Muslim Life Guide China: Faith, Halal Life, Work Skills and Safe Community Influence
Reposted from the web
Summary: This reflection discusses Muslim faith, halal daily life, public speech, useful professional skills, and the need to build positive community influence while staying practical and responsible.
Some of my old articles on my public account were recently deleted. This might be because they touched on new internet media regulations coming in March. Are we not allowed to preach in public without a permit? I have been using the internet for over twenty years, and this is the first time my posts have been deleted. I have been active on several other social media platforms for years and have never had a post deleted or an account banned for posting extreme comments. I have always been a law-abiding internet user.
Since the articles are gone, I cannot remember exactly what I said that was considered inappropriate. I want to reassure the authorities that I have no interest in preaching. From the day I started learning about the faith (din), I never thought about making a living as a religious professional. My interest in religious knowledge is purely personal. I learned from Al-Ghazali's The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya Ulum al-Din) that in his medieval times, local jurists were as common as hair on an ox. We lacked experts and scientists like doctors and architects, and we often had to rely on non-believers for professional skills. This embarrassing situation has not changed to this day.
Even in the time of the Prophet, expanding influence required strong external help and the support of powerful people, including but not limited to manpower, material resources, and financial backing. Many famous medieval scholars held multiple jobs. They were doctors and merchants, and being a religious scholar was just one of many labels they carried. Ibn Sina seemed to study religious philosophy in his spare time, and many of us know him because he wrote The Canon of Medicine, a textbook used by the Western medical community for hundreds of years.
According to the Prophet's prophecy, knowledge will gradually disappear as scholars pass away, and then ignorant people will pose as scholars and mislead the public. The knowledge here refers mainly to religious knowledge, not scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge can be continuously discovered and accumulated, but religious knowledge cannot. Religious knowledge only comes from revelation. After the Messenger received the revelation, he passed the knowledge to the companions and their followers. During this transmission, some information is inevitably lost. When scholars who hold religious knowledge pass away, if the younger generation has not fully mastered it, that knowledge disappears. It is like electricity; there is energy loss during transmission. In the religious field, there is nothing new. Everything we know today does not go beyond the scope of the Quran and Sunnah. In our era and beyond, it is impossible to produce great scholars who surpass those of the past. So, stop rushing to become local internet-famous religious experts. Making a living by spreading religious knowledge for profit is shameful; you would be better off working in a factory.
If we are not allowed to talk about the faith in public, we can find many flexible ways to do it, because our faith is already integrated into many details of our lives. 'For people who think, there are indeed many signs in this.' Isn't it better to show the excellence of a Muslim without preaching? Dry lectures probably only attract people who are already believers and do nothing to reach a wider audience. In my article 'An Indonesian Halal Journey: An Indonesian Trip Through the Eyes of a Chinese Hui Muslim,' I mentioned the history of how the faith spread in Southeast Asia. It relied on Sufi preaching. Sufis loved their non-believer neighbors from the heart and treated their illnesses, touching them deeply. Once the upper classes of the Malay Peninsula accepted the Islam taught by the Sufis, the peaceful transformation of all of Southeast Asia was just a matter of time.
My articles about halal food have never been deleted, and the comments on these articles are generally very friendly. This shows that writing about food and travel is safe. These articles attract many ethnic minorities who follow the faith, as well as those who do not. Of course, they also attract many people from the majority ethnic group. I often include my own personal views in these articles, and rational people can certainly sense the message I want to convey.
Summary: This reflection discusses Muslim faith, halal daily life, public speech, useful professional skills, and the need to build positive community influence while staying practical and responsible.
Some of my old articles on my public account were recently deleted. This might be because they touched on new internet media regulations coming in March. Are we not allowed to preach in public without a permit? I have been using the internet for over twenty years, and this is the first time my posts have been deleted. I have been active on several other social media platforms for years and have never had a post deleted or an account banned for posting extreme comments. I have always been a law-abiding internet user.
Since the articles are gone, I cannot remember exactly what I said that was considered inappropriate. I want to reassure the authorities that I have no interest in preaching. From the day I started learning about the faith (din), I never thought about making a living as a religious professional. My interest in religious knowledge is purely personal. I learned from Al-Ghazali's The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya Ulum al-Din) that in his medieval times, local jurists were as common as hair on an ox. We lacked experts and scientists like doctors and architects, and we often had to rely on non-believers for professional skills. This embarrassing situation has not changed to this day.
Even in the time of the Prophet, expanding influence required strong external help and the support of powerful people, including but not limited to manpower, material resources, and financial backing. Many famous medieval scholars held multiple jobs. They were doctors and merchants, and being a religious scholar was just one of many labels they carried. Ibn Sina seemed to study religious philosophy in his spare time, and many of us know him because he wrote The Canon of Medicine, a textbook used by the Western medical community for hundreds of years.
According to the Prophet's prophecy, knowledge will gradually disappear as scholars pass away, and then ignorant people will pose as scholars and mislead the public. The knowledge here refers mainly to religious knowledge, not scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge can be continuously discovered and accumulated, but religious knowledge cannot. Religious knowledge only comes from revelation. After the Messenger received the revelation, he passed the knowledge to the companions and their followers. During this transmission, some information is inevitably lost. When scholars who hold religious knowledge pass away, if the younger generation has not fully mastered it, that knowledge disappears. It is like electricity; there is energy loss during transmission. In the religious field, there is nothing new. Everything we know today does not go beyond the scope of the Quran and Sunnah. In our era and beyond, it is impossible to produce great scholars who surpass those of the past. So, stop rushing to become local internet-famous religious experts. Making a living by spreading religious knowledge for profit is shameful; you would be better off working in a factory.
If we are not allowed to talk about the faith in public, we can find many flexible ways to do it, because our faith is already integrated into many details of our lives. 'For people who think, there are indeed many signs in this.' Isn't it better to show the excellence of a Muslim without preaching? Dry lectures probably only attract people who are already believers and do nothing to reach a wider audience. In my article 'An Indonesian Halal Journey: An Indonesian Trip Through the Eyes of a Chinese Hui Muslim,' I mentioned the history of how the faith spread in Southeast Asia. It relied on Sufi preaching. Sufis loved their non-believer neighbors from the heart and treated their illnesses, touching them deeply. Once the upper classes of the Malay Peninsula accepted the Islam taught by the Sufis, the peaceful transformation of all of Southeast Asia was just a matter of time.
My articles about halal food have never been deleted, and the comments on these articles are generally very friendly. This shows that writing about food and travel is safe. These articles attract many ethnic minorities who follow the faith, as well as those who do not. Of course, they also attract many people from the majority ethnic group. I often include my own personal views in these articles, and rational people can certainly sense the message I want to convey.
