該文介紹民國時期到埃及Al-Azhar唸書的中國穆斯林。其中包含之後來台的王世明與定中明阿訇。這段歷史在台灣學界尚未看到有人特別注意。
In the 1930s, several groups of Muslim students from China arrived to study at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. They were destined to play an important role in the history of modern Chinese Islam.[1] These 35 Chinese Azharites, all but two from the Sinophone Hui community, helped China to establish lasting links with Egypt and other Muslim countries in the Middle East. They also left a considerable cultural legacy, including translations of crucial texts from both the Islamic and Chinese traditions.
After returning to China, many of the Azharites became
intellectual and political leaders of the Hui community, roles they
continued to play in both continental China and Taiwan after the establishment
of two competing Chinese states in 1949. Both the Republic of
China and the People’s Republic of China utilized these highly educated men in
their diplomacy, putting former colleagues on two opposing sides of the deep
political divide. Yet regardless of their post-1949 citizenship, the Chinese
Azharites remained loyal to a similar vision of modernized Chinese Islam. Drawing
on the example of “Arabic purity” they learned in Egypt, they sought to
reconcile the Islamic and Chinese components of the Hui identity and to use the
resources of both civilizations for the benefit of the entire Chinese
nation-state.[2]
