[2025 Ramadan] Day 2 The light of the foreign that will bring nations back to the Lord, Hui people

(2025 Ramadan) Day 2 The light of the foreign that will bring nations back to the Lord, Hui people

The Hui are the second largest of China's 55 ethnic minorities, with a population of about 11.4 million, spread across 2,000 county-level and above cities, in addition to the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The ancestors of the Hui people were foreigners from outside of China, and over the course of nearly 1,000 years since the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century, Muslims from Arabia, Persia, Central Asia, and elsewhere arrived in China as merchants, scholars, bureaucrats, artisans, and soldiers, intermarrying and assimilating into the Chinese population.

The “Hui” in Hui refers to Islam, or Muslims, a unique ethnic minority in China whose ethnicity and language have already been assimilated into the Hui people and whose ethnic identity can only be found in Islam, a practice that has no parallel in the world. As a result, their evangelization rate is still only 0.01%, and there are still very few people who do ministry in a professional way to evangelize them.

Historically, the Hui people have been relatively moderate Muslims, adapting to the Chinese Communist Party's model of governance. They have been able to worship in mosques and pursue Islamic education through Islamic seminaries and Arabic language schools in a relatively free environment. The Chinese government has also used the Hui people as a link to the broader Muslim world in areas such as business and tourism to effectively promote its Belt and Road Initiative.

However, since February 2018, when the Chinese government issued the “Regulations on the Affairs of New Religions,” the Chinese government has continued to push for the Sinicization of all religions, and to this day, the Hui people are still struggling as they begin to lose their ethnic autonomy.

In certain areas, the Chinese government has confined ethnic Hui people who clearly express their Muslim identity to re-education centers, linking them to extremism, and has imposed a policy of mosque consolidation, allowing only one mosque within a 2.5-kilometer radius, closing others, and detaining ethnic Hui people religious leaders and protesters who oppose.

In addition, the Chinese government has been gradually weakening the Hui community by relocating them to other parts of the country, especially to the larger cities in the predominantly Hui-dominated coastal regions, in the name of “poverty alleviation. In addition, it has removed signs of Arab cultural influence from Islamic architecture, places, dress, and religious rituals, and has begun removing halal signs from all restaurants and grocery stores.There is rapidly growing concern within the Hui that if things continue this way, the next generation will gradually lose faith and the Hui could quietly disappear, but there is little the Hui can do against the huge and powerful Chinese government.

Same with previous years, restrictions on Ramadan activities are likely to be in place in some parts of China this year.

Communist Party members and minors of Hui people origin are prohibited from participating in any religious activities, including fasting, and Hui people teachers are not allowed to wear hats or scarves worn by Hui people at schools.

Following a three-year lockdown during the pandemic, the synchronization of Islam to China policy, which is now being vigorously enforced again, is causing many Hui people to experience an identity crisis. While some have sought to strengthen their Muslim identity in the face of this, many others, especially the urban youth who have grown up more influenced by materialism and individualism, want to live a life that is more secular than religious, and more global than local.

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life for the Hui, who are wavering in the face of powerful Chinese challenges to their Muslim identity! Although evangelization seems to have been slow, but in recent years, Hui people have been turning to the Lord through internet gospel broadcasts, Hui people house church communities, Bibles written in Hui religious

languages, and dreams. In some large cities, there are Hui people pastoring multi-ethnic churches. Hui churches and organizations that used to do domestic mission work only with Hui people, Tibetan, and Yunnan ethnic minorities are now sending workers and sharing the gospel with the Hui people.

They need more, stronger prayers. Living among China's largest ethnic group, the Hui people, but observing none of the traditional Hui holidays, only the Islamic ones, Ramadan is almost the only time they get to celebrate their Muslim identity..

But at the same time, we are also seeing an increase in their spiritual awakening, encountering Jesus in dreams and responding with immediate faith when they hear the gospel of repentance that brings Christ's love and forgiveness of sins.

Since most foreign workers have been forced out of China, there are few foreign workers are left to reach and directly evangelize the Hui souls. But as the global church prays together for the Hui, Almighty God will send Chinese evangelists to them, open the gates of heaven, and reveal to them Christ, the Word of eternal life!

Through the remnants of Hui people, the Church will rise up, and they will be used as a light of the Gentiles to illuminate all nations!

(Today’s Prayer)

1. Please send evangelists to share the gospel among the spiritually hungry Hui people, whose identity as Muslims has been shaken by the Synchronization of Islam to China policy, and establish countless churches in every part of the country where they live.

2. Let the Hui souls scattered and lonely in the big cities, hear the gospel through Hui house church communities, and allow the believing Hui Christians rise up as evangelists to reach their hometowns and families who are marginalized by the gospel.

3. Give the Hui Christians, who are being persecuted by their government and their own people, the faith and spiritual authority to overcome the world, and to rise up as a people to be a light to the nations, serving not only their own people but also the nations alongside the Hui Church in China!