Follow Not the Camel, But the One Who Holds the Camel Together

In the geographic center of China—just north of the Tibetan plateau and southeast of the Gobi Desert—live the Salar, a Muslim people of Turkish origins. The cultural and religious capital of the Salar is located in Xunhua County in Qinghai province—just northeast of Xining.

As the legend goes, about 800 years ago the Salar people faced persecution where they lived in Uzbekistan. So, two brothers took a camel and strapped a copy of the Quran to its head. They followed this camel until it stopped at a spring in what is now Jiezi in Xunhua County. The Salar followed the camel to their new home, believing that Allah was leading them through it.

Today the Salar are defined most clearly through their belief in Islam. This represents a remarkable challenge as the church seeks to take the good news of Jesus Christ to their tongue—which has no written form—and tribe, which gains its primary identity from a system of belief that denies the diety of Jesus. The Salar are genetically different than the Han majority in China, and even than the other (mostly Turkish) minorities in China's west. Yet it is not the genetic differences that give the Salar their distinct culture, but 800 years of developing an identity as a minority group defined by religious status.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao once declared pork to be such a valuable asset to the country that all people were mandated to eat it—even Muslims, in violation of their purity code (called halal). Instances such as this, where the majority ethnicity violated the culture created by Islam further heighten the Salar's identity as a Muslim people. So, even in the case of marginal Salar Muslims—that is, those who are cultural Muslims but not particularly devout—Islam so defines their identity that anything that challenges the Muslim culture is particularly alien.

The Quran says that Allah has 100 names, and he has revealed 99 of them in the Quran. The last name, according to the Quran, was revealed only to the camel. A popular method of evangelism to Muslims is to point to this text and then seek to show that the 100th name of Allah is Jesus Christ. Obviously, much more definition must go into a Gospel presentation than just adding a name for Allah. Most notably, faith in Jesus requires a change of community. Because some practices of Islam are directly in contradiction to following Christ, faith in Christ requires, in some leaving Islam and entering the church of Jesus Christ.

It makes an interesting situation for the Salar. As a Gospel witness spreads along the valleys of the western Yellow River, many Salar, whose ancestors followed a camel to a new land, will be asked instead to follow the one whose name is in some places only known by the camels. Perhaps it is that God brought the Salar out of Uzbekistan and into China in order that the Good News of his Son, Jesus Christ, might come to them there.

Oh, that the Salar people in the valleys of the Yellow River would worship Jesus. Until they do, the red rocks and hills cry out.