Chinese imam uses social media to promote harmony

With brown-tinted glasses and an elaborately shaved face, Ma Guangyue, a prolific blogger on Sina Weibo, has overturned people's stereotyped impression of an imam.

Ma, 42, began blogging on Sina Weibo in early 2013 and has more than 7,600 followers. At Wechat, another popular Chinese social media platform, he has more than 30,000 followers.

Ma does two things on Wechat. He tells non-muslims that the utmost purpose of Islam is to worship Allah and love the people, and he discusses with muslims how to live peacefully with non-muslims.

"A real muslim should not slight his belief nor should he go to extremes," he said. Ma is an imam at the Laowang Mosque in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China's Gansu Province.

His top post on Weibo showed his concern for the people of Gaza.

"Allah, please protect the muslim brothers and sisters in Gaza," it reads, with photos of burning mosque during the recent Israel-Palestine conflict.

He spends more than an hour each day, explaining the Quran and the Hadith to the believers and answering questions on social media. His video explaining the Quran is very popular on video platforms.

In June 2013, Ma raised 77,763 yuan ($12,600) through his Weibo and Wechat accounts for a 26-year-old uremia patient in need of money for an operation.

Ma studied in the prestigious Al-Azhar University and Cairo University between 2005 and the end of 2010 when the "Arab Spring" swept through the region.

"The Arab Spring was my winter," said Ma, who came back to China after the chaos and began teaching in six mosques in the provincial capital Lanzhou, and in Linxia.

Ma was furious when terrorists killed 29 civilians at a Kunming train station on March 1. He wrote a blog the next day condemning the attack as against Islam and inhuman. The blog was forwarded hundreds of times.

"This is an era of peaceful coexistence," said Ma. "Different civilizations and cultures should respect and tolerate each other."