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“Apoliticization”: One Facet of Chinese Islam

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602000802548078

1469-9591

James D. Frankel,

Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

Abstract Islam, a tradition that both spans and transcends conventional notions of “East” and “West”, has adapted itself as the religion and culture of a sizable minority in China from imperial times down to the present day. For their survival, Muslims in China have often found it necessary to downplay the political (and sometimes militant) emphasis of “normative” Islam, even as they have participated in the political life of Chinese society. However, beyond merely reacting to social, political and cultural intimidation, the tendency to “apoliticize” Islam among Muslims in China is also a reflection of Chinese Muslims simultaneity, a sense of belonging to two civilizations at the same time, without disjunction. Responding to rival pressures to assimilate and to resist assimilation to assert a distinct identity, common to many diaspora communities, Chinese Muslims have exemplified a long history of accommodation of Islam to local contexts, showing Islam to be an evolving, multifaceted tradition. Notes Peter J. Awn, “Faith and Practice”, in Islam: The Religious and Political Life of a World Community, ed. Marjorie Kelly, New York: Praeger, 1984, p. 14. Holy Quran, 2:115. Sahih Muslim, Book 32, Ch. 15, No. 6258. Jim Yardley, “A Spectator's Role for China's Muslims”, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2006, available online at: Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Ch. 21, No. 79. Yardley, “A Spectator's Role”, op. cit. Ibid. Donald Leslie, “The Sahaba Sa'd Ibn Abi Waqqas in China”, The Legacy of Islam in China: An International Symposium in Memory of Joseph F. Fletcher, ed. Dru C. Gladney, unpublished conference volume, Cambridge: John King Fairbank Center, Harvard University, April 1989, pp. 14–6; and Donald Leslie, Islam in Traditional China: A Short History to 1800, Canberra: Canberra College of Advanced Education, 1986, pp. 74–5. Liu Zhi, Tianfang dianli zeyao jie (Selected Essential Explanations of the Rites of Islam), Reprint, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Muslim Propagation Society, 1971, p. 7. Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, New York: Norton, 1982, p. 61. Ibid. Ma Kuangyuan, Huizu wenhua lunji (Collected Essays in Hui Nationality Culture), Kunming: Chinese Literary Union, 1998, p. 53; translated in Marshall Broomhall, Islam in China: A Neglected Problem, London: Darf, 1987, pp. 63–4. Donald Leslie, Islam in Traditional China, op. cit., p. 119. Jonathan Neaman Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997, p. 80. Ibid., p. 81. Quoted in Zvi Ben-Dor, “The “Dao of Muhammad”: Scholarship, Education, and Chinese Muslim Literati Identity in Late Imperial China”, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California Los Angeles, 2000, Ann Arbor: UMI, 2000, p. 267. Lipman, Familiar Strangers, op. cit., p. 219. Ibid., p. 132. Dru C. Gladney, “Salman Rushdie in China: Religion, Ethnicity and State Definition in the People's Republic”, in Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and Modern States of East and Southeast Asia, ed. Charles F. Keyes, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994, p. 256. Ibid. Ibid., p. 259. “Riots Provide Bleak Picture of Society's Ills”, AsiaNews.it, Nov. 2004, available online at: . Ibid. Ben Blanchard, “Religion, Politics Mix Awkwardly for China's Muslims”, News.Yahoo.com, May 2006, available online at: /nm/20060526/lf_nm/religion_china_muslims_dc>. Yardley, “A Spectator's Role”, op. cit. Ibid.