The Oxford History of Islam by John L. Esposito

Author:John L. Esposito
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, History, Philosophy, Reference, Religion
ISBN: 9780195107999
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1999-10-14T19:00:00+00:00

The Third Mode: Scripturalist Concerns and Modernist Reforms

A third mode identifiable in Chinese Islam began at the end of the Qing dynasty, a period of increased interaction between China and the outside world, when many Muslims began traveling to and from the Middle East. In the early decades of the twentieth century, China was exposed to many new foreign ideas and in the face of Japanese and Western imperialist encroachment sought a Chinese approach to governance. Intellectual and organizational activity by Chinese Muslims during this period was intense. Increased contact with the Middle East led Chinese Muslims to reevaluate their traditional notions of Islam. The missionary Claude Pickens recorded that from 1923 to 1934 there were 834 known Hui Muslims who made the hajj to Mecca. In 1937, according to one observer, more than 170 Hui pilgrims boarded a steamer in Shanghai bound for Mecca. By 1939 at least thirty-three Hui Muslims had studied at Cairo’s prestigious al-Azhar University. Although these numbers are not significant when compared with pilgrims on the hajj from other Asian Muslim areas, the influence and prestige attached to these returning Hui hajji was profound, particularly in isolated communities. “In this respect,” Joseph Fletcher once observed, “the more secluded and remote a Muslim community was from the main centers of Islamic cultural life in the Middle East, the more susceptible it was to those centers’ most recent trends.”

As a result of political events and the influence of foreign Muslim ideas, many new Hui organizations emerged. In 1912, one year after SunYat-sen was inaugurated provisional president of the Chinese Republic in Nanjing, the Chinese Muslim Federation was also formed in that city. This was followed by the establishment of other Hui Muslim associations: the Chinese Muslim Mutual Progress Association in Beijing in 1912, the Chinese Muslim Educational Association in Shanghai in 1925, the Chinese Muslim Association in 1925, the Chinese Muslim Young Students Association in Nanjing in 1931, the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Muslims in Nanjing in 1931, and the Chinese Muslim General Association in Jinan in 1934.

The Muslim periodical press flourished as never before. Although it was reported that circulation was low, there were more than one hundred known Muslim periodicals produced before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Thirty journals were published between 1911 and 1937 in Beijing alone, prompting one author to suggest that although Chinese Islam’s traditional religious center was still Linxia (Hezhou), its cultural center had shifted to Beijing. This took place when many Hui intellectuals traveled to Japan, the Middle East, and the West. Caught up in the nationalist fervor of the first half of the twentieth century, they published magazines and founded organizations, questioning their identity as never before in a process that Hui historian Ma Shouqian has termed “the New Awakening of the Hui” at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the

twentieth centuries. As many of these Hui hajji returned from their pilgrimages to the Middle East, they initiated several reforms, engaging themselves once again in the contested space between Islamic ideals and Chinese culture.

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