Islam in Taiwan

Taipei Grand Mosque

Islam in Taiwan is a slowly growing religion (about 0.3% of the population, it could be higher if included nominally Muslims from Indonesia) with an estimated 100 converts annually. There are about 45,000 registered Muslims in Taiwan, as of 2007. There are 88,500 Indonesian Muslims working in Taiwan. There are six mosques throughout Taiwan, with the most notable being the Taipei Grand Mosque.

The eastward spread of Islam

Main article: Islam in China

Islam originated in Hejaz and spread eastward to China as early as the 7th century AD. Muslim merchants married local Chinese women, creating a new Chinese ethnic group called the Hui people. Islam is known in Chinese as Huì Jiào (回教 Religion of the Hui) though the term 伊斯蘭教 (Yīsīlán Jiào) is becoming more popular. In China, there are some 20 million Muslims and it is believed to have first reached Taiwan in the 17th century when Muslim families from the southern Chinese coastal province of Fujian accompanied Koxinga on his invasion of Taiwan to oust the Dutch from the southern city of Tainan in 1661. These people are believed to be the first Muslim settlers on the island. Their descendants however became assimilated into Taiwanese society and adopted the local customs and religions. According to Professor Lien Ya Tang (連雅堂) in his book History of Taiwan 《臺灣通史》 (1918), there were few muslims on the island most of whom were from other provinces in China. There was no spread of Islam and no mosques were built .

The second wave of Muslim migrants occurred during the Chinese Civil War in the 20th century when around 20,000 Muslim families fled mainland China with the Kuomintang to Taiwan in 1949. Many of them were soldiers and government employees at the time and came from provinces were Islam is strong such as Yunnan, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Gansu (mostly southern and western regions of China). During the 1950s, contact between Muslims and Han Chinese were limited due to differences in custom. The Muslims were largely dependent on each other through the ummah (Islamic community) that met regularly in a house on Lishui Street (麗水街) in Taipei. However, by the 1960s when Muslims realized that returning to mainland China would be unlikely and out of professional need, contact with Han Chinese became more frequent though there was still a considerable degree of interdependence within the ummah. Since the 1980s, thousands of Muslims from Myanmar and Thailand have migrated to Taiwan in search of a better life. They are descendants of nationalist soldiers that fled Yunnan when the communists took over mainland China.

The majority of Taiwanese Muslims today are relatively recent converts, mostly women, who have married mainlander Muslims. Today there are some 53,000 Taiwanese Muslims and a further 80,000 Indonesian workers making the current total just over 140,000 Muslims living in Taiwan.

A directed study of the Muslim population of Taiwan by Jennan Al-Hamdouni will soon be attached to this document.

Mosques

There are a total of six mosques throughout Taiwan :

• Kaohsiung Mosque
• Long Gang Mosque (龍岡清真寺), in Jhongli
• Taichung Mosque
• Tainan Mosque
• Taipei Cultural Mosque, owned by the Chinese Muslim Youth League
• Taipei Grand Mosque, owned by the Chinese Muslim Association

See also

• Religion in Taiwan
• Hui people