In the post below Aziz asserts that Islam is expanding in China just like Christianity. I would agree with this assertion, but, I would add the caveat is that Islam is reconverting and revitalizing traditionally Muslim groups (either the “Chinese speaking Muslim” Hui community or among the various Turkic groups) , while Christianity is converting non-Christian Han.
I believe that Islam has a higher hurdle in China than Christianity because the former is less compatible with a crucial element of Chinese culture than the latter: pork consumption. While Christian converts could continue to eat with their non-Christian family members, I suspect it would be far more difficult for Muslim converts to do the same with non-Muslim relatives. This suggests that Christianity will be more potent memetically speaking in the context of Han culture because it does not have inflexible constraints on this issue. A contrast might be the competition between Christians and Muslims in Africa to convert polygamous pagan peoples. Obviously the former have a harder sell on that issue (switch to monogamy) than the latter (no more than four wives at a time). A reaction has been that some Christian groups tolerate polgamy, while many “African Christian” sects accept it de jure. I can’t imagine a way Muslims could re-work the pork taboo, but who knows, perhaps Chinese Muslim converts will genetically engineer a “cow” that tastes like a pig & is as good at converting offal as a pig.
Posted by razib at 06:23 PM