Wounds that fester: Histories of Chinese Islamophobia

網路對同治年間回民起義的「另類解讀」

Sometime in March 2019 the Baike Baidu page about the Great Northwestern Muslim Rebellion (陕甘回民起义), c.1862–1874, vanished. The topic has never been a comfortable one in China, but even for the heavy-handed architects of China’s Great Firewall, this was a blunt intervention into history. For a facile comparison, this is a little as if Wikipedia had abruptly deleted their introduction to the American Civil War.

The Great Northwestern Muslim Rebellion was complex, messy and extremely violent. It began with a series of local feuds that mostly were not about religion but which escalated when Qing officials took the side of Han disputants against the Muslims and garrisons across the two provinces mutinied, producing a domino effect. Rumour, banditry and socioeconomic distress did the rest: by the end of the rebellion, the populations of Shaanxi and Gansu had fallen by half, with millions dead or having fled to make new lives elsewhere.

Despite being described as a rebellion, there is limited evidence that any of the various leaders intended to overthrow the Qing rulers. The rebellion was in truth a patchwork of different, highly local conflicts, where in each case the Hui participants came to be viewed as the rebels.

The Anti-Islamic Movement in China

看完之後有許多想法。中國政治與社會反伊斯蘭其實是這兩百年來的結構性問題。我知道會有學者提出異議，認為不客觀、偏頗，或是需要在百年後，才能透過史料才能了解「真相」。他們說的都對，只是那些學者從未真正傾聽生活在那大地上的穆斯林感受。

https://www.hudson.org/research/15095-the-anti-islamic-movement-in-china