You rock, Jomo.
I had no idea what origin of namaaz was. This is quite enlightening.
What do the Hui Muslims call salaat? Maybe dao3gao4 or qi2dao3? If not, maybe kou4tou2? Just WAGs.
WRS
koutou (see the film The Last Emperor for examples) looks pretty similar to sujûd, I’ll grant you that. But somehow I doubt the Hui applied the term to their sujûd despite the similarity.
I read once that the pre-1911 Imperial Chinese state had an inscribed plaque representing the presence of the emperor placed in all houses of worship, including mosques. All Chinese subjects were required to kowtow to the plaque as to the emperor. Since this would violate Islamic principles that you can only make sujûd to Allah, the Muslims worked out a compromise where they lowered their heads most of the way before the imperial plaque, but not quite touching the floor.
Did you know that the Hui Muslims were the developers of some of the most important styles of Kung Fu?