Chinese Muslims Struggle to Forge Distinct Identity : Culture: In the U.S., Middle Eastern customs often dominate the practice of Islam. But Asians have their own rituals.

Sophia and Jamillah Ma steal a minute to sit with a visitor at an out-of-the-way table in the China Islamic restaurant their family owns in Rosemead. They help run the business with four other siblings and in-laws. It is a bright, bustling place with a communal spirit and “ halal --in English that means Kosher--food,” says Jamillah Ma, her head covered with the hijab , or scarf, that many Muslim women wear.

Born in Taiwan to a family that has been Muslim “so far back” she can’t remember how long and married to a Libyan Muslim, Jamillah Ma believes the hijab is an essential expression of her faith.

“This is the sign of a strong believer, but it doesn’t mean that a woman who does not wear the hijab is bad or not practicing her faith,” says Ma, 30.

Her sister’s head is uncovered.

She used to wear the hijab , says Sophia Ma, who came to the United States in 1979 with the rest of her family. But the 25-year-old Cal State Los Angeles student couldn’t stand the reaction of her classmates.

“I would participate in computer lab--two people are supposed to share a computer terminal--but no one wanted to share with me,” she says softly. “They would all look at me very strangely, so I decided to go with the American way. But I still keep my belief in my heart.”

One day, says her sister Jamillah, “I wish she will be covered all the time,” but that is a personal jihad, or struggle, that Sophia must resolve for herself.

Persecuted throughout their history in China and dispersed after the rise to power of Mao Zedong, Chinese Muslims who have come to America are struggling to establish a distinct identity for themselves and a network of support for this “minority of minorities” among Asian followers of Islam.

“Islam is a world religion. It covers not only the people who are speaking Arabic, which is the misunderstanding most people have. It covers all kinds of nationalities,” says Ali Jiang, the general secretary of Chinese Muslims International, a year-old association of Muslims of Chinese descent based in New York.

Arabs, in fact, compose only 10% of the Muslim world. Indonesia is the nation with the largest Islamic population.

“Each national community has its own cultural background, language, rituals. Though we have the same religion with other nationalities, we feel very uncomfortable when we are with other groups,” Jiang says in a phone conversation from his home in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, N.Y.

“I used to live in Brooklyn close to a Turkish mosque,” he says. “A lot of Pakistani people went there too. The service was conducted in Turkish, and the people treated me there as a friend. The Pakistani people treated us (Chinese) as brothers and they invited us to all kinds of parties. But when they came together, they were talking in Urdu and we felt very isolated.”

There are no Chinese mosques in his community, Jiang says, but he would like to see one established there--wherever there are large numbers of Muslims of Chinese descent or other Asian Muslims who share cultural traditions with the Chinese.

No one knows for certain how many Muslims of Chinese descent live in the United States; one of the goals of the embryonic Chinese Muslims International is to find out. The group has been distributing membership applications throughout the United States, usually leaving them in Chinese restaurants for customers.

“We Chinese Muslims are scattered in this nation everywhere. There are lots of Muslim centers in the United States where we can pray together,” says Iliyas Ting, 58, founder of Chinese Muslims International, but there is no group that can address the specific needs of Chinese Muslims.

When a baby is born to a Chinese Muslim, “they have to be circumcised and they have to be given a name. The mother may have to write home to a great-grandfather in Hong Kong or Taiwan to be given the name for the baby. It is very difficult for the Chinese lady who does not know Arabic or English to communicate” this ritual to an “imam who is a Middle Eastern Muslim,” Ting says from his home in Queens.

“We Chinese Muslims are a minority of a minority, scattered in this nation,” Ting adds. “If you don’t have an association, which is like a beehive, you have no place to go, no place to ask for explanations, for mutual support. In the long run, what will happen is that we will be disunited.”

No one knows for certain how many Muslims are in China, either, where Islam was introduced more than a 1,000 years ago by Arab and Iranian warriors and merchants. Chinese Muslims International literature estimates that there are more than 30 million followers of the Prophet Mohammed in China and that they are concentrated in most major cities and in the vast northwest regions of the country.

The 1990 Encyclopedia Americana offers much smaller estimates, saying that the mostly Muslim Hui--China’s second largest minority--total 7.2 million. The Uygurs, another minority group, total 6 million and are Turkic-speaking Sunni Muslims.

When the Chinese communist revolution brought Mao Zedong to power in 1949, “lots of Chinese Muslims ran away,” says Pat H. Zaw, the Los Angeles representative for Chinese Muslims International. “They are scattered all over the world. There are a lot in Saudi Arabia, a lot still in Taiwan, Korea, a whole bunch in Canada and in America, and even in Africa. On top of that, many families were separated” while fleeing communist rule, she says. “I myself come from Burma, which is right on the border of China.” Many Chinese Muslims fled the country, she says.

Zaw, 43, came to the United States in 1976 with her husband, Rick, and their 9-month-old son, Patrick.

The niece of Chinese Muslim International founder Ting, Zaw and other Asian Muslims note that their cultural traditions allow for an expression of Islam that is far less restrictive than Arab and Middle Eastern expressions of the faith.

Further, they assert that Islam as they practice it is truer to the spirit of the teaching of the Prophet Mohammed.

Implicitly, they are challenging the cultural hegemony of Arabs over Islam.

“It is very sad,” says Zaw, “that Arab culture has become confused with Islam.”

It is “100% true that Arabs, Middle Eastern culture in general and Pakistani culture,” have come to dominate Islam, says Dr. Fathi Osman, an Egyptian-born former professor of intellectual history at USC.

Osman, 60, now the resident scholar at the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles, says that it is not only Chinese Muslims who cannot identify with the cultural traditions of these other nationalities: “There are differences between the Arabs and Pakistanis, between Western Arabs and Eastern Arabs, between the Moroccans and the Jordanians and the Iraqis.”

In the United States, Muslims are attempting to bridge these differences by forging a distinct identity as American Muslims.

Dr. Maher Hathout, spokesman for the Islamic Center in Los Angeles, which Zaw and the Mas attend, says he “sympathizes very much with the needs of Chinese Muslims to express their own ethnicity and culture within Islam.

“What we are trying to do at the center is advocate that we have all the pieces of the mosaic in one place. Then let us come together and shine with an American Muslim identity. Under that, we can find Muslims of Chinese background, Indian background, Arabic background, each in harmony with the other. That is being done successfully at the Islamic Center. We have Chinese members, and we are de-emphasizing the Arab nature of the center. We are trying to make it as pluralistic as America and as Islam meant things to be.”

Unlike Jamillah Ma, Zaw does not wear the hijab outside of the the mosque.

“No,” she says, firmly shaking her head in the dining room of her Downey home. “We Chinese Muslim women don’t wear that.” And the veils that many Middle Eastern Muslim women wear is simply a “fashion” started by “Persian ladies in high society,” she says. “It became a fad and people began to say that all Muslim women must cover their faces. This is a misinterpretation of Islam.”

Many aspects of Islam are misunderstood by non-Muslims and Muslims alike, say many American Muslims. But for all the misinterpretations and stereotypes that many claim pervade Western thinking, America is the best place to be a Muslim, say Marayati, Hathout and others.

“I enjoy my religion so much in this country,” says Jamillah Ma. “I really feel I can practice my religion here more than in my country. In Taiwan, if I wear the hijab, people would laugh, give me a hard time. Here I can cover myself and go anywhere. Here--because Muslims pray five times a day--I can go into a parking lot for privacy when I travel and make my prayers. American people might see me, they may feel something since they are not Muslim, but they never bother me. I never feel scared or shy. People have their own beliefs, but they have respect for other religions.”

The chatter of lunchtime patrons and the clatter of heavy dishes are the only sounds competing with Jamillah Ma’s words as she sits with her sister. Sophia Ma listens to the older woman attentively, deferring to her, occasionally translating the English questions of an interviewer.

When asked about her home life, Sophia Ma says, “my parents are very restrictive, very conservative.” She is not allowed to date. All her friends are female. “I am happy with my social life,” she says. “It is very plain. I go to school, I come back and work, go home and study, talk with my friends about school and sometimes we go shopping, to the mall.” What her life will be like later depends on the man she marries.

“When she marries, “ Jamillah Ma says, “my parents will have to arrange it. But they cannot force her to marry a man. She can talk to the man as long as she feels satisfied.”

Has anyone been picked for her yet?

Sophia Ma’s large brown eyes widen and she smiles slightly. “Somebody told my parents about this man from Saudi Arabia. My parents mentioned him to me, but I think he is too old for me, so I refused him.”

Because Jamillah Ma’s husband, Adel Elashegh, 31, is Libyan, “my social life is . . . just like Middle Eastern culture,” she says.

They met in the restaurant where Elashegh was a frequent customer, always leaving Jamillah a big tip, she says, “though I hardly gave him any service.” The auto mechanic offered to fix her 1981 Datsun 210, always in need of oil or a tuneup, she says. Those frequent meetings led to long talks about Islam and, eventually, marriage. They have a daughter, 9.

At home, Jamillah says, she stays in the kitchen or bedroom when male guests come to her house. When female guests come, her husband leaves the room, she explains.

“No,” says Pat Zaw, shaking her head again, that’s not the Chinese Muslim woman’s way. “When my husband and I have company, I sit and talk with them because they are my friends. I don’t feel ashamed to come out. I am used to this kind of life, just like any American woman when her husband brings home friends, we talk and we socialize. Of course, when I say we socialize, there is no liquor, no beer, no wine, that is part of our religion.

The social segregation of men and women in the home “has nothing to do with Islam itself,” says Hathout of the Islamic center. These social taboos are “ancient tribal customs, not only the tribes of the Middle East but tribal structures in general try to overprotect--to use a nice term for it--women. But this has nothing to do with religion.”

Hathout adds: “Islam in Chinese and other Asian cultures are generally less adherent to tribal habits. When I see a Chinese woman expressing herself more freely, I consider her closer to the Islamic spirit, departing from tribal practices and moving toward the fairer nature of relationships,” espoused by Islam.