Few people know that not only Buddhists live in Tibet - the image of a Tibetan monk often appears in films and literature. Tibetan Muslims are an obscure minority who speak the same language as the rest of the mountainous region.

Sakina Butt is a young Tibetan Muslim woman from Nepal. She worked for several years in the government, being a real "black sheep", and for her diligent service she was awarded an award - a personal meeting with the Dalai Lama. Despite the fact that Sakina is not a Buddhist, she did not refuse to meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader.

“I was overwhelmed with emotion when I entered the hall [for the meeting],” the girl recalls.

Butt hails from a community that converted to Islam with the arrival of traders from Kashmir, China and Ladakh in the 14th century. Muslim merchants created families with Tibetan women, and so a Muslim community appeared in the region, whose representatives are called kache.

When China invaded Tibet in 1950 and the Dalai Lama took refuge in Dharamsala, many Tibetan Muslims left the region to preserve their religious identity from assimilation into communist Chinese ideology.

The largest community of Tibetan Muslims lives in Kashmir, and they also live compactly in West Bengal and Kathmandu.

The Dalai Lama regularly meets with representatives of Tibetan Muslims and maintains friendly relations with them, reports bbabo.net with reference to the RFA.

"The Dalai Lama regards Tibetan Muslims as an integral part of the Tibetan people and has the utmost respect for their history and culture," said Jose Cabezon, professor of Tibetan studies at the University of California.

bbabo.Net