Of the 45 participating nations at the Games, more than half were predominantly Muslim, including nations like Khazakstan that fuel China's burgeoning economy with its vast reserves of oil, gas, and minerals. Some 30 percent of the food served at the Games was certified Halal.



Guangzhou's new Waqqas Mosque is one of many of China's recent forays into Islamic infrastructure -- a market that promises to earn Beijing as much in soft power with the resource-rich Muslim world as it does contract revenues.

China has even left its mark on Mecca. Early last year, the state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation put the finishing touches on the Mecca Light Rail, a metro linking Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest cities in Saudi Arabia, allowing pious Muslims to perform the obligatory once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage in air-conditioned comfort.

Most recently, Algerian authorities granted a coveted contract to build the Grand Mosque of Algiers, the latest of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's extravagant infrastructure projects, to the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSEC), a national enterprise with a broad portfolio of infrastructure projects in the developing world.

The mosque will be the third largest in the world, after those in Mecca and Medina, spanning some 400,000 square meters. And in a kind of my minaret is bigger than your minaret to Algeria's perennial adversary, Morocco, the mosque will tower at 300 meters, 90 more than Casablanca's King Hassan II Mosque.

Beating out construction firms from Algeria and Lebanon for the contract late last year, CSEC promised to complete the massive project in only four years for an astounding 109 billion Algerian dinars, or $1.5 billion.

When news of the contract first broke on ElWatan.com, the Web site for Algeria's leading independent newspaper, commenters lambasted the project, exclaiming in French that they'd rather anyone build the mosque than the "godless Chinese."

"Even an Israeli company would be better," one commenter wrote, "At least they believe in God."

But not everyone agrees.

"Religion doesn't and shouldn't interfere in the business world, I think that the Chinese company got the bid because it presented and justified the competitiveness of its performance," said Aziz Nafa, an Algerian economist specializing in developmental studies. The Algerian firm's proposal was $600,000,000 higher than the winning Chinese bid.

China has engaged in and often won a number of such cutthroat races to bring Islam to Muslims in Algeria and across the Muslim world. Analysts say that, after September 11, 2001, Islamic infrastructure projects have seen little competition from the United States.

"There is no question that China has reached out to Muslim-majority countries over the past ten years [since 9/11]," said Haris Tarin, director of the Washington D.C. office of Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a group advocating against Islamophobia in American society.