Chinese Muslims, known today as the Hui and during the 19th century as Dungans, present a particular problem for a historian. Why should Chinese-speaking believers in Islam constitute a separate ethnic group when believers in other religions of foreign origin (Buddhism and Christianity, for example) do not? Did Chinese Muslims have a common history across China, or has one been created for them because they are now labeled an ethnic minority group (minzou) in the People's Republic of China? Jonathan Lipman begins his history by challenging the whole notion of the “Hui” as an ethnic group, which he argues in his Introduction has been taken as an unproblematic category by both Chinese and Western scholars. Lipman prefers the term “Sino-Muslim” to “Hui” to emphasize the reality that these Muslims are and have been Chinese in culture for centuries and to distinguish them from non–Chinese-speaking Muslim groups in China.