other words, religion either specifically served the state or it was specifically subversive. For they were accustomed to absolute authority and could not brook competition from any alternative authority [...] Although the Qing tolerated Islam, they were unusually jittery about the unsettling effect of Chinese Muslims in the imperial order [because they remained oriented to Mecca and the Middle East rather than Beijing].​
 
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