“It’s easy to live an intensely Muslim life here,” said Ma Habibu, 67, a retired truck driver, whose surname, Ma, with its phonetic resemblance to the name Mohammed, is common among the Hui. “Even government officials here are very devout and study the Quran every day.”

Descendants of Persian and Arab traders who settled along the Silk Road and took Chinese wives, the nation’s 10 million Hui are a minority primarily defined by their faith and, in some cases, solely their culinary habits. Compared with the Uighurs, they have also demonstrated a remarkable ability to coexist with the Communist Party, an organization hard-wired to distrust those whose first loyalty belongs to a higher power.

Unlike the Uighurs, who speak a Turkic dialect and whose Eurasian features set them apart from the country’s Han Chinese majority, the Hui speak Chinese and are often indistinguishable from their non-Muslim neighbors. In much of China, the white caps worn by men and the head scarves worn by women are all that give them away. In many places, the Hui have so thoroughly assimilated that their only connection to Islam is a vestigial aversion to pork.

Most subscribe to a moderate brand of Islam, though tradition frowns upon intermarriage — Hui men who break convention by marrying outside the faith often demand that their wives convert to Islam.

Their loyalty to the Communist Party has been well rewarded. In places like Linxia, people can easily obtain passports and about half of the senior officials are ethnic Hui, according to local residents. In Xinjiang, by contrast, most important government posts go to the Han, and young Uighurs find it hard to get passports to travel abroad. Government workers in Xinjiang who go to mosques or fast during the holy month of Ramadan often find themselves unemployed.