Researching China in Southeast Asia by Ngeow Chow-Bing

Author:Ngeow Chow-Bing [Chow-Bing, Ngeow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367671068
Google: Yt23zQEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2020-12-18T03:46:28+00:00

There are also ethnic Malay scholars who pay attention to Islam in China, such as Sobri Salamon (see items 10 and 11). A well-trained academic in the field of Islamic studies who graduated from the renowned Islamic university, Al Azhar in Egypt, Sobri premised his argument, from an Islamic perspective, on the fallibility and errancy of the atheistic Marxism. Hence, Sobri adopted a highly critical perspective against Marxist systems of all types, including the Soviet Union and China. His hostility towards Marxism was reinforced by his citations of western liberal critiques of Marxism (the cited references of Sobri’s works are mostly western languages as he could not read Chinese), but it is fundamentally derived from his belief in Islam, and the incompatibility between such belief and Marxism (see also Sobri 1981). Developing from this premise, his studies of Islam in contemporary China, Konflik antara Islam dan Marxisme dan Satu Kes Kajian Kedudukan Islam di USSR dan China and Mengenal Islam di tanah besar China are not surprisingly highly critical of the Chinese regime, labelling the suppression of the Chinese Muslims during the Maoist era as ethnic cleansing or genocide. However, this perspective also resulted in a simplified narrative where the Chinese Muslim minorities are seen as frequently subject to continuous oppressions by the non-Muslim Han Chinese majority, overlooking the varying trends historically of the relationship between the Han Chinese, the Chinese communist regime, and the Chinese Muslims, in which there have been both periods of conflict and cooperation, suppression and tolerance.

More books would have been categorized under “Islam in China” if we listed books concerned with the Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) during the Ming Dynasty and his relationship with the Malacca Kingdom as under the “Islam in China” category and not the “Ancient History” category, loosely defined as before the Late Qing era (roughly before 1850s). Among the eight books listed under the “Ancient History” category, five books are either about Zheng He or Ming–Malacca relations. Two of them, Lembaran Sejarah Gemilang: Hubungan Empayar Melaka-Dinasti Ming abad ke-15 and Pelayaran Zheng He dan alam Melayu, were written by scholars from China: Professor Liang Liji and Professor Kong Yuanzi (items 24 and 28). Both Liang Liji and Kong Yuanzi are China-based academics with fluent Malay language ability, due to their background as returned/repatriated overseas Chinese from the Malaysia-Indonesia region during the Cold War in the 1950s. They were among the first generation in Chinese universities to develop the Malay-Indonesian language program (Professor Wu Zongyu is another major China-based scholar specializing in the Malay language, item 50 is his biography). Liang Liji spent some time as a visiting professor at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and during his stay at UKM he completed his book on Ming–Malacca relations (item 24). In the book he drew on many Chinese historical sources to reconstruct a history of Ming–Malacca relations that has won major praise from many Malay scholars and created a major impact. It was an example, Liang wrote later, of scholarship contributing to the friendship of both countries (Liang 2012: 109).

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