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Summarize and evaluate the origins and early trajectories of Islam in China from the Tang to Ming dynasties (approximately 618-1644). In summarizing and assessing this thousand-year period, the following points may be considered:
- The context of pre-Tang/early contact between China and pre-Islamic Arabia
- Chinese Muslim communal founding myths and their relation to historical record
- Early Muslim life in China – economic life, living situations
- Processes of integration into Chinese society
- Military alliances/confrontations between China and Caliphates
- Prominent early Chinese Muslim figures
- Racial/ethnic divisions and hierarchies from dynasty to dynasty
The main goal here is to concisely restate the primary content of the class material in your own words – this is the summarizing aspect. At the same time, you should weave in your evaluation and opinion of this history. This task is more subjective. How does this history compare to other histories/historical processes with which you are familiar? Can you draw parallels to any modern phenomena? These are two examples of questions you may consider in crafting your assessment.
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Chapter 3 Hui Identity and Modernity Chinese Muslims: Identity and Modernity Before considering the subject of acculturation and modernity it seems useful to know how the Hui identify themselves. In this twenty-first century, the search for identity is commonplace and touches all ethnic groups including minorities such as the Hui, Chinese Muslims at a crossroads between modernization and Sinicization. Most of China's Muslims are Sunni. The majority are members of the old school Laojiao, also called Gedimu (from the Arabic qadim, "ancient"). In Yunnan, they call themselves "Old Heads," Laotou, a qualifier that only the Muslims of this province understand. The greater part of the Hui belongs to the orthodox Hanafite School; few of them recognize Abu Hanifa (c. 696-c. 767). This jurisprudential school of Iraqi origin goes back to Abdullah Ibn Masud, a companion of the Prophet, and is characterized by the Sunna Muslim tradition, inductive and legal reasoning, and consultation before taking a religious or political decision. In China; Muslims, particularly the Hui, have Chinese family names (xing). These names have an Arabic origin such as Ha, Na, Sai, and Sha. The most widely used by far is Ma ("Horse"). The most common patronymic, Li, also exists but it is less frequent among Hui than among Han. For Gustav von Grunebaum (1909-72), Islamic cultural identity raises a ques- tion about the relationship between Muslims and the Western world: "In accepting Western influence, the Muslim elites aimed not at renewing a heritage but at eliminating marks of inferiority." This question leads to our quest for accultura- 29 Islam in China tion and modernization. The transformation of minorities in China, including the Muslims, is being achieved through the acculturating filter of Sinicization. This Sinicization is called "internal colonialism" by authors such as Michael Hechter (Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development) and in particular Dru Gladney in his recent book Dislocating China (2004) on Muslims, minorities, and other "subaltrrn subjects." .. This study follows the methodology I elaborated for the Dong minority, which did not touch the question of colonialism (Sinisation 1998). The Hui are similarly confronted with Westernization and modernization through Chinese culture and the official education system in particular. The Chinese state, following a type of Durkheimian education system, sticks to state education linked with order and social peace. Acculturation (implemented in particular via the education of the youth) for the Hui is double, Chinese and Islamic. Is it necessary to replace fundamental values coming from family education by the values of the Chinese school? In fact, politics and laws count more than religion. Muslims living in an Islamic country think of the state through the sharia; the Hui, a minority, are Chinese citizens who cannot come under the control of Koranic laws. Ibn Battuta, each time that he encountered a Chinese Muslim, had the impres- sion of encountering his own family or a close friend. Is this still true? Six hundred years after the long voyage of the celebrated traveler from Tangiers, the Hui, having been greatly altered due to Chinese influence, do not necessarily resemble other Muslims. However, one of their principal references remains the Koran, which is a compulsory subjeGlt of study for all Muslims. Arabic is "axial," says Massignon, but it is difficult in China to attain Islamic universality through Arabic, the Koranic 'tJ.jj language. The Hui majority read the Koran only in Chinese, and Chinese citizenship distinguishes them from the Arabs. Some Muslims of the Old Religion (Gedimu) believe that the reformers of the nineteenth century were not orthodox. In Linxia (Hezhou), for instance, those of the old school consider that the "New Religion," Ikhwan Al-Muslimin (Yihewani in Chinese) or the Muslim Brotherhood, has little to recommend it, for it developed in 1936 Salafism (Salaifeiye) under the patronage of Republican warlords in Gansu and Qinghai, the ancient Kuku Nor. This Brotherhood expressly favors education in Arab, which poses problems in China. The communal life of the Hui, however, reinforces the existence of the com- munity. The code of Muslim life imposes the five pillars: belief (kalima, in Chinese kalimate), prayers, fasting, charity (zakat), and the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is the unique act of total membership in the umma. It is a duty for all Muslims to go 30 Hui Identity and Modernity to the mosque on Friday, which is sometimes called libaidian or the day of prayer. Chinese people have often found it unusual that Hui and Uyghurs meet together; their devotional prayers are strange for the Chinese. Dali in Yunnan Province, in majority Muslim, which was ruled by Du Wenxiu from 1856 to 1873, was a Muslim state. It finally collapsed. One cannot say how deeply Islamic culture was rooted in this community, but when assistance was requested from Tibet to fight the Manchu, Muslim identity was stressed. The umma is above all transnational, for Muslims throughout the world belong to a same community. Belonging to this community means going to Mecca at least once. After following a seminar in the mosque on Oxen Street (Niujie) in Beijing, the pilgrims accepted by the Islamic Association leave for Mecca; they become an integral part of this community without frontiers. A Yunnanese named Ma, the celebrated Admiral Zheng He (1371-1435), was one of the first Chinese pilgrims to go to Mecca with the Muslim sailors from his fleet accompanying him. In the begin- ning of the twentieth century, pilgrims used the Yunnan railway from Kunming to Hekou toward Hanoi, because it considerably reduced the length of the trip. Before the Second World War, others embarked at Shanghai, a "Treaty Port." Since the normal resumption of Chinese pilgrimages in the 1980s, the trip is normally made by plane from Beijing or Shanghai. Kunming is now linked by air to Bangkok, and a visa must be obtained in Thailand based on the rigid limits of the Saudi quota. The more adventurous go in pilgrimage via Pakistan from Xinjiang. The Koran is central in defining official religious acts, in particular during this pilgrimage. Koranic Teaching Hui who can read the Koran in Arabic are called Ahong, a term of Persian origin; this term is also used to designate imams in China as is the term yimamu (imam). The Islamic Association's practice of lowering the age of the imams is also seen among the rare female Ahong who teach the Koran. Since the 1990s one finds a constant practice: the imams fifty to sixty year-old, or the elderly female Ahong are replaced by young Ahong who are politically more reliable. This lowering of the age of imams is part of Sinicization. Young imams are happy to find a job. Even ardent believers are concerned with their professional survival. They have not known the stresses of the Cultural Revolution. They closely follow what has been taught to them under the auspicious control of the Islamic Association. They know the limits imposed on religions, 31 Islam in China particularly on Islam, but never speak of Sinicization. They cannot even imagine what acculturation means. The search for employment or an administrative post occurs through the building of good family or professional relations (guanxi). The most Islamized young Hui elite sometimes seek to study abroad. The guiding organization, the Islamic Associiltion, helps motivated students enter an overseas IslamiC university; the family can also playa major role. Th;e most famous Hui scholars have graduated front~l-Azhar, the prestigious Egyptian university. Before the Second World War, dozens of Ahong studied in Egypt, they became the elite of the Chinese Islamic thinkers and researchers. New generations of Chinese imams also try to study in Egypt. Others, after two years at Chiang Mai's Chinese madrasa, study at Medina University. While a good knowledge of the Koran is an essential preliminary, for an imam in China the first criterion-a profound knowledge of Chinese-is crucial. This seems paradoxical, but it must be remembered that in China, Koranic Arabic is learned via Chinese. The Uyghurs, whose language uses an Arabic-Persian alphabet, have an advantage in studying Arabic when they start. However, the Islamic Association in Beijing prefers to train Hui than Uyghurs. However, Uyghurs also join the National University for Minorities in Beijing. In 1989, there were more than 200,000 imams in China. The older ones have a better knowledge of the Koran and have experienced the r~ligious crises of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution. For them Islam is a community. The Party is linked to the Islamic Association, and most imams are affiliated with it and thus linked to the state. The Association currently prefers young imams who receive only small gifts (zakat) from neighboring Muslims. Imams are never rich. ·~.l~ The Muslim belongs to a community. What are the questions a Chinese Muslim can ask in a reformed socialist country? Islam thinks of the other world after death. A belief in metempsychosis also gives to Buddhism a popular platform in the face of Taoism. One can rightly hold that the Marxist ethic is no longer what it once was, and this is one reason for the increase in Christian belief in China since Deng's reforms. In the 1980s the correct and novel desire to become rich altered radically the Chinese ethic of the period 1949-76. How to live an honest life and have an upright spirit? Islam places responsibility for the person above the collectivity but allows the community to designate the route to follow. Muslim education centers on family values and purity. 32 Hui Identity and Modernity purity Without considering Muslim ablutions as a ritual preparation for prayers and respecting the obvious necessity of cleanliness, belonging to the Muslim community means also respecting certain dietary rules and clothing habits. The purity of food (hatat in Arabic, a synonym of "legal") is from a semantic point of view identical with the concept of "purity and truth" (qingzhen) of the mosques. For the French Ollone Mission qingzhen was the official name of Islam since the fourteenth century, from which arose the characters Qing and Zhen, placed above entrances to Muslim place of worship. . The Chinese Islamic community defines itself by purity and truth (qingzhen). Dabry de Thiersant mentions that Xian's main mosque, at first named "The Temple of Pure Religion" (qingjiaosi) was renamed quingzhensi in 1315, like all other mosques. For the Chinese, qingzhen designates, above all, a product manufactured by the Hui minority. But for Chinese Muslims qingzhen signifies that which is Islamic. The term Qingzhensi ("Temple of Purity") is not well known by the Han, except by the literati and those living in Muslim areas. Related to purity is the well-known prohibition on pork as part of Muslim dietary taboos. Butchered cattle and sheep in China as in the Islamic world must have the throat cut according to Koranic ritual. Since the beginnings of Islam in China,