In Western discourse today the charge that Islam is “not just a religion” but a comprehensive social system is leveled to cast doubt over Muslims' ability to integrate into a political community. In the People's Republic of China, this understanding of Islam has served the opposite purpose. From the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), religion cannot be the basis for legitimate political identity. Islam, however, is not just a religion. Rather, as a “social system,” Islam constitutes a legitimate basis for national identity, and the Hui (Huihui), or Chinese Muslims, therefore constitute a minority nationality. This essay explores the origins of the CCP's understanding of Islam in the 1930s and 1940s, when the Party first formulated its policy vis-à-vis the Hui. Glasserman shows how this understanding of Islam as “not just a religion” suited the political, geopolitical, and ideological circumstances of the Yan'an period (1936–48). He also shows how this understanding was informed by contemporary Hui discourse and activism.
This article adapts methods from the study of late imperial Chinese society to understand Hui families’ pursuit of Islamic cultural capital in Qing Guangzhou. It outlines three processes that crystallized by the middle of the nineteenth century: the integration of Guangzhou’s mosques into regional and long-distance commercial networks; the institutionalization of Islamic education at the city’s mosques; and the rationalization of mosque management. Through an analysis of mosque inscriptions and three Hui genealogies, it shows that the local development of Islamic learning and the organization of mosque authority were linked to the wider social field in which Hui families competed for status.
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