stylistic:style_transfer, quality:corruption, quality:correction, structural:scholar_edition
Anti-Islam laws

Qing policy on Muslims and Islam was changed during the reign of the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors. While the Kangxi Emperor proclaimed Muslims and Han to be equal, his grandson, the Qianlong Emperor, endorsed Han officials harsh recommendations towards treatment of Muslims. The Kangxi Emperor said that Muslim and Han Chinese were equal when people argued for Muslims to be treated differently. The Yongzheng Emperor held the opinion that "Islam was foolish, but he felt it did not pose a threat" when a judge in Shandong petitioned him to destroy mosques and ban Islam. Yongzheng then fired an official for demanding Muslims be punished more harshly than non-Muslims.

This policy changed in the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. Chen Hongmou, a Qing official, said that Muslims needed to be brought to law and order by being punished more harshly and blaming Muslim leaders for criminal behavior of Muslims in a letter to the Board of Punishments called Covenant to Instruct and Admonish Muslims that he wrote in 1751. Although the Board of Punishment did nothing, the Shaanxi-Gansu Governor-General in 1762 then proceeded to implement his recommendation and had Muslim criminals punished severely more than Han Chinese ones. He also implemented the policy that the criminal deeds of Muslim congregants of Mosques ended up with their Imams being punished and held responsible for them. These anti-Muslim policies by the governor general received endorsement from the Qianlong Emperor.

Great changes happening to Chinese Muslims, like the introduction of a Sufi order, the Naqshbandiyya to the Hui, causing the Qianlong emperor to adopt this harsh attitude against Muslims in contrast to his grandfather and father. This led to larger connections between the Hui and the broader Islamic world from the west, as the Naqshbandiyya order came east to the Hui when Hui scholars in Suzhou were converted to Naqshbandiyya by Muhammad Yusuf Khoja. Afaq Khoja, Muhammad Yusuf's son, also further spread Naqshbandi orders among Chinese Muslims like Tibetan Muslims, Salars, Hui and other Muslim ethnicities in Hezhou, Gansu (now Linxia) and Xining in Qinghai and Lanzhou. Ma Laichi was the leader of one of these orders and he personally studied in the Islamic world in Bukhara to learn Sufism, and Yemen and in Mecca where he was taught by Mawlana Makhdum. This brought him prestige among Chinese Muslims. In an argument over the breaking of fast during Ramadan Ma Laichi said that before praying in the mosque, fast should be broken, not vice versa and this led to him getting many Naqshbandi converts from Hui and Turkic Salars. It came to court in 1731 when the Muslims arguing over how to break Ramadan fast filed lawsuits. The Muslim plaintiffs were told by the Qing authorities at the court to resolve them themselves, as the legal authorities who had no idea about Ramadan fasting. The dispute was not solved and continued to go on and was compounded by even more disputes like how to perform dhikr in Sufism, in a jahri (vocal) as taught by Ma Mingxin, another Sufi who learned in the western Islamic lands like Bukhara, or khufi (silent) like what Ma Laichi did. The Zabid Naqshbandiyyas in Yemen taught Ma Mingxin for two decades. They taught vocal dhikr. Ma Mingxin was also affected by another series of events in the Middle Eastern Muslim world, revivalist movements among Muslims like the Saudis who allied with Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab. This renewal tajdid influenced Ma Mingxin in Yemen.

While Ma Mingxin was in Yemen and away from China, all of Muslim Inner Asia was conquered by the "infidel" Qing dynasty giving even more relevance to his situation and views. Ma Laichi and Ma Mingxin again sued each other in court but this second time the Qing passed a verdict in favor of the quiet dhikr faction, the Silentist Khafiyya of Ma Laichi and gave it the status of orthodoxy while damning as heterodox the Aloudist Jahriyya of Ma Mingxin. Ma Mingxin ignored the order and kept proselytizing in Shaanxi, Ningxia and Xinjiang going to Guangchuan from Hezhou in 1769 after being kicked out and banned from Xunhua district. Turkic Salars in Xunhua followed his orders even after the Qing banned him from there and he continued to have further lawsuits and legal issues with the Khafiyya and Ma Laichi as the Qing backed the Khafiyya.

A violent battle where a Qing official and Khafiyya followers were among one hundred slaughtered by a Jahriyya assault headed by Su Forty-three, a supporter of Ma Mingxin in 1781 led to Ma Mingxin declared a rebel and taken to jail in Lanzhou. The Qing executed Ma Mingxin after his release was demanded by the armed followers of Su Forty-three. A Jahriyya rebellion all over northwest China ensued after Ma Mingxin was executed. In response, the Manchus in Beijing sent Manchu Grand Secretary Agui with a battalion to slaughter Jahriyya chiefs and exile the adherents of the Sufi order to the border regions.

Tian Wu led another Jahriyya rebellion 3 years after that, which was crushed by the Qing, and the Ma Datian, the Jahriyya's 3rd leader was exiled to Manchuria in 1818 by the Qing and died.

This continual build up of conflict between Muslims and the Qing court led to the 19th century full-scale wars with Muslim rebellions against the Qing in southern and northern China. The change in Manchu attitudes towards Muslims, from tolerating Muslims and regarding them as equal to Han Chinese, before the 1760s, to the violence between the Qing state and Muslims after the 1760s, was due to progressive Qing involvement in the conflict between the Sufi orders Jahriyya and Khafiyya making it no longer possible for the Qing to keep up with the early rhetoric of Muslim equality. The Manchu court under Qianlong began approving and implementing Chen Hongmou's anti-Muslim laws that targeted Muslims for practicing their religion and the violence by the Qing state, the communal violence between Jahriyya and Khafiyya coincided with the Jahriyya's major expansion.

Chen Hongmou's policies were implemented as laws in 1762 by the Qing government's Board of Punishments and the Qing Manchu Qianlong emperor leading to severe tensions with Muslims. State authorities were mandated to receive all reports of Muslim criminal behaviour by local officials and all criminal behaviour by Muslims had to be reported by Muslim leaders to Qing authorities under these laws. This led to an inundation of anti-Muslim reports filing in Qing offices as the Qing court received information that Muslims were inherently violent and Muslim bandits were committing crimes as report after report were filed by local officials and Muslim crimes inundated court records. The Qing became even more anti-Muslim after receiving these reports about criminal behavior and started passing even more anti-Muslim laws one of them being that if any weapon was found in a group of 3 or more Muslims all of those Muslims would by sentenced as criminals by the Qing.

A new criminal category or act, brawling (dou'ou) was designated by the Qing Manchu court of the Manchu Qianlong emperor in the 1770s especially as an anti-Muslim measure to arrest Muslims leading to even non-Jahriyya Muslims to join with Jahriyya against the Qing and leading the Qing court to be even more anti-Muslim, apprehensive of anti-Qing rebellion by Muslims. This led to the execution of Ma Mingxin in 1781 and the rebellion and violence was compounded by lack of Qing intelligence. A Qing official who was tasked with ending the Jahriyya and Khafiyya communal violence mistakenly thought the people he were talking to were Khafiyya when they were in fact Jahriyya, and he told them that the Qing would massacre all Jahriyya adherents. This led to him being murdered by the Jahriyya mob, which led to the Qing sending Manchu Grand Secretary Agui on a full scale pacification crackdown campaign against the Jahriyya.

The military victory of the Qing against the Jahriyya led to even more Jahriyya anger. Officials went overboard in massacring Muslims deemed as state enemies to impress the Qing court, leading to further growth in Jahriyya membership, leading in turn to the 1784 rebellion by Tian Wu.

The Qianlong Emperor asked his minister what was going on as he was puzzled as to how the Muslims from many regions gathered together for revolt. He asked if the investigation of Muslim behavior by Li Shiyao got leaked leading to rebels to incite violence by telling Muslims the government would exterminate them. He then pondered and said none of these could be why and kept asking why. To solve the issue of the 1784 revolt, northwestern China was put under military occupation by the Qing for 50 years until the Taiping rebellion of southern China forced the Qing to move them away from northwest China leading to the massive 1860s and 1870s Muslim revolts in the northwest caused by growing violence.

The sudden questions about halal in Islam that Mongol Buddhists had in the 18th century was caused by all these things, northwestern China right next to Mongolia getting militarized, the Qing government officially declaring Muslims to be anti-Qing and violent and revivalist Islam coming to China.

More than 1000 Hui Muslim children and women from the Sufi Jahriya order in eastern Gansu were massacred by Qing Banner general Li Shiyao during a 1784 uprising by Hui Jahriyya Muslims Zhang Wenqing and Tian Wu, 3 years after an early 1781 rebellion by Salar Sufi Jahriyya members when the Qing executed Jahriya leader Ma Mingxin. The Qing government under Qianlong then ordered the extermination of the Sufi Jahriya "New Teaching" and banned adoption of non-Muslim children by Muslims, converting non-Muslims to Muslim and banning new mosques from being built. Some Sufi Khafiya "Old Teaching" Muslims still served in Qing forces in fighting against the Jahriya Sufi "New Teaching" Muslims despite the fact that those laws forbdding them from spreading their religion applied to them too. Li Shiyao was a member of the Qing Eight Banners and related to the Qing royal family.