Interpreting Islam in China

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Educational System ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Strategic Objectives ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Han Kitab

This book explores the contours of the Han Kitab tradition through discussing the works of some of its brightest luminaries in order to identify and explicate pivotal transitions in Sino-Muslim engagement with the Islamic tradition. A distinctive intellectual tradition emerged during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Sino-Muslims established an educational system known as scripture hall education (jingtang jiaoyu經堂教育‎), which utilized an Islamic curriculum made of Arabic, Persian, and Chinese works. The Han Kitab, a corpus of Chinese-language Islamic texts developed within this system, reinterpreted Islam through the lens of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian terminology. Three prominent Sino-Muslim authors are representative of major junctures within the history of Sino-Islamic thought and are used to illustrate discursive transformations within this tradition: Wang Daiyu 王岱輿‎ (1590–1658), the earliest important author; Liu Zhi 劉智‎ (1670–1724), the most prolific scholar; and Ma Dexin 馬德新‎ (1794–1874), the last major intellectual in premodern China. The chapters explore how these authors defined being a Muslim through an examination of their thoughts on the hajj, the Qur’an, and the Arabic language. In the discussions, I analyze how they deployed the categories of pilgrimage, scripture, and language in their writings, as well as their strategic objectives in doing so. More broadly, this book fosters an exploration of issues of vernacularization, translation, centers and peripheries, and tradition. It offers theoretical directions for redescription of critical categories in the study of religion, especially within translingual Muslim communities.

Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
Dennis Michael Warren
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Medical Tradition ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The late Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Islamic Thought at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has written this book as number seven in the series on Health/Medicine and the Faith Traditions. This series has been sponsored as an interfaith program by The Park Ridge Center, an Institute for the study of health, faith, and ethics. Professor Rahman has stated that his study is "an attempt to portray the relationship of Islam as a system of faith and as a tradition to human health and health care: What value does Islam attach to human well-being-spiritual, mental, and physical-and what inspiration has it given Muslims to realize that value?" (xiii). Although he makes it quite clear that he has not attempted to write a history of medicine in Islam, readers will find considerable depth in his treatment of the historical development of medicine under the influence of Islamic traditions. The book begins with a general historical introduction to Islam, meant primarily for readers with limited background and understanding of Islam. Following the introduction are six chapters devoted to the concepts of wellness and illness in Islamic thought, the religious valuation of medicine in Islam, an overview of Prophetic Medicine, Islamic approaches to medical care and medical ethics, and the relationship of the concepts of birth, contraception, abortion, sexuality, and death to well-being in Islamic culture. The basis for Dr. Rahman's study rests on the explication of the concepts of well-being, illness, suffering, and destiny in the Islamic worldview. He describes Islam as a system of faith with strong traditions linking that faith with concepts of human health and systems for providing health care. He explains the value which Islam attaches to human spiritual, mental, and physical well-being. Aspects of spiritual medicine in the Islamic tradition are explained. The dietary Jaws and other orthodox restrictions are described as part of Prophetic Medicine. The religious valuation of medicine based on the Hadith is compared and contrasted with that found in the scientific medical tradition. The history of institutionalized medical care in the Islamic World is traced to awqaf, pious endowments used to support health services, hospices, mosques, and educational institutions. Dr. Rahman then describes the ...

The Heart of Wang Daiyu’s Philosophy: The Seven Subtleties of Islamic Spiritual Physiology

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-201
Author(s):  
Kristian Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Spiritual Nature ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Sufi Order ◽  
Han Kitab ◽  
Islamic Literature

Abstract The True Explanation of the Orthodox Teaching (Zhengjiao zhenquan 正教真詮), published in 1642 by Wang Daiyu 王岱輿 (ca. 1590–1658), is the oldest extant text in the Han Kitab, a Sino-Islamic canon. This literature employed Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist language and imagery to explain Islamic thought. Wang was a pioneering figure in the institutionalization of this distinct Sino-Islamic discourse and crystallized much of the terminology used throughout subsequent Han Kitab literature. In the Zhengjiao zhenquan, Wang analyzes the spiritual nature of the heart, dividing it into three aspects and seven levels. These seven levels are correlative of the classification of subtleties (laṭāʾif ) or stages (aṭwār) developed by authors affiliated with the Kubrawi Sufi order. In this article, Wang’s spiritual taxonomy is analyzed in comparison with delineations of the multiple levels of the heart determined by Najm al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1256) and Nūr al-Dīn Isfarāyīnī (d. 1317). Through a close reading of the sources I establish the intellectual influences from these authors’ thought on Wang’s explanation of Islam. By doing so we begin to determine the various sources for Sino-Islamic thought and determine an exact lexical register of Chinese language Islamic literature.

scholarly journals How “Muslim” are Central Asian Muslims? A Historical and Comparative Enquiry

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-269
Author(s):  
Galina M. Yemelianova
Keyword(s):  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Common ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
High Level ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

The article analyzes the social, political, and symbolic functions of Islam in contemporary Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Over many centuries, Central Asians developed a particular form of Islam based on a productive and fluid synergy among Islam per se, their tribal legal and customary norms, and Tengrian and Zoroastrian beliefs and practices. It is characterized by a high level of doctrinal and functional adaptability to shifting political and cultural environments, the prevalence of mystical Islam (Sufism) and oral, rather than book-based, Islamic tradition. These qualities have defined distinctive Islamic trajectories in post-Soviet Central Asia, which differ significantly from those in other Muslim-majority countries and in Muslim communities in the West. At the same time, the common Eurasian space and lengthy shared political history of Central Asians and other peoples of Muslim Eurasia are also reflected in the considerable similarities in their Islamic trajectories.

History of the Development of the Sino-Muslim Community

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Scholarly Production ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Political Economic

Chapter 1 sketches a brief history of Muslims in China to aid in understanding the development of Sino-Islamic scholarship and the shifting contours of this tradition. The establishment of local religious institutions and a unique body of Chinese literature was predicated by the changing attitudes of foreign and local Muslims in relation to political, economic, and cultural policies. The chapter focuses on the transmission of Islam to China as it affected the development of Islamic thought, and situate this process within the Chinese cultural environment and then in the broader Eurasian context, focusing on global relationships and interactions across geographical boundaries. Locally, dynastic history shaped the Sino-Muslim community and their scholarly production, while developments abroad provided episodic intellectual nourishment. In this discussion, I also spar with some theoretical challenges that arise in any analysis of Asian Muslim communities—namely, the processes of Islamization, vernacularization, and syncretism.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Language ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Comparative Assessment ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Han Kitab

The primary objective of this introduction is to establish the key theoretical concerns that are examined through the Han Kitab body of literature. The text defines the analytical boundaries of this discussion and identifies key issues about the study of Muslims in China—translation, interpretation, and sources. It defines the Han Kitab tradition as a genre of Chinese-language Islamic texts, which deploy “literati” discourses, themes, and references. Following this, the main subjects of the book, Wang Daiyu (1590–1658), Liu Zhi (1670–1724), and Ma Dexin (1794–1874), are briefly introduced. Next, the text critiques notions of centers and peripheries in establishing authenticity, orthodoxy, and authority. We argue that these literary artifacts are best understood as being produced within a dialogical process of past, present, and future readers and sources. Overall, the discussion describes a clear methodological method for a comparative assessment of key categories in the study of religion through an analysis of the Sino-Islamic tradition.

Reconstructing Islam

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-53
Author(s):  
Kristian Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Language Of Instruction ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Chinese Muslims ◽  
Specific Interpretation ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Han Kitab

During the sixteenth century when Islam was already established in China, Chinese Muslims began to critically examine their understanding of Islamic knowledge and how to transmit it to future generations. Traditional tutelage based on purely Arabic and Persian sources generally evaded a Muslim population that, for the most part, could no longer read the available rare Islamic texts. The subsequent reconstruction of Islamic knowledge and education emphasized the intersections between the Chinese and the Muslim communities’ cultural and religious heritages. The new specialized educational system, “scripture hall education” (jingtang jiaoyu), utilized Chinese as the language of instruction and incorporated aspects of traditional Chinese literati education in collaboration with newly retrieved Islamic sources from the Muslim heartland. The ensuing standardization and organization of curriculum and pedagogical techniques enabled peripatetic students to replicate this system throughout China. It also allowed the religious community’s leaders to direct the discourse concerning Islam and disseminate a specific interpretation of religious knowledge. This is most clearly displayed through the Han Kitab, the canonized corpus of Chinese Islamic texts written, approximately, during 1600-1750. This literature articulated Islamic principles through the lexicon of literary Chinese and replicated the ideology highlighted by the educational network. This paper analyzes why Islamic knowledge was lost and traces how the new educational system transformed the indigenous Islamic discourse, articulated through the Han Kitab literature, to reflect a distinctive Chinese Muslim interpretation of the faith.

Circuits of Faith

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Farquhar
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Saudi Students ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Social Technologies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Power And Agency ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
Late Ottoman

This book considers efforts undertaken by the Saudi political and religious establishments to widen the sphere of Wahhabi influence beyond the kingdom’s borders from the mid-twentieth century. It focuses on the history of the Islamic University of Medina (IUM), founded in 1961 to offer fully-funded religious instruction to mostly non-Saudi students. It demonstrates that this Saudi state-backed missionary initiative built on political, cultural, and social transformations tracing back to the late Ottoman period. It goes on to show that, just as the IUM sought to extend the authority and influence of the Wahhabi religious establishment into distant Muslim communities, its own operation was both enabled and influenced by migrants from across the Islamic world who came to work and study on its campus. Moreover, the university’s missionary project was further complicated insofar as it was refracted through the agency of the itinerant students who were expected to convey its Wahhabi-inflected message. The book argues that the complex history of such projects of Wahhabi “religious expansion” is best understood as involving a series of unequal transactions within the terms of a transnational religious economy, comprising flows of spiritual capital, material capital, religious migrants and social technologies. This analytical framework suggests new ways of thinking about the evolution of Wahhabism, the rise of Salafism in locations around the world, and the forms of power and agency at stake in border-spanning struggles to steer the future course of the Islamic tradition.

Reconstructing Islam

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-53
Author(s):  
Kristian Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Language Of Instruction ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Chinese Muslims ◽  
Specific Interpretation ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Han Kitab

During the sixteenth century when Islam was already established in China, Chinese Muslims began to critically examine their understanding of Islamic knowledge and how to transmit it to future generations. Traditional tutelage based on purely Arabic and Persian sources generally evaded a Muslim population that, for the most part, could no longer read the available rare Islamic texts. The subsequent reconstruction of Islamic knowledge and education emphasized the intersections between the Chinese and the Muslim communities’ cultural and religious heritages. The new specialized educational system, “scripture hall education” (jingtang jiaoyu), utilized Chinese as the language of instruction and incorporated aspects of traditional Chinese literati education in collaboration with newly retrieved Islamic sources from the Muslim heartland. The ensuing standardization and organization of curriculum and pedagogical techniques enabled peripatetic students to replicate this system throughout China. It also allowed the religious community’s leaders to direct the discourse concerning Islam and disseminate a specific interpretation of religious knowledge. This is most clearly displayed through the Han Kitab, the canonized corpus of Chinese Islamic texts written, approximately, during 1600-1750. This literature articulated Islamic principles through the lexicon of literary Chinese and replicated the ideology highlighted by the educational network. This paper analyzes why Islamic knowledge was lost and traces how the new educational system transformed the indigenous Islamic discourse, articulated through the Han Kitab literature, to reflect a distinctive Chinese Muslim interpretation of the faith.

The Sorrowful Muslim's Guide

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Ahmad Amin
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals ◽  
The Many ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Arab Spring

Originally published in Arabic in 1983, this book remains a timely and important read today. Both the resurgence of Islamist politics and the political, social and intellectual upheaval which accompanied the Arab Spring challenge us to re-examine the interaction between the pre-modern Islamic tradition and modern supporters of continuity, reform and change in Muslim communities. This book does exactly that, raising questions regarding issues about which other Muslim intellectuals and thinkers have been silent. These include – among others – current religious practice vs the Islamic ideal; the many additions to the original revelation; the veracity of the Prophet’s biography and his sayings; the development of Sufism; and historical and ideological influences on Islamic thought.

scholarly journals Problems of the Methodology for Studying the Religious Tradition in the Context of post-Soviet reIslamization

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
Lilia V. Sagitova
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Regional Differentiation ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Constructivist Approaches ◽  
The Impact

Abstract: the article examines the sociological aspects of Islam in post-Soviet Russia and one of its regions – Tatarstan. The author draws attention to a number of influential factors, without which it is impossible to adequately study the processes of post-Soviet reIslamization. The most significant are: regional differentiation of Muslim communities; the influence of Soviet modernization and state ideology of atheism on the state of Islamic theology and the transmission of religious norms and practice; the impact of globalization trends and glocalization on the identification and practices of Muslims. The combination in one sociocultural space of the local religious tradition and the patterns of Islamic globalization in close proximity to the secular community forms the situation of competition of identification projects, normative and ideological conflicts, both among spiritual leaders and inside the ummah itself. The new challenges of the post-secular world require a revision of the methodology for studying Muslim communities; rethinking the concept of “tradition” in the contexts of the local history of the Tatars in conditions of a multi-confessional Russian society and a global Islamic tradition. The research potential of constructivist approaches in sociology and identity theories in the study of Islam and Muslim communities is shown.

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