Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Islam in China 1 6 9tion of large numbers of Hui during economic and political crises of the seventeenththrough the nineteenth centuries, assisting widespread Muslim-ledrebellions and resistance movements against late Ming and Qing imperial rulein Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang. The 1912 Nationalist Revolution allowedfurther autonomy in the regions of northwest China where Muslimswere concentrated, and wide areas virtually came under the control of Muslimwarlords. This situation gave rise to frequent intra-Muslim and Muslim-Hanconflicts until the eventual Communist victory in China led to the reassertionof 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 popularityunder Nationalist and warlord sponsorship. They were noted for their criticalstance toward traditionalist Islam, which they viewed as being overly acculturatedto non-Muslim Chinese practices and to forms of popular Sufism suchas veneration of saints and saints’ tombs.Beyond such internal Muslim critiques, the Chinese state has also launchedits own criticisms of certain Sufi orders among the Hui. The stakes in such debateswere often economic as well as ideological. For example, during theLand Reform campaigns of the 1950s, the state appropriated mosque andw a q f (Islamic endowment) holdings from traditional Muslim religious institutions.These measures met with great resistance from the Sufi m e n h u a n , w h i c hhad accumulated a great deal due to their hierarchical centralized leadership.Islam and Chinese NationalismIn the twentieth century, many Muslims supported the earliest Communist callfor economic equality, autonomy, freedom of religion, and recognized nationalitystatus and were active in the early establishment of the People’s Republicof China (PRC). However, many of them later became disenchanted by growingcritiques of religious practice during several periods in the PRC beginningin 1957. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Muslims became the focusof both antireligious and anti-ethnic nationalist campaigns, leading towidespread persecutions, mosque closings, and at least one large massacre of1,000 Hui following a 1975 uprising in Yunnan Province. Since Deng Xiaopi n g ’s post-1978 reforms, Muslims have sought to take advantage of liberalizedeconomic and religious policies while keeping a watchful eye on the everswingingpendulum of Chinese radical politics. There are now more mosquesopen in China than there were prior to 1949, and Muslims travel freely on theh a j j to Mecca and engage in cross-border trade with coreligionists in CentralAsia, the Middle East, and, increasingly, Southeast Asia.With the dramatic increase in the number of Muslims traveling back andforth to the Middle East came new waves of Islamic reformist thought, includ-