LIFE

Shariah with Chinese characteristics

Life, Published on 16/09/2016

» Matthew S. Erie, a trained lawyer and ethnographer who teaches at Oxford University, lived for two years in Linxia, a small city in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu. Known as China's Mecca, it is a centre of religious life for the Hui, an ethnic minority numbering 10 million who practise Islam. Along with the Turkic Uighurs, they are one of 10 officially recognised ethnic groups that practise Islam, making the total population of Muslims in China around 23 million, according to the 2010 government census.