Images of Islam in Taiwan : from Chinese Islam to Global Islam

Abstract EN

Taipei Grand Mosque looks like a mini global village.

Every Friday, the prayer hall is always overcrowded with Muslims from diverse ethnic backgrounds, including local Chinese Muslims (Hui), Arabs, Turks, Africans, Malaysians and Indonesians.

They meet each other and exchange ideas after the congregational prayer.

However, in the 1970s, there was a different image of Islam in Taiwan.

Only Chinese Muslims were included in the congregation.

The first generation of Chinese Muslims (around 20 to 50 thousand people) arrived in Taiwan with the National Government in 1949 and early 1950s when the Communist Party took over China.

These Chinese Muslims showed distinctive features of ‘Chinese Islam’ in Taiwan.

The elites among these Chinese Muslims were those who played a leading role in the revival of Islam in China during the 1930s and 1940s.

When they settled in Taiwan, they resumed work serving Islam as they did the same in China, such as constructing mosques, building Muslim cemeteries and dispatching Muslim students to Middle Eastern countries.

However, with the passage of time, their work on the revival of Islam seems to have been unsuccessful.

The population of Chinese Muslims stagnated and even declined.

Instead, with the open policy for drawing in foreign workers and students by the government in Taiwan during the 1990s, foreign Muslims from various countries began to appear in Taiwan, thereby exhibiting another images of Islam to the public.

Nowadays, Chinese Muslims seem to be an invisible community in Taiwan as they and their descendants have become outnumbered by foreign Muslims.

This paper aims to describe and analyze the paradigm shift in images of Islam in Taiwan over a half century.