Islam in China
The Yihewani sect was modernist, identifying strongly with Chinese culture and politics, whereas the Salafi Muslims stressed a non-political, and, what they termed an "original" form of Islam. In 1937, when the Salafi formally split with the Yihewani Muslim Brotherhood, Ma Bufang persecuted them as "heterodox" and "foreign". The Salafis were not allowed to move or to worship openly. General Ma effectively suppressed all non-Yihewani groups, including the traditional Sunni Gedimu, the oldest sect of Islam in China, by enforcing Yihewani Imams on them. However, when the Communist party took over, the Gedimu used the Communist party's rules on freedom of religion to ward off the Yihewani practices and imams.