Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest ChinaOpen access edition: DOI 10. 6069 9780295800554 The Chinese speaking Muslims have for centuries been an inseparable but anomalous part of Chinese society Sinophone yet incomprehensible, local yet outsiders, normal but different. Long regarded by the Chinese government as prone to violence, they have challenged fundamental Chinese conceptions of "self" and "other" and denied the totally transforming power of Chinese civilization by tenaciously