The region from Lanzhou to Linxia is often called the Quran belt. When you’re on the highway, it’s impossible to go a minute without seeing a new mosque under construction. What’s driving this is an accumulation of wealth, and people are willing to allocate some of it, because they see mosques as a center of their community. It’s not just where people pray or study but also where they socialize and share news and gossip.

Is this government-financed?

Almost none of it. Almost all comes from donations. Donors are businesspeople using the money they’ve saved to benefit their communities.

What about overseas donations? In the West, many big mosques are financed by the Saudis or Gulf states.

That rarely happens in China. The government keeps tight control over this. They don’t want to have these sorts of ties overseas.

Is there any international dimension to Islam’s revival?

The revival has two aspects. One is almost always personal: a marriage that didn’t work out, or interfamilial strife. And then they learn about larger phenomena through translated texts, social media or on-the-ground missionary activity. Saudi Arabia is a natural pole star. Egypt has major pull given its academic institutions and religious scholars. Missionary work increasingly comes from the Dawa movement. These activists are primarily from South Asia. The idea is that Muslims should return to the pious behavior of the Prophet Muhammad. This can mean a variety of things, from daily prayer to rejecting chopsticks in favor of eating with one’s hands. These people interact with the Hui trying to find themselves. That’s where the rekindling occurs.

Some of this seems to parallel Christianity’s rise in China. It also benefits from overseas missionary ties.

True, but Islam is different in that you have this global discourse on terrorism, which is oppressive and limits the capacity of Muslims inside China to interact with Muslims outside of China. Islam is so politicized that it’s quite different.