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ISLAM
and the adaptation of Islam to a particular natural and cultural environment very different from what one finds in the cradle of classical Islamic civilization in the Middle East. More than 220 million Muslims are scattered in this vast area, which includes thousands of islands as well as the Malay Peninsula. Less is known about Chinese Muslims than any other group in the Islamic world. Their number is estimated anywhere from 25 to 100 million, and they are scattered all over China, with the main concentration being in the western province of Sinkiang (the old Eastern Turkestan). They are an old community—there are records of Muslims in Canton in the first/seventh century—and they have created a distinct Chinese Islamic culture of their own, including their own distinct style of Arabic calligraphy. There is also a corpus of Chinese Islamic literature, most of which remains unknown to the outside world. But Muslims remain an important minority in China, as they do in certain other countries from Burma in South Asia to Sweden in northern Europe. Mention must also be made of the parts of the ummah living in Europe and America, although their number is relatively small. Over 20 million Muslims live in various European countries. Some, including the Bosnians, who are of Slavic stock, and the Albanians, of Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo, belong to communities that are centuries old, as are small communities of Turkish and even Bulgar origin. The rest are predominantly immigrants who have come to Europe since World War II and consist mostly of North Africans in