Last Wednesday, June 17th, started Ramadan. For one month, Muslims across the world will observe this religious fast. Ramadan is one of the most important tenants of Islam and it unites Islam’s ethnically diverse adherents across the globe. China has fifty-five official ethnic minorities, and many more that do not have their own official status, but consider themselves linguistically and culturally separate. Of China’s officially recognized minorities, ten are Muslim. The names of these groups in descending order of size are:

• Hui
• Uyghur
• Kazakh
• Dongxiang
• Kyrgyz
• Uzbeks
• Salar
• Tajik
• Bonan
• Tatar

How to pray:

• Pray for good relations between the Chinese government and these ethnic minorities during such a sensitive time. Pray particularly for those minority groups that have contentious relationships with the government.

• Pray for spiritual awakening among these groups and for Jesus to make himself as known among Muslim Chinese as he has among the ethnic majority, Han Chinese.

• Pray for the Han church to be increasingly burdened for China’s ethnic minorities and pray that the church will lead the way in crossing the barriers that so often exist between ethnic groups.

• Pray for minority church leadership and for minorities who are engaged with the gospel to help share the good news with other minority groups.

Articles:

“Ethnic minorities in China”

“Islam in China”

“Chinese Ethnic Groups”

“A Tale of Two Chinese Muslim Minorities”