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L A D N E YC h i n a ’s Muslims are now facing their second millennium under Chinese rule. Many of the challenges they confront are the same ones they have faced for the last 1,400 years of continuous interaction with Chinese society, but many others are new, resulting from China’s transformed and increasingly global- ized society and, especially, from the watershed events of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack and the subsequent “war on terrorism.” Muslims in China live as minority communities amid a sea of people whom they see as largely pork-eating, polytheistic, secularistic, and “heathen” ( k a f i r ) . N e v e r t h e- less, many of their small and isolated communities have survived in inhos- pitable circumstances for over a millennium.
Though small in population percentage (about 2 percent in China, 1 per- cent in Japan, and less than 1 percent in Korea), the Muslim populations of East Asia are nevertheless numerically large in comparison with those of other Muslim states. In fact, there are more Muslims living in China today than there are in Malaysia, and more than in every Middle Eastern Muslim nation except Iran, Tu r k e y, and Egypt. East Asia is also increasingly depen- dent on immigrants from Muslim-majority nations for energy and cheap la- bor, thus raising the importance of its Muslim diasporic communities for in- ternational and domestic relations. Japan has a rather small resident Muslim community, estimated to be less than 10,000; however, recent waves of Middle Eastern and South Asian migrant laborers to Japan’s large industrial cities suggest that the total Muslim population in Japan could be nearing the mil- lion mark. Though these communities are made up of temporary residents, they have as strong an impact on Japan’s rather insular society as the Turkish and Kurdish populations have on the Scandinavian heartlands (Turks and
Kurds now make up more than 10 percent of the population of Scandinavia). As Jonathan Lipman insightfully noted, these long-term Muslim communities have often been the “familiar strangers” found in small enclaves throughout Asia (1997, 2). And if Kosovo and Bosnia are to serve as lessons, failure to ac- commodate Muslim minorities can lead to national dismemberment and in- ternational intervention. Indeed, China’s primary objection to NATO in- volvement in Kosovo was based on its fear that involvement there might encourage the aiding and abetting of separatists generally, a potential prob- lem in light of the fact that independence groups in Xinjiang, Tibet, and even Taiwan remain a major Chinese concern.
This chapter will seek to examine Muslim-minority identity in Asia with spe- cific reference to China, not only because that is where I have conducted most of my research, but also because, as the largest Muslim minority in East Asia, C h i n a ’s Muslims are clearly the most threatened in terms of self-preserv a t i o n and Islamic identity. At the same time, some of the lessons gleaned from the study of the Chinese case might be useful for other Muslim communities in East Asia, and perhaps elsewhere in the world as well. Most relevant to this is the thesis that successful Muslim accommodation to minority status in Asia can be seen as evidence that Muslim groups can reconcile the dictates of Islam to the contexts of their host cultures. This goes against the opposite view that can be found in the writings of some analysts of Islam in China, such as Raphael Is- raeli and Michael Dillon, who argue that Islam in the region is almost unavoid- ably rebellious and that Muslims as minorities are inherently problematic to a non-Muslim state (Israeli 1978; Dillon 1997).
Islam in China
According to the reasonably accurate 1990 national census of China, the total Muslim population is 17.6 million, including Hui (8,602,978), Uyghur (7,214,431), Kazakh (1,111,718), Dongxiang (373,872), Kyrgyz (373,872), Salar (87,697), Tajik (33,538), Uzbek (14,502), Bonan (12,212), and Ta t a r (4,873). The Hui speak mainly Sino-Tibetan languages; Tu r k i c - l a n g u a g e speakers include the Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tatar; combined Turkic-Mongolian speakers include the Dongxiang, Salar, and Bonan, concen- trated in Gansu’s mountainous Hexi corridor; and the Tajik speak a variety of Indo-Persian dialects. It is important to note, however, that the Chinese census registered people by nationality, not religious affiliation, so the actual number of Muslims is still unknown, and all population figures are influenced by poli- tics in their use and interpretation.
Archaeological discoveries of large collections of Islamic artifacts and epig- raphy on the southeast coast suggest that the earliest Muslim communities in
China were descended from Arab, Persian, Central Asian, and Mongolian Muslim merchants, militia, and officials who settled first along China’s south- east coast from the seventh through the tenth centuries. Later, larger migra- tions to the north from Central Asia under the Mongol-Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries added to these Muslim populations by gradually intermarrying with the local Chinese populations and raising their children as Muslims. Practicing Sunni Hanafi Islam and residing in indepen- dent small communities clustered around a central mosque, these communi- ties were characterized by relatively isolated, independent Islamic villages and urban enclaves who interacted via trading networks. However, these scattered Islamic settlements shared a recognition of belonging to the wider Islamic community ( u m m a ) that was connected by traveling Muslim teachers known lo- cally as a h u n g .
Hui Muslims and Islamic Accommodation to Chinese Society Islam in China has primarily been propagated over the last 1,300 years among the people now known as Hui, but many of the issues confronting them are relevant to the Turkic and Indo-European Muslims on China’s inner Asian f r o n t i e r. Though Hui speak a number of non-Chinese languages, most Hui are closer to Han Chinese than are other Muslim nationalities in terms of demo- graphic proximity and cultural accommodation. The attempt to adapt many of their Muslim practices to the Han way of life has led to criticisms among some Muslim reformers. In the wake of the modern Islamic reform movements that have swept across China, a wide spectrum of Islamic belief and practice can now be found among the Hui Muslims in China.
The Hui have been labeled the “Chinese-speaking Muslims,” “Chinese Mus- lims,” and most recently, as “Sino-Muslims.”1H o w e v e r, this terminology is mis-
leading because by law, all Muslims living in China are “Chinese” by citizenship and because there are large Hui communities who primarily speak the non- Chinese languages dominant in the areas where they live. This is the case, for example, with the Tibetan, Mongolian, Thai, and Hainan Muslims of China, who are also classified by the state as Hui. These “Hui” Muslims speak Ti b e t a n , Mongolian, and Thai as their first languages and learn Han Chinese in school, as the national language, along with the Arabic and Persian that some of them also learn at the mosque. Interestingly, since Tajik is not an official language in China, the schoolchildren among the Tajiks of Xinjiang (who speak a Darian branch language, distantly related to old Persian and quite different from the Tajik languages spoken in Tajikistan) go to schools where they are taught in ei- ther Turkic Uyghur or Han Chinese.
In the past, accommodation to the Han way of life was not as much of an is-
Islam in World Cult u r e s 1 6 4
sue for some Turkish and Indo-European Muslim groups as it was for the Hui, for the former were traditionally more isolated from the Han and their identi- ties were not as threatened by extensive interaction. However, this has begun to change since the 1960s. As a result of the state-sponsored nationality-identi- fication campaigns launched in recent decades, these various groups have be- gun to think of themselves as ethnic nationalities, as something more than just “Muslims.” The Hui are unique among the fifty-five identified nationalities in China in that they are the only nationality for whom a religion (Islam) is the only unifying category of identity, even though many members of the Hui na- tionality may not actively practice Islam.
Hui Sufi Orders and Chinese Culture
Sufism began to make a substantial impact in China proper in the late seven- teenth century, arriving mainly along the Central Asian trade routes with saintly s h a y k hs, both Chinese and foreign, who brought new teachings from the pilgrimage cities. These charismatic teachers and tradesmen established widespread networks and brotherhood associations, including most promi- nently the Naqshbandiyya, Qadiriyya, and Kubrawiyya. Unlike in the Middle Eastern or Central Asian Sufi orders, where one might belong to two or even three orders at once, the Hui belong to only one. Among the Hui, one is gen- erally born into one’s Sufi order ( m e n h u a n ) , or one converts dramatically to an- o t h e r. In fact, this is the only instance of conversion I encountered among my sojourn among the Hui. I never met a Han who had converted to Islam in China without having been married to a Hui or adopted into a Hui family, though I heard of a few isolated instances. Joseph Fletcher records the conver- sion to Islam of twenty-eight Tibetan tribes and their “Living Buddha” by Ma Laichi in Xunhua, Qinghai, in the mid-eighteenth century (Trippner 1961, 154–155). After the 1784 Ma Mingxin uprising, the Qing government forbade non-Muslims from converting to Islam, which may have had some influence on the subsequent rarity of recorded Han conversions. This goes against the common assumption that Islam in China was spread through proselytization and conversion. Islamic preachers in China, including Ma Laichi, Ma Mingxin, Qi Jingyi, and Ma Qixi, spent most of their time trying to convert other Muslims. Islam in China, for the most part, has grown through birth and i n t e r m a r r i a g e .
The tensions and conflicts that led to the rise and divisions among various Sufi orders in China and subsequent non-Sufi reforms are complex and im- possible to enumerate. An overview of major developments can, however, give evidence of the ongoing struggles that continue to make Islam meaningful to Hui Muslims. These tensions between Islamic ideals and social realities are of-
ten left unresolved. Their very dynamism derives from the questions they raise and the doubts they engender among people struggling with traditional mean- ings in the midst of changing social contexts. Questions of purity and legiti- macy become paramount when the Hui are faced with radical internal socioe- conomic and political change and are exposed to different interpretations of Islam from the outside Muslim world. These conflicts and reforms reflect an ongoing debate in China over Islamic orthodoxy, revealing an important dis- junction between “scripturalist” or “mystical” interpretations.
In a similar fashion, the study of Southeast Asian Islam has often centered on the contradiction and compromise between the native culture of the in- digenous Muslims and the shari’a of orthodox Islam, between the mystical and the scriptural, between the real and the ideal.2The supposed accommodation
of orthodox Islamic tenets to local cultural practices has led scholars to dismiss or explain such compromise as syncretism, assimilation, and “sinification,” as has been described among the Hui. An alternative approach, and one perh a p s more in tune with the interests of the Hui themselves, sees this incongruence as the basis for ongoing dialectical tensions that have often led to reform movements and conflicts within Muslim communities (Eickelman 1976, 10–13). Following Max Weber (1978), one can see the wide variety of Islamic expression as reflecting processes of local world construction and programs for social conduct whereby a major religious tradition becomes meaningful to an indigenous society.
In the competition for scarce resources, these conflicts are also prompted by and expressed in economic concerns. For example, Fletcher notes that one of the criticisms of the Khufiyya order in China was that their recitation of an Is- lamic religious text entitled the Ming Sha Le took less time than the normal Qur’anic readings as performed by non-Sufi clergy, and therefore Khufiyya imams were cheaper to hire for ritual ceremonies. Fletcher suggests that this as- sisted their rise in popularity and contributed to the criticism they received from traditional religious leaders (Fletcher 1996, 21). Similarly, the Chinese Muslim reformists known as the y i h e w a n i criticized both traditional Muslims and Sufis for only performing rituals in believers’ homes for profit, and con- demned such practices altogether. They summarized their position on such matters in the oft-repeated axiom “If you recite, do not eat; if you eat, do not re- cite” (Nian jing bu chi, chi bu nian jing). A 1958 document criticizing Ma Zhenwu, a Sufi s h a y k h of the Jahriyya order, contains the following revealing accusations:
According to these representatives, Ma Chen-wu instituted many “A-mai-lis,” or festival days to commemorate the dead ancestors to which the A-hungs must be invited to chant the scriptures and be treated with big feasts, thereby squeezing money out of the living for the dead. For example, he has kept a record of the days of birth and death of all the family members of his followers and has seen to Islam in World Cult u r e s
it that religious services be held on such days. These include “Grandmother’s D a y,” “Wife’s Day,” “Aunt’s Day,” and others, sixty-five of such “A-mai-lis” in a y e a r. On the average, one such “A-mai-li” is held every six or seven days, among which are seven occasions of big festival. . . . All the A-hungs of the Islamic mosques have been appointed by Ma Chen-wu. Through the appointment of A- hungs he has squeezed a big sum of money. . . . Ma has regularly, in the name of repairing the “kung-peis” [i.e., tombs], squeezed the Hui people for money. (Quoted in MacInnis 1972, 171–172)
Tendencies toward Acculturation and Purification
The tensions arising from the conflict between Chinese cultural practices and Islamic ideals have led to the rise and powerful appeal of Islamic movements among Hui Muslims. I explored one way of looking at this tension between cultural practice and Islamic ideals in an earlier work (Gladney 1996, 75).3I n
China, there were many attempts to reconcile Chinese culture with Islam, leading to a range of levels of integration. At one extreme are those who reject any integration of Islam with Chinese culture, advocating instead a return to an Arabized “pure” Islam. Conversely, at the other extreme, there are those traditionalist Chinese Muslim leaders who accept greater degrees of integra- tion with traditional Chinese society. Ma Qixi, for example, stressed the com- plete compatibility of Chinese and Islamic culture, the importance of Chinese Islamic Confucian texts, the harmony of the two systems, and the reading of the Qur’an in Chinese.
In between, one finds various attempts at changing Chinese society to “fit” a Muslim world, through transformationist or militant Islam, as illustrated by the largely Naqshbandiyya-led nineteenth-century Hui uprisings. The Jahriyya order sought to implement an alternative vision of the world in their society, and this posed a threat to the Qing as well as to other Hui Muslims, earning them the label of “heterodox” (xie jiao) and leading to their persecution by the Chinese state. By contrast, other Hui reformers have attempted throughout h i s t o ry to make Islam “fit” Chinese society, such as Liu Zhi’s monumental ef- fort to demonstrate the Confucian morality of Islam. The alternative advo- cated by the Qadiriyya order in China represents an attempt to resolve this tension through ascetic withdrawal from the world. A s h a y k h of this order, Qi Jingyi, advocated an inner mystical journey in which the dualism of Islam and the Chinese world is resolved by grasping the oneness of Allah found inside e v e ry believer. These various approaches in Chinese Islam represent sociohis- torical attempts to relate the world religion of Islam to local Chinese culture.
The hierarchical organization of the Sufi networks helped in the mobiliza-
A pagoda-shaped minaret atop a mosque in Linxia, a predominantly Muslim city in Gansu Province, People’s Republic of China. (Bohemian Nomad Picturemakers/Corbis)
tion of large numbers of Hui during economic and political crises of the sev- enteenth through the nineteenth centuries, assisting widespread Muslim-led rebellions and resistance movements against late Ming and Qing imperial rule in Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang. The 1912 Nationalist Revolution al- lowed further autonomy in the regions of northwest China where Muslims were concentrated, and wide areas virtually came under the control of Muslim warlords. This situation gave rise to frequent intra-Muslim and Muslim-Han conflicts until the eventual Communist victory in China led to the reassertion of central state control. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wahhabi-inspired reform movements, known as the y i h e w a n i , rose to popular- ity under Nationalist and warlord sponsorship. They were noted for their criti- cal stance toward traditionalist Islam, which they viewed as being overly accul- turated to non-Muslim Chinese practices and to forms of popular Sufism such as veneration of saints and saints’ tombs.
Beyond such internal Muslim critiques, the Chinese state has also launched its own criticisms of certain Sufi orders among the Hui. The stakes in such de- bates were often economic as well as ideological. For example, during the Land Reform campaigns of the 1950s, the state appropriated mosque and
w a q f (Islamic endowment) holdings from traditional Muslim religious institu-
tions. These measures met with great resistance from the Sufi m e n h u a n , w h i c h had accumulated a great deal due to their hierarchical centralized leadership.
Islam and Chinese Nationalism
In the twentieth century, many Muslims supported the earliest Communist call for economic equality, autonomy, freedom of religion, and recognized nation- ality status and were active in the early establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, many of them later became disenchanted by grow- ing critiques of religious practice during several periods in the PRC beginning in 1957. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Muslims became the fo- cus of both antireligious and anti-ethnic nationalist campaigns, leading to widespread persecutions, mosque closings, and at least one large massacre of 1,000 Hui following a 1975 uprising in Yunnan Province. Since Deng Xiao- p i n g ’s post-1978 reforms, Muslims have sought to take advantage of liberalized economic and religious policies while keeping a watchful eye on the ever- swinging pendulum of Chinese radical politics. There are now more mosques open in China than there were prior to 1949, and Muslims travel freely on the
h a j j to Mecca and engage in cross-border trade with coreligionists in Central
Asia, the Middle East, and, increasingly, Southeast Asia.
With the dramatic increase in the number of Muslims traveling back and forth to the Middle East came new waves of Islamic reformist thought, includ-
ing criticism of local Muslim practices in China. Through similar channels, Chinese Muslims have also been exposed to various new, often politically radi- cal, Islamic ideologies. These developments have fueled Islamic factional struggles that have continued to further divide China’s Muslims. For example, in February 1994, four Naqshbandi Sufi leaders were sentenced to long-term imprisonment for their support of internal factional disputes in the southern