Matthew S. Erie, a trained lawyer and
ethnographer who teaches at Oxford University,
lived for two years in Linxia, a small city in the northwestern Chinese
province of Gansu. Known as China’s Mecca, it is a center of religious life for
the Hui, an ethnic minority numbering 10 million who practice Islam. Along with
the Turkic Uighurs, they are one of 10 officially
recognized ethnic groups that practice Islam, making the total population of
Muslims in China around 23 million, according to the 2010 government census.
Mr. Erie’s recently published book, “China
and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law,” is a
look at how Shariah
— Islamic law and ethics — is implemented among the Hui. In an interview
he discussed his findings, which confound many preconceptions about Shariah,
Chinese law and the rigidity of the Communist state.
How
should we understand the statistics on Muslims in China? Officially there are
23 million, but this assumes that Islam is an ethnicity, and that all Hui, or
all Uighurs, must be Muslim.
It’s a problematic issue because it’s an
ethnic category that is used to define members of a religion. Hence, it can be
both over-inclusive and under-inclusive. For the former, Muslims outside of
China may not consider every Hui to be a Muslim. Many Hui are very pious. They
attend mosque regularly and go to the hajj. And then there
are people who say they’re Hui, meaning they just don’t eat pork. For the
latter, it’s possible that some Chinese citizens who
are ethnically Han [the dominant ethnic group in China] or Tibetan are, in
fact, Muslims. It’s a very loose category.
How about converts to Islam? Can one
change one’s legal ethnicity?
There are converts, for sure. The
motivations are interesting. I met a Han laborer who worked on the railway. He
had injured his arm and did not receive benefits. He became disaffected and
found solace in Islam. He was also looking for a wife. Poor Han men sometimes
convert if they’re looking for a wife, because there are Hui networks that will
help out. Hui will help you convert and marry.
But changing one’s ethnic identity, officially, is very difficult. It can
happen, but it’s hard.
One
sees in China a huge spiritual hunger and need for traditional values, which
some find in religion. Is Islam part of this religious
revival?
Absolutely. The
vacuum created by the end of Maoism has led to a commercialization of Chinese
society that is in its own way spiritually void.
There’s no question that people are searching for meaning. What’s really
important is that some people are doing it through Islam. These are
people who were born Hui but not part of that spiritual tradition, and who are
returning to it. They find a group of fellow believers and discover strength in
that community. Many of these people travel to places like Linxia and study
Islam for the first time in their lives. (與1930年代的背景不同。)
You report that
China had 20,000 mosques in 1994 and 34,000 in 2010. That seems like solid
evidence for a growth in the religion.
The region from
Lanzhou to Linxia is often called the Quran belt.
When you’re on the highway, it’s impossible to go a minute without seeing a new
mosque under construction. What’s driving this is an
accumulation of wealth, and people are willing to allocate some of it, because
they see mosques as a center of their community. It’s not just where
people pray or study but also where they socialize and share news and gossip.
Is this
government-financed?
Almost none of
it. Almost all comes from donations. Donors are businesspeople using the money
they’ve saved to benefit their communities.
What about
overseas donations? In the West, many big mosques are financed by the Saudis or
Gulf states.
That
rarely happens in China. The government keeps tight control over this. They don’t want to have
these sorts of ties overseas.
Is there any
international dimension to Islam’s revival?
The
revival has two aspects. One is almost always personal: a marriage that didn’t work out, or
interfamilial strife. And then they learn about larger phenomena through
translated texts, social media or on-the-ground missionary activity. Saudi
Arabia is a natural pole star. Egypt has major pull
given its academic institutions and religious scholars. Missionary work
increasingly comes from the Dawa movement. These activists are primarily from
South Asia. The idea is that Muslims should return to the pious behavior of the
Prophet Muhammad. This can mean a variety of things, from daily prayer to
rejecting chopsticks in favor of eating with one’s hands. These people interact
with the Hui trying to find themselves. That’s where the rekindling occurs.
Some of this
seems to parallel Christianity’s rise in China. It also benefits from overseas
missionary ties.
True, but Islam
is different in that you have this global discourse on terrorism, which is
oppressive and limits the capacity of Muslims inside China to interact with
Muslims outside of China. Islam is so politicized that it’s quite different.
Does
that hamper Islam’s ability to function as a force for soft power? China makes
much of the fact that it is the world’s biggest Buddhist nation. Couldn’t it
also win friends in Central Asia or the Middle East by pointing to its vibrant
Muslim population?
There’s no
doubt that the state looks at Islam in a different way
than it does Taoism or Buddhism. It makes it
hard for them to participate in even a nationalistic revival — even
slogans of Xi Jinping, such as the Yidai Yilu [the One Belt, One Road
initiative to link China to Central Asia and South Asia through overland and
sea routes]. I was in China this summer and everyone was talking about it, but the question is if Muslims can participate in this. That
would be good for the state, but the anxieties are great, too. (1930年代的穆斯林多了自主性，現在較看不到)
Your book has
rich descriptions of Linxia, a dry, remote city with so much religious life.
It’s the base
of Islam in the northwest. Muslims have built mosques and prayed there since at
least the 14th century. Some say certain Muslim tombs there date to the Tang
dynasty. That’s hard to prove, but it shows how important it is. It’s a place
where Islam took hold.
Your book
challenges the idea that the Hui are the “good” Muslims, while the Uighurs are
the “bad” ones, engaged in terrorism.
The Hui have
had numerous uprisings, most notably during the second half of the 19th century
from Yunnan to Gansu and beyond. Not all of these were necessarily against the
state. There were a number of local conflicts that often snowballed. They are
not submissive lackeys of the state.
You show this
through the fascinating paradigm of Shariah. In the
West, people often think of Shariah as a rigid Muslim legal system from the
Middle Ages, with stoning and amputations. Here we see it as something alive
and very flexible. What does it encompass?
The parameters
are wide, from dietary considerations to interpersonal relations. Some of it is
deciding what is halal food. But it’s also what we would call torts in the U.S.
— when someone driving a vehicle strikes a pedestrian. A lot of time the
authorities will ask the mosques to aid in evidence-gathering. We have a localized sense of Hui morality, that may be
inflected with Shariah and that might affect the outcomes — the amount
of the settlement, for example. The ahongs [Hui term
for cleric] will help determine an amount.
But this
consultation has its limits.
Definitely.
It’s not used in criminal law, where the state has the monopoly on using its
own legitimated force. But in social relations, the Hui
are part of this local dynamic — the clerical authority and the authority of
the local state.
This is a more
pragmatic exercise of power than many might expect.
The state
realizes it needs the local clerics. If the state were to consciously exclude
the local religious authorities, it would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the
believers.
Are Hui
satisfied?
There is a
spectrum of opinions. They push for more autonomy and
decision-making ability but are not always allowed to. In this, I think
their struggles parallel those of Muslim minorities elsewhere — in France,
Germany or the U.S. — but in China they do not have
recourse to formal law, political institutions or even civil society. Rather,
they rely on their ties to the government and increasingly transnational
networks to protect their personal and collective interests. (與西方穆斯林的不同處)
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