Overview

How can people belong simultaneously to two cultures, originating in two different places and expressed in two different languages, without alienating themselves from either? Muslims have lived in the Chinese culture area for 1400 years, and the intellectuals among them have long wrestled with this problem. Unlike Persian, Turkish, Urdu, or Malay, the Chinese language never adopted vocabulary from Arabic to enable a precise understanding of Islam's religious and philosophical foundations. Islam thus had to be translated into Chinese, which lacks words and arguments to justify monotheism, exclusivity, and other features of this Middle Eastern religion. Even in the 21st century, Muslims who are culturally Chinese must still justify their devotion to a single God, avoidance of pork, and their communities' distinctiveness, among other things, to sceptical non-Muslim neighbours and an increasingly intrusive state. The essays in this collection narrate the continuing translations and adaptations of Islam and Muslims in Chinese culture and society through the writings of Sino-Muslim intellectuals. Progressing chronologically and interlocking thematically, they help the reader develop a coherent understanding of the intellectual issues at stake.

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9781474402279

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This volume does an admirable job of bringing Chinese Muslims into the mainstream of Chinese intellectual history, and one hopes that it will inspire scholars of Islam to engage more with Muslim scholarship from the periphery of the Islamic world, like those Sino-Muslim intellectuals who saw themselves as contributors to both Chinese civilization and the global umma. -- Journal of Islamic Studies, Alexander Stewart, University of California, San Diego

This volume does an admirable job of bringing Chinese Muslims into the mainstream of Chinese intellectual history, and one hopes that it will inspire scholars of Islam to engage more with Muslim scholarship from the periphery of the Islamic world, like those Sino-Muslim intellectuals who saw themselves as contributors to both Chinese civilization and the global umma. -- Journal of Islamic Studies, Alexander Stewart, University of California, San Diego

"""This volume does an admirable job of bringing Chinese Muslims into the mainstream of Chinese intellectual history, and one hopes that it will inspire scholars of Islam to engage more with Muslim scholarship from the periphery of the Islamic world, like those Sino-Muslim intellectuals who saw themselves as contributors to both Chinese civilization and the global umma."" -- Journal of Islamic Studies, Alexander Stewart, University of California, San Diego"

Author Information

Jonathan N. Lipman is Felicia Gressitt Bock Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies and Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. His research focuses on Islam and Muslims in China since the 17th century, including religious, social, political, and economic themes. Jonathan is author (with Barbara Molony and Michael Robinson) of Modern East Asia: An Integrated History (2011), Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (1998), (with K.W. Masalski and A. Chalk), Imperial Japan: Expansion and War (1995), and co-editor (with G. Hershatter, E. Honig, and R. Stross) of Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain (1995) and (with S. Harrell) of Violence in Chinese Society: Studies in Culture and Counterculture (State University of New York Press, 1990)

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