Bai Shouyi

Who was Bai Shouyi?

Bai Shouyi, also known as Djamal al-Din Bai Shouyi, was a prominent Chinese Muslim historian, thinker, social activist and ethnologist who revolutionized recent Chinese historiography and pioneered in relying heavily on scientific excavations and reports. A Marxist philosophically, his studies thus take a very class-centric view and reasoning. Born a son of a Hui merchant in Kaifeng, he became literate in Arabic from his mother and aunt.

Bai argued for the need for increased awareness of Islam and Muslims by the Chinese population in general in 1937, since Muslims numbered 50 million in China alone, and western works were the only works available for non-Muslim Chinese to study Muslims living right with them in China. He said Muslims in western China could either stand as a "defensive wall", or "hinder ...national defence", depending on whether conduct to them was good or bad.

He died in Beijing at the age of 91.