Is China a House of Islam? Chinese Questions, Arabic Answers, and the Translation of Salafism from Cairo to Canton, 1930-1932

Halevi, Leor

doi:10.1163/15700607-00591p03

Cited by 4 publications

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“…On a trip to the Middle East in the early 1930s, Sabit Damulla penned articles describing the Muslims in Xinjiang as enjoying almost complete freedom of religion, directing most of his complaints towards the activities of European missionaries. His views were in accord with those of prominent Arab theorists of political Islam such as Rashid Rida, who held that while China lay outside the Islamic world and was technically Dar al-Harb (the ' Abode of War'), this did not impose on Muslims any obligation to contest Chinese rule (Halevi 2019). The preferred course of action, he believed, was to engage in proselytisation of the faith.…”

Section: Towards a Defence Of Religious Freedommentioning

confidence: 66%

Xinjiang Year Zero

2022

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Xinjiang Year Zero provides an analysis of the processes of dispossession being experienced by Uyghurs and other indigenous peoples of China's Uyghur region that is sorely needed today. Most politicians and their followers today, whether on the left or the right, view what is happening to the peoples of this region through a twentieth-century lens steeped in dichotomies that are obsolete in describing the nature of states today-those of capitalism vs socialism and democracy vs totalitarianism. The contributors to this volume explore what is happening in Xinjiang in the context of the twenty-first century's racialised and populist-fuelled state power, global capitalist exploitation, and ubiquitous surveillance technology. At the same time, they invite the reader to reflect on how the processes of dispossession in the Uyghur region during the twenty-first century are repeating the colonial practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have shaped our current global system of inequality and oppression. The result offers an analysis of what is happening in Xinjiang that emphasises its interconnectedness to what is happening around us everywhere in the world. If you believe that the repression in this region is a fabrication to 'manufacture consent' for a cold war between the "West" and China, you need to read this book. Afterwards, you will understand that if you want to stop a return to the twentieth-century geopolitical conflicts embodied in the idea of a cold war, you must establish solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of China's northwest and call for the end to the global processes fuelling their dispossession both inside China and outside. '

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Section: Towards a Defence Of Religious Freedommentioning

confidence: 66%

Xinjiang Year Zero

2022

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“…Views on the possibility of good bid'a did not align neatly with the Yihewani/Gedimu or reformist/ traditionalist divide. The renowned Guangzhou-based ahong Ma Ruitu, descended from an Islamic scholarly lineage in Yunnan and a prominent critic of what he considered unlawful practices among Chinese Muslims, employed the five-fold classification of bid'a in a 1934 work (Halevi 2019;Ma Ruitu 2005, p. 603). Wang Jingzhai later listed Ma Ruitu as a member of the same reformist, "scripture-observing" (zunjing) milieu as Xiao Dezhen and against Hong Baoquan, whom Wang criticized as a member of the "custom-following sect" (congsu pai) (Wang Jingzhai 1939, pp.…”

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confidence: 99%

Bid‘a and evolving conceptions of the shari‘a in Qing and Republican China

Glasserman

2023

International Journal of Asian Studies

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In this article I revise the conventional account of the contestation over Islamic reform in late Qing and Republican China. I argue that previous scholarship has overlooked important similarities between so-called “reformists” or “Yihewani” and “traditionalists” or “Gedimu.” Based on an analysis of several texts and their exposition of the concept of bid‘a, I show that scholars associated with opposite sides of this divide in the early twentieth century shared a legalistic understanding of the shari‘a as a system of categories for classifying human action; and that this classificatory conception of the shari‘a differed from the practice-centered approach reflected in earlier Chinese Islamic works.

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Nationalist Spirits of Islamic Law after World War I: An Arab-Indian Battle of Fatwas over Alcohol, Purity, and Power

Halevi

2020

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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In 1922, one of the most famous Muslim scholars of modern times, the Syrian-Egyptian reformer Rashīd Riḍā, published in his journal a detailed fatwa in defense of alcohol. He did so in reaction to an obscure Indian jurist's fatwa that had warned Muslims not to use alcoholic products. On the surface, the authors of the fatwas appeared to be principally concerned with the right way to interpret sacred laws of purity and pollution. However, this article reveals that their disagreement had much to do with differing approaches to the politics of independence. Their divergence is intriguing because the cities where they lived, Cairo and Bombay, had just experienced the convulsions of anti-British consumer boycotts. And it emerged at a time when anti-imperial Muslim activists from the Middle East and South Asia were rallying together for a pan-Islamic cause—to prevent the final collapse of the caliphate. These movements swayed both Riḍā and his rival, who may well be described as Muslim nationalists. Yet they embraced radically different strategies for independence. One aimed for national purity, the other for national power. This discrepancy led to the battle of fatwas—a forgotten battle that is worth remembering because it suggests some of the difficulties that Muslim jurists of Arab or Indian ancestry faced during the interwar period when they tried to turn Islamic law into an effective nationalist discourse.

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Is China a House of Islam? Chinese Questions, Arabic Answers, and the Translation of Salafism from Cairo to Canton, 1930-1932

Cited by 4 publications

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Xinjiang Year Zero

Xinjiang Year Zero

Bid‘a and evolving conceptions of the shari‘a in Qing and Republican China

Nationalist Spirits of Islamic Law after World War I: An Arab-Indian Battle of Fatwas over Alcohol, Purity, and Power

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