The notion of the sinicization of Islam in China is based on a false preconception of Islam and its at- titude toward indigenous cultures. It presumes that the only valid (“orthodox”) expression of Islam is Middle Eastern. In reality, neither Muslim societies in history nor classical Islamic law produced uni- form patterns of cultural expression. Muslims have always formulated distinctive indigenous forms of Islamic cultural expression wherever they went, and the process was encouraged by Islam’s religious law.9
Martin Palmer is very interesting about what happened to Christianity when it arrived in China in the 600s. It was put in a religious "zoo" in the emperors gardens and very quickly adapted to Chinese ideas. It looks like Islam had a similar experience.
It does look like the concept of the ummah is a fiction and everyone develops their own "way"!
My colleagues and I had come to Lou Guan Tai, the site of the greatest official Daoist temple. I believed that the earliest Christian church in China was located nearby.
West of the main temple, we saw a perilously leaning seven-storey pagoda. We asked an old woman, a vendor of amulets, sitting nearby what religion it represented. “It is Buddhist,” she replied. As we turned away disappointed, she added, “But it wasn’t always Buddhist.”
Our hopes were aroused until she continued, “It used to be Daoist,” she told us. Crestfallen, we again prepared to leave. With impeccable timing, she again prevented us from departing.
It doesn’t really belong to either of them, though,” the old woman confided. “It was built by five monks who came from the West and believed in one God.”
To explore further, we climbed the steep hill into which the site had been cut. We scrambled to the top—and were welcomed by another aged lady, a Buddhist nun who informed us that she was 115 years old.
We searched for proof that the pagoda had once been Christian. No evidence offered itself. Only when I climbed still higher did I discover that we had found what we had sought. Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist temples, almost without exception, run north-south. This terrace, cut to hold the temple, ran east-west: the cosmic alignment for Christian churches.
http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org/article/the_jesus_sutras_an_ancient_message_for_a_post_modernist_future/
Topic: The Quran