BROTHERS AND COMRADES:

MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISTS AND COMMUNISTS ALLIED FOR THE

TRANSMISSION OF ISLAMIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHINA.

Observing the transmission of Islamic knowledge in China

raises a question: why do the most rigorist Muslims, whom we

call “Fundamentalists”, benefit from the Chinese Communist

Party’s support in their activities of opening and running

schools, leading official institutes transmitting –religious--

knowledge? Why do opposite ideologies and opposite ways of

life, apparently antagonistic, seem to be allies? This article

aims to open perspectives on this paradox, which has not yet

been fully explored.

How to define Chinese Muslim Fundamentalism? It

originated in two main Islamic reform movements, which appeared

at the end of the nineteenth century. The first one appeared

in Eastern China, and the other mostly in the northwestern part

of the country. Though very different from one another in

their inspiration as we will see below, and differing also in

their Islamic and Chinese culture, they both promote a return

to the source of Islam, the Holy Book, the Koran, and the

Sunnah, which is transcribed in Hadîth, the Sayings of the

Prophet Muhammad. This might be without the intermediation of

the traditional imam or of the mystical brotherhood shaykh.

In the Eastern part of China, the Middle-East Nahdha

(Arabic “Awakening”) that started early in the nineteenth

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century influenced the reformist movement. It was aimed to

provide better education and knowledge in order to renew and to

deepen faith, to allow Chinese Muslims to understand the sacred

Books, and to purify religion from unorthodox Islamic rituals

and Chinese customs. It was called “New Religion” or Xinjiao, in

opposition to the “Old Religion” or traditional Religion,

Laojiao or Qadim (Ar. “Ancient”). I define this as

fundamentalism because according to it a believer ought to know

and read the holy texts by himself, and to conform his life to

their commands. This trend is modernist in its means of

action, which are the renovation of religious teaching and the

introduction of a generalist education. It encourages its

members to participate in Chinese social life, and to improve

their social position. For this purpose, developing knowledge

was, as in the rest of the Muslim world, an essential

condition.

The second trend is linked to Wahhabism, and was first

introduced in Northwest China, in Linxia, in the Gansu

province, at the end of the nineteenth century. Its followers

called themselves, as Wahhabis call themselves elsewhere, Ahl al-

Sunnah (“People of the Sunnah”). Their movement was also

called New Religion, Xinjiao, or Xinxinjiao, New new religion,

because it came after other mystical reformist movements.

Their famous motto, “Respect scriptures, reform customs” zunjing

gesu, defines their approach quite well and made them known as

“The sect of the scripture respect” or Zunjing pai. Today, the

most common term is Ikhwan (Ar. “Brothers”), in reference,

according to themselves, to a Koranic quotation, saying that

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all Muslims are Brothers on Earth, or, according to some

researchers,1 after a group of Arabian Peninsula tribesmen who

joined to form a religious warfare brotherhood in the early

twentieth century, under the banner of Wahhabism, and were

called Ikhwân.

In the first part of the twentieth century, the Chinese

Ikhwan flooded the West, the Xinjiang, Ningxia, Qinghai and

Yunnan provinces. It became a nationwide movement when it came

close to Eastern reformism in the 1940s. It was a rigorist

movement of Wahhabi inspiration and it opposed, sometimes

violently, the Northwest’s influential mystical brotherhoods,

though it never claimed to leave China’s dominant Hanafi school

of law. Originally avoiding contacts with non-Muslim Chinese

society, but backed by Muslim warlords since the early 1920s,

the Ikhwan turned resolutely modernist, and dominated the

Muslim educational movement in the Northwest.2

Those two movements, though they appeared in different

places and were inspired by different Muslim reformist schools,

echoed each other by promoting their common interests: the

return to a pure Islam, the eradication of the so-called non-

Islamic customs, as well as the popularisation of learning.

1 Ma Tong. Zhongguo yisilan jiaopai menhuan suyuan [The Origins of Chinese Islamic Sects]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1995, 132-146, and Feng Jinyuan. Zhongguo de yisilanjiao [China’s Islam]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1991, 64.2 Leila Cherif-Chebbi. “L’Yihewani, une machine de guerre contre le soufisme?”. In Islamic Mysticism Contested. Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics. Frederickde Jong & Bernd Radtke eds. Leiden: Brill, 1999, 585-591.

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I- Half a Century of Modernization of Islamic Teaching

Fundamentalist movements led to the modernization of

Chinese Muslims education during the first half of the

twentieth century.3 Modernization, for Chinese Muslims, means

first to learn written Chinese, and second, to study scientific

subjects, such as mathematics, history, and geography.

Education allows a believer to read and understand religious

texts and their commentaries by himself, to comprehend the

meaning of his faith, to perform rituals, and not let the ahong

(“imam”) be the only depositary of knowledge, nor, worse, to

let the tariqa’s shaykh, the leader of a Sufi brotherhood, lead

the believer’s life.

In the Chinese context, on the one hand, reformists have

to train good believers, integrated and able to progress in

society. General education is also considered as a means to

help Chinese Muslims leave their backward social position, so

that many elementary schools were set up.4 On the other hand,

the course of religious teaching is to be completed in few

years, ideally four years, with the help of translations,

apologetic booklets, and abstracts of religious books, in order

to train imams who will be able to perform their duty of

teaching and leading the religious community bound to a mosque.

3 Françoise Aubin. “L’enseignement dans la Chine islamique précommuniste (du XVIe siècle au milieu du XXe siècle)”. In Nicole Grandin & Marc Gaborieau dir. Madrasa, la transmission du savoir dans le monde musulman. Paris: éditions Arguments, 1997, 373-388. 4 For a general survey of Muslim Education in the Chinese context, Dru Gladey. “Making Muslims in China: Education, Islamization, and Representation”. In China’s National Minority Education: Culture, State Schooling and Development. Gerard A. Postiglione, ed., New York: Garland Press, 1999, 55-87.

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Even if socialism has entirely changed the Chinese society

in the last fifty years, the aspirations to education still

exist today. Lack of instruction is still denounced by

fundamentalists and they actually run the majority of Chinese

Muslim private schools.

A- The Modern Education: Relegation of the Traditional Mosque School Teaching

General education was provided in the elementary (xiaoxue)

and secondary (zhongxue) schools. Those institutions were,

during the first half of the twentieth century, private

schools, sometimes backed, mostly financially, by the

nationalist government and the Northwest warlords. Elementary

education rarely concerned girls, and was the result of the

voluntary stance of few pedagogues. Girls’ schools, or girls’

classes within boys’ schools, were mostly opened in the modern

East, instead of the backward Northwest, where women did not

participate in the social and religious life, and seldom do so

nowadays.

The Chinese Muslim warlords, the Ma families, promoted the

Ikhwan movement from 1917-1918 to 1949, in the regions they

controlled. In order to secure political and religious

influence among the numerous Muslims, they put the Ikhwan in

charge of imams and at the leading positions in associations

they created, to promote the development of modern education.

The traditional Qadim, with its very loose ties, no centralized

authority, and mystical brotherhoods, endlessly fighting each

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other or facing internal conflict or secession, could not be

reliable allies.

Those modern education associations claimed to be branches

of the “Association for the Progress of Islam” Huijiao jujinhui,

which was founded by a reformist imam in Beijing in 1912 in

order to develop Muslim education.5

The “Association for Promoting Islamic Teaching” in the

province of Gansu was founded in the region’s capital in 1918,

by the scholar Ma Linyi (1864-1938), one of the founders of the

Beijing Association, who came to Gansu in 1913 to be in charge

of education.6 In 1949, the Association was proud to announce

that 179 elementary schools and several middle schools had been

created, and that 19,500 students had been turned out. In

Xining, in the province of Qinghai, the “Association for the

Progress of the Islamic Teaching of Ningxia and Qinghai” was

founded in 1922, presided by the Muslim warlord Ma Qi (1869-

1931), and leaded by the Dongguan Great Mosque’s Ikhwan Imam, a

cousin of Ma Qi.7

Religious knowledge was also renovated in opening Arabian

Chinese schools, or Normal schools for higher education.

Elementary schools opened inside mosques and were placed

under the imam’s authority. Some ulemas having received a

5 For more detailed information see Qian Zhihe. “20 shiji qianye Huizu jiaoyu fazhan de lishi guiji” [20th Century Historical Location of the Development of Hui Teaching]. Ningxia shehui kexue, 1995, n°2 (69), 23-28; Zhang Juling. “Zhongguo Huijiao jujinhui chuzhuang jiping” [The Foundation of Chinese Muslim Progress Association at the Early Stage], Huizu Yanjiu (Researches on the Hui), 1997, n°4 (28), 1-8; 1998, n°1 (29), 10-22; 1998, n°2, 14-16.6 Huang Shengjun ed. Huizu jiechu renwu [The Renowned Hui Personalities]. Xian:Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1999, 158-161.7 ZHU Jielin. Gan-Ning-Qing minzu jiaoyu shi jianbian [Brief Historical Survey of Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai Nationalities Education]. Xining: Qinghai renmin chubanshe, 1993, 248-251.

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modern education, or Muslim intellectuals, or even non-Muslims,

taught in those schools. This teaching was clearly meant to

put an end to Arabic and Persian course that obliged students

to memorize the texts, and which lasted for at least ten years.

The results were often unsatisfying, often because imams were

barely able to decipher Arabic scriptures. In order to reform

that situation, general education had to be promoted and

religious education had to be simplified, thanks to the use of

written Chinese language.

Thus, various kind of schools were created, ranging from

secular and general education schools to renovated religious

mosque schools. However, regardless of the type of school, an

imam systematically taught religious courses and led prayers.

Traditionally, every Muslim child was taught elementary

religious knowledge, by the imam or his assistants, in order to

memorize some parts of the Koran, and to accomplish prayers.

It was most often the only education the Hui (Chinese speaking

Muslims) received. This traditional education, which excluded

the learning of Chinese characters and focused on the sole

Arabic alphabet, led Chinese people and the Hui themselves to

consider those ulemas as “illiterate”.

The imams’ renovated instruction was devolved to an

institution, in spite of a single or successive masters who

were the mosques’ imams.

In the East and in the Southwest, which were not run by

Muslim warlords, but which were more developed and modern, and

where the vast majority of Hui Muslim intellectuals resided,

four colleges were in existence from the twenties to the late

7

thirties. The Sino-Japanese war, in 1937, obliged Muslim

intellectuals to seek refuge in the West and led to the

progress of education in backward regions such as the Gansu,

Ningxia, Sichuan and Guangxi provinces.

The first institution of this kind was the Chengda Normal

School, founded in Jinan, in the easternmost part of China in

1925 and moved to Beijing two years later. The purpose of the

school was to form “three leaders”: not only modern imams or

“chiefs of religion” jiaozhang, but also “chiefs of association”

huizhang, and “chiefs of schools” xiaozhang.8 The others adopted

the same pattern. The second one, the Shanghai Islamic Normal

School, was founded in 1928 by an Azharite imam, Ha Decheng

(1888-1941)9 in the great city of Shanghai, where Muslims

formed a small but quite flourishing community. Yunnan also

had its Mingde College in the late 1920s, the first to make an

agreement to send students to Al-Azhar in Egypt.10 The fourth,

the Wanxian Islamic Normal School, was founded in Sichuan in

1928 by the Ikhwan imam Li Renshan (1881-1937), who came from

Shanghai, and the merchant Zhou Jisan. Due to bad economic

conditions, this school had to cease its activities six years

8 The article is written by one of the school’s founders, Ma Songting. “Zhongguo huijiao yu Chengda shifan xuexiao” [China’s Islam and Chengda Normal School]. In Li Xinghua & Feng Jinyuan eds. Zhongguo yisilanjao shi cankao ziliao 1911-1949 [Selected Reference Materials on the History of Islam in China, 1911-1945]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1985, vol. 2, 1033-1054.9 Leila Chérif-Chebbi. “L’islam chinois dans la période moderne à travers la vie et l’œuvre de Ha Decheng (1888-1943)”. Unpublished manuscript, 1988, 25-26; Ruan Renze & Gao Zhennong. Shanghai zongjiao shi [History of Religions in Shanghai]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1992, 537-539.10 Yao Jide. “Zhongguo liu Ai Huizu xuesheng paiqian shiwei” [The Whole Process of Sending Chinese Students Study in Egypt)». Huizu yanjiu, 1999, n°1 (33), 59-63.

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later.11 These were the most famous schools, which formed the

Hui scholars or leaders whose careers took mostly place under

the communist regime. Between 1931 and 1936, the first three

schools sent some thirty students to Egypt. Most of them

became well-known intellectuals, professors or translators.

In the Northwest, the Muslim warlords founded or sustained

financially the same kind of schools, setting up a consistent

amount of elementary schools, and a few middle schools. In

Ningxia, Ma Fuxiang (1876-1932), a scholar and the only Muslim

warlord who played a nationwide political role, helped on

education in the northwestern region he controlled, Ningxia,

but also supported financially the Beijing Chengda Normal

School, the Shanghai School in the East, and he contributed to

Muslim publications.12

His son, Ma Hongkui (1892-1970), succeeded his father and

concentrated his efforts on his province. In 1932 he

established a Ningxia Private Sino-Arabic College in the

Dongdasi Mosque, in the provincial capital of Yinchuan, under

the leadership of the famous Ikhwan imam Hu Songshan (1880-

1956). One year later, it became a public school, gaining fame

to the point that it received students from as far as Shanghai,

the Yunnan and the Sichuan provinces. But in 1935 Hu Songshan

made a violent public preaching against Ma Hongkui, who had

organized festivities for the Chinese New Year, ten days before

119 Ma Yanhu. “Zhou Jisan yu Wanxian Yisilan shifan” [Zhou Jisan and Wanxian Islamic Normal School]. Huizu yanjiu, 1993, n°1 (9), 96-98.12 Ningxia San Ma [The Three Ma of Ningxia]. Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1988, 20-25 ; Ding Mingjun. Ma Fuxiang chuan [Ma Fuxiang’s Biography]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 2001, 138-166.

9

the end of Ramadan, and accused him of kufr (“blasphemous

attitude”). Hu Songshan was dismissed and moved to a remote

place in Ningxia. After pardon was granted to him, he ran in

1938 the Wuzhong Sino-Arabic Normal School, in a city seventy

kilometres from the provincial capital. This school provided

three courses of general teaching and one course for imams. It

was in existence for five years and delivered degrees to two

hundred students. Following the same pattern, Ma Hongkui

founded twenty-four schools through Ningxia, two of them

providing a high level of secondary education.13

In Xining, the capital of the Qinghai province, the

Dongguan Great Mosque, which had headed the Ikhwan movement

since the early 1920s, became a great centre for the

instruction of Ikhwan preachers and imams. Indeed, in 1918,

the Muslim warlord Ma Qi (1869-1931) saved the founder of the

Ikhwan movement, Ma Wanfu (1853-1934), from imprisonment. The

latter took the spiritual leadership of Ikhwan religious

activities. However, the control of the Great Dongguan Mosque

remained in the hands of the relatives of Ma Qi and his son Ma

Bufang (1903-1975). The latter, following his father’s will,

received an imam’s instruction until the age of 19, whereas his

elder brother received a military education.14 So, if the

adherence of Ma Qi to the Ikhwan could appear tactical, the

religious zeal of Ma Bufang seems to have been sincere.

13 Hu Xibo. «Hu Songshan he Ma Hongkui de sanci hezuo banxue (Three Times Collaboration between Hu Songshan and Ma Hongkui to set up Schools)». Huizu yanjiu. 2002 n°2 (46), 109-115.14 Xu Xianlong. ZhuMa junfa jituan yu Xibei musilin shehui [Ma Warlords and Northwest Muslim Community]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 2001, 131.

10

Every year the Dongguan mosque trained more than a hundred

young men. They were granted scholarships and were assured of

receiving wages thereafter.15 For all the other imams fresh

from school, this was not the same. They had to be “invited”

by the administrators to preach in their mosque. Students came

from all over China, especially from Yunnan, Henan, and

Ningxia. The imams who graduated from the Dongguan mosque were

sent to one of the 1,000 mosques dependent on the Dongguan

mosque, and were backed if necessary by troops, in order to

teach a reformed Islam in rituals, burials, Koranic recitations

and so on. Many violent incidents took place in Gansu region,

because followers of the other Muslim sects resisted, sometimes

fiercely, the clerics imposed on them.16 In Ningxia, Ikhwans

settled less violently, due to the action taken by its most

famous imam, Hu Songshan.

B- Patriotism and Involvement in Chinese Affairs

As education spread, naturally Muslims increasingly

participated in Chinese political life or at least developed an

interest for it. Moved first by a hope of social promotion,

they were later force by circumstances to participate in the

tremendous changes that occurred in China. The Hui

individually took part in the war of resistance against Japan,

which invaded Manchuria in 1931, and led to a general invasion

in 1937. It is not possible to distinguish between the15 Liu Dewen. “Zhongguo yisilanjiao Yihewani pai zai Xining de chuanbo” [The Preaching ofthe Chinese Muslim Ikhwan in Xining]. In Zhongguo yisilanjiao yanjiu [Research on Islam of China]. Xining: Qinghai renmin chubanshe, 1987, 309-318.16 Li Xinghua et alii. Zhongguo yisilanjiao shi [History of Islam of China]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1998, 783-786.

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involvement of the various sects or Islamic schools, although

some men, because they worked as teachers, especially

fundamentalists, attracted the communists’ attention. These

teachers, whose discourse and acts are reported very

conventionally in today’s publications, are portrayed as Muslim

patriot heroes, some of them even joining the Chinese Communist

party.

One of those nationalist heroes is the Ikhwan imam from

Ningxia, Hu Songshan. He was one of the first imams to become

Ikhwan in this province. After a firm confrontation with

powerful Sufi brotherhoods that sent him to prison for some

months and caused him to abandon preaching for some years, he

wisely turned his back on the Ikhwan intolerance to a “warm”

attitude of compromise. In the province, the Ikhwan got

support from the Muslim warlords, but more inconspicuously than

in Qinghai and Gansu. As said below, Hu was responsible for

modern schools, in Yinchuan and in Wuzhong. But his glory

resides in his nationalism. In 1924, according to his

biography, he went on a pilgrimage and suffered all the way

from scorn and derision, not because he was a Muslim, but

because he was a Chinese. He became convinced that only a

strong China could protect Chinese Muslims from contempt.

During the Sino-Japanese war, he wrote a prayer in Arabic to

ask Allah to destroy China’s enemies, which was posted up in

Ningxia’s mosques and called Muslims to fight the Japanese.17

17 Jonathan Lipman. Familiar strangers. A History of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 200, for a translation of this prayer, and 209-211 for the life of Hu Songshan.

12

Other patriotic figures were those of Hui Muslims studying

in Egypt at Al-Azhar University during the 1930s and early

1940s. They were students from Normal schools of the East and

Yunnan but were not all Ikhwan. During their stay in Egypt,

the Japanese attack of 1937 awakened their patriotism. They

denounced Japanese exactions in China, explaining that it was

also directed at Muslims, to the leaders and the public opinion

of Arab countries, which, as many colonized countries, were

mostly in favour of the Axis powers. In 1939, Japan sent a

delegation of five people to accomplish a pilgrimage, in order

to prove that Chinese Muslims were well treated. Beijing’s

ulemas and the nationalist government sent orders to students

to go to Mecca and counter this propaganda. Within few days,

the twenty-eight students improvised themselves as China’s

official envoys. They succeeded in their mission, even by

physical confrontation with their fellow countrymen, in being

considered as representatives of China’s Islam.18

Most of those intellectuals were later enrolled in RPC

official institutions such as universities, the Islamic

Institute of China founded in 1955, the radio broadcasting

service and the Chinese State Council, or the ministry of

foreign affairs. Only one of them worked as a mosque imam.

They tried to prove the compatibility between Islam and

Socialism, saying that Islam is a religion of progress and

humanity, and that there is no such gap with communist reforms

such as the reform on marriage -polygamy is to be avoided in

Islam-, inheritance –Islam allows women to inherit as opposed18 Tie Weiying & Li Xuezhong. Zhongguo Musiln chaojin jishi [Chronicle of Pilgrimage of China’s Muslims]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1994, 201-210.

13

to Chinese culture-, and agrarian reform –Islam encourages

believers to be generous to the poor and to make others benefit

from their wealth.19 More recently, birth control has been

said to be compatible with Islamic commandments.

Today, the official institutions for the transmission of

Islamic knowledge, called Islamic Institutes, a heritage of the

schools of the first half of the twentieth century, that turned

out high standard students, are led by fundamentalists.

External funding, mostly from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf

countries supports confessional private schools, which

flourished in numbers in the 1990s. Most of them teach a

scriptural Islam, using modern technology and staying in touch

with Muslim countries. Only few of these schools are headed by

Sufi brotherhoods. In those schools, religious courses are

more or less important. Some of them need simply to compensate

scholarship failure for the Chinese Muslim youth, or are simply

less expensive than the state-run schools. But some, famous at

the provincial or national level, essentially teach religious

courses, and carry the idea of the necessary and strict

obedience to Islam, which can prove difficult in a country were

Muslims constitute a small minority.

II - Socialism and Fundamentalism, Brothers and Comrades:

Friendly Foes?

19 Ma Jian. Muhanmode de baojian [The Sword of Muhammad]. Anonymous publisher, 1952, 124. A collection of articles written at the early fifties. For marriage, see 25-36, on Socialism 79-80.

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Many signs of hostility have been noted over the second

half of the twentieth century between fundamentalists and

communists--but does this jeopardize the general concord

otherwise observed?

A - A History of Hostility

1 - Historical Circumstances

The Ikhwan growth from a sub-regional-scale movement

centring on Linxia into a nationwide movement was made possible

by the protection bestowed upon the movement by the Northwest

warlords. The Ikhwan came to act as a representative of the

warlords' regime and as a go-between upholding the regime in

the eyes of the Muslim population. The warlords' troops were

80% Muslim, and were led by Ikhwan imams playing both a

political and a religious role. Most officers belonged to the

Ikhwan movement.20 To fight the Communist Party, the warlords

portrayed it as "the party which shares property and wives",

which "kills Muslims and destroys religion".21 Paradoxically,

in the 1940s, and since the People's Republic was founded, the

Communists trusted a large part of the management of Muslim

affairs, and notably education, with their former opponents.

In the East, fundamentalists have been active in schools

of secondary and further education receiving funds from the

warlords and from the nationalist government. During the war

against Japan, they founded Islamic associations, which

20 Xu Xianlong, 127-135.21 Xu Xianlong, 183-184.

15

attracted national interest and supported Chiang Kai-shek's

regime.22 The fundamentalist imam Wang Jingzhai (1879-1949)

was among those who in 1937 in Henan founded the “Association

of Chinese Muslims Against Japan to Save China” Zhongguo Huimin

kang Ri jiuguo xiehui. He was born in the port of Tianjin, studied

at Al-Azhar in the early 1920s and was instrumental in the East

in the movement to renew and purge religion.23 He also

translated the Koran and a law book and was an editor of one of

the most widespread Muslim reviews. In 1938, the Association

moved to Wuhan and there came under the control of members of

the Nationalist government. In 1945 the Association took its

definitive name, “China Islamic Association” Zhongguo Huijiao

xiehui, and in 1949 followed the move of the regime to Taiwan.

Since then it has been the island's official Muslim

association.24 Wang Jingzhai, having been to Taiwan in 1948 to

survey the place in the perspective of moving there, died

before the Nationalist regime fell. Having been unable to

leave China, he is still considered there as one of the "Four

Great Imams" of the Republican period.25

From 1949, in the first years of the Communist regime, the

CCP adopted a cautious attitude and organised no purges, since

22 For a brief synthesis on these associations see Guo Qingxiang. “Lüelun ershishiji qianbanqi de Huizu shetuan” [A Brief Treaty of Hui Associations in the FirstHalf of the Twentieth Century]. In Ma Tong ed. Huizu jinxiandai shi yanjiu[Studies on the Hui's Modern History]. Lanzhou: Gansu minzu chubanshe,1992, 154-166.23 Wang Jingzhai, “Wushi nian qiuxue zishu” [Autobiographical Survey of Fifty Years of Improving Studies]. In Li Xinghua & Feng Jinyuan eds., Cankao ziliao 1911-1949, 620-631.24 Li Xinghua et al., 761-762.25 Huang Chengjun ed., 219-222; Feng Jinyuan. “Wang Jingzhai ahong zhuanlüe” [Biography of the Ahong Wang Jingzhai]. Zhongguo Musilin [Muslims of China], 2001 n°1 (130), 21-23.

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it was engaged in securing its control of the country,

especially in the Northwest where active resistance by

"bandits" was carried on until 1953. Repression started in

1954 in a selective way and became widespread in 1958 during

the period of the Great Leap Forward; it was finally extended

to all Muslims for the period of the Cultural Revolution of

1966-76.

Two Ikhwan imams were imprisoned very early on and died in

jail in 1970. The first was Chen Keli (1924-1970), a disciple

of Wang Jingzhai and of Pang Shiqian (1902-1958), a famous

Ikhwan imam of Henan. Among other works, Chen Keli translated

the Hadîth (the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) and a book by

the Lebanese Husayn al-Jisr who was a disciple of Muhammad

'Abduh. In 1950 he wrote an essay presented as a series of

brief and clear paragraphs exposing his views on Islam and its

influence on social life.26 He then was invited by the “China

Islamic Association” Zhongguo Yisilanjiao xiehui, founded in 1953, to

teach in its Islamic Institute before the official inauguration

of 1955, and accepted on the condition that he would not become

a member of the Association nor have any political activities.

Pressure made him retire to his birthplace and refuse other

functions, explaining "he would only devote his life to the

service of Allah". When the anti-rightist movement was launched

in 1957, he tried to flee to Linxia but was arrested on his way

and imprisoned for years before being sent back to his

birthplace in 1962 for forced labour. He kept working

frantically at translations and was again arrested at the

26 Chen Keli. Cong Muhanmode kan Yisilanjiao [Islam Seen in the Perspective of Muhammad]. Anonymous publisher, 1990, 229 p.

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beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and died in

prison. His manuscripts, consisting of two dozen translations

and two books, were destroyed.27 One extant narrative

survives, the entranced relation of how one translation was

traced by the Communists and mailed as a precaution to a

correspondent in Linxia. The Linxia correspondent masoned up

the translation in a wall during the Cultural Revolution and

then transferred it to the home of his wife’s poor peasant and

illiterate aunt to keep it from searches.28 The republishing,

from the 1980s on, of the surviving books, is evidence that

nothing has been forgotten.

What is even more surprising is that a severe repression

fell early on upon another Ikhwan imam, Ma Fulong (1919-1970),

who had been taught in Ningxia by Hu Songshan and had

contributed in 1942 to religious teaching in Ningxia. In 1949,

however, while he was imam of the Xinhua mosque at the centre

of Yinchuan, he had welcomed the Communists in the provincial

capital by brandishing a flag in the street, heading his

mosque’s students. Two pictures of this event were even

published.29 He then collaborated with the Army in the

religious affairs committee. His essay Yisilan qianlun [A Brief

Essay on Islam] was published in 1954 and in it he tried to

27 Ma Yanhu. “Buqiao de Chen Keli ahong” [The Unfortunate Ahong Chen Keli]. QinghaiMusilin-Moslems in Qinghai, 1993, n°2, 39-42. A review of the Qinghai Islamic Association, of Ikhwan influence, published at irregular periods. See also Chen Keli (transl.), Shengxun jing [The Book of Traditions of the Prophet]. Anonymous publisher, vol. 2, 12-18.28 Ma Jitang. “Shengxun jing hanyi shougao lixian ji. Ma Zhizhong de gushi” [The Adventures of the Chinese Translation of the Book of Hadith. The Story of Ma Zhizhong]. Huizu Yanjiu. 2000 n°3 (39), 43-45.29 Yang Jianping. Jiefang Ningxia lishi tuji [Historical Pictures and Drawings on the Liberation of Ningxia]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1988, 62,72.

18

integrate religious duties with the duties imposed by the new

social organisation. He was accused of supporting religious

feudalism, arrested and he died in prison sixteen years

later.30

Hu Songshan, the patriot imam, who was close to the

Ningxia warlord Ma Hongkui, died earlier on in 1955 so that he

escaped the repressive wave. Conversely, his son Hu Xueliang

(1918-1960), who was also an imam and was his father's

assistant, was charged in March 1959 with having collaborated

with the former warlord and was accused of being a rightist, so

that he was sent to forced labour in the country near Yinchuan

and died of starvation and exhaustion in November 1960.31 A

similar fate awaited an imam who had since 1949 headed the

Great Dongguan Mosque of Xining, which was the principal mosque

of the Ikhwan; he was arrested in 1958 and died in prison.32

As a matter of course, since almost all religious leaders

heading mosques are teachers, the transmission of religious

knowledge was deeply affected when they were banned from their

mosques or arrested. During the Cultural Revolution, all

religious teaching was made illegal and in the extreme periods,

it was not practicable even in an underground way.

Harassment, persecution and arrests were also common with

other movements than the Ikhwan, since the Northwestern Sufi

brotherhoods33 and the intellectuals of the East also suffered30 Biographic after word by Hai Zongyuan. In Ma Fulong. Yisilan qianlun [Brief Essay on Islam], Yinchuan: Anonymous publisher, 1993, 226-236.31 Hu Xibo (the son of Hu Xueliang), 113-114.32 Kong Xianglu, La Bingde. “Xining Dongguan Dasi” [The Great DongguanMosque of Xining]. In Xibei Huizu yu yisilanjiao [The Hui and Northwestern Islam].Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1994, 425.33 Françoise Aubin. «En Islam chinois», 551-552. Ma Zhenwu (1895-1961), master of the Shagou branch of the Jahriyya Sufi order, was judged in a

19

repression. The most famous Muslim scholar, Ma Jian, studied

at Al-Azhar and translated numerous books during his stay in

Egypt (1931-1939). In 1946, he was appointed Head of the

Arabic course in the Department of Oriental Languages at the

University of Beijing and even acted as official interpreter

for President Mao. He only published a few articles in support

of the regime in the early 1950s, and from then on restricted

his activities to the amelioration of his translation of the

Koran into a vernacular Chinese. He was harassed personally

during the Cultural Revolution: falsely accused of

participating to an “Imân (Ar. “Faith”) Party”, he was

suspended from teaching from 1966 to 1972.34

Persecution has hitherto been mostly ignored, or vaguely

and briefly evoked as "the Ten Black Years' Troubles", i.e. the

Cultural Revolution, and has been contrasted with the following

recovery of religious freedom in 1979. It is now an indication

of persisting resentment that persecutions are described in

private, and even, recently, in official journals and reviews--

this was the case with the 1975 massacre of about 2,000 Muslims

in Shadian in the Yunnan.35 For instance, Ma Jian lost his

mother-in-law, a sister and a niece without being allowed to

express any feeling.36 The private conversations of Muslims

bear witness to the appalling scale of the persecutions.

much publicized trial in 1958 and was executed three years later and then rehabilitated in 1984.34 Ma Jian is the subject of scores of articles. For an exhaustive study seeLi Zhenzhong. Xuezhe de zhuiqiu: Ma Jian chuan [Looking for the Scholar: aBiography of Ma Jian]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 2000, 216-243.35 Shadian Huizu shiliao [Historical Materials of the Shadian Hui]. Honghe: Kaiyuan shi yinshua chang, 1989, 46-57, 303-317.36 Li Zhenzhong, 245-247.

20

2 - A Widening Gap: Islamic Demands Vs Increased

Political Control of Religions

The Great Dongguan Mosque of Xining (Qinghai), the

historic centre of the Ikhwan, remains important among Chinese

Muslims even if its leading role has no official existence.

The mosque has been since 1985 the location of the Islamic

Institute of Qinghai, whereas in other provinces the Islamic

Institutes have new premises outside the mosques. In 1989 the

Dongguan Mosque harboured a gathering of tens of thousands of

protesters against a book deemed insulting to Islam.37 In

October 1993, the army had to storm the place to evict the

demonstrators who were again protesting a book they found

insulting.38 Teaching was suspended for a period and the

mosque is now only allowed to teach seventy students whereas it

could teach many more. All the mosque's activities are under

close surveillance. This is why the town's Muslims take it as

an expression of piety and silent watchfulness that several

thousand worshippers should each Friday overcrowd the Mosque's

imposing building; that the grandson of the founder of the

Ikhwan should have been selected to be imam; and last but not

least that the authorities cannot oppose such moves as the

recent and impressive renovation of the building without

infringing upon the constitutional principle of freedom of

religion.

37 Dru Gladney. Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991, 1-4. Leila Chérif-Chebbi. Contre les « Rushdie chinois », le réveil des musulmans Hui. Unpublished manuscript, 1991, 18.38 Eglises d’Asie. n° 163, 16 November 1993, 2.

21

Fundamentalist affirmative action is now affected by a

worldwide phenomenon of Islamic "globalization" using the same

neo-fundamentalist doctrinal sources as the puritanical Saudi

Islamism which is funding it. This movement rests on the view

of a unified Islam overriding local differences. It is marked,

especially among young Muslims educated in private religious

schools, by the use of recognizable terms such as “brother”,

“sister”, “talib” (“student”) and the use of the Muslim first

name in preference to the Chinese name. Physical details

include, for women, a square headscarf and a loose, shapeless

dress, and for men, an untrimmed beard, embroidered skullcap,

and long shirt over loose trousers.

Apart from dress, the new fundamentalists, who are often

teachers or school officials, voice their opinions in private

reviews and the prefaces of books, essays and translations from

foreign contemporary Muslim books. Ma Enxin epitomises the new

tendencies. He is one of the new intellectuals, is head of an

Islamic school at Najiaying, at the centre of the Yunnan

province, and formerly taught at the Islamic institute of the

province; his work includes translations of Mawdudi, Yusuf al-

Qardhawi and others. In the preface to the translation of a

Saudi book done by a Najiaying Islamic Cultural Centre teacher,

he denounces the new dangers threatening the purity of faith.

Apart from the traditional influence of Chinese philosophy,

Islam in China is confronted to westernization, now made easier

by the new, open politics of China. Islam is also being

altered by theories growing from academic research and saying

that Islam has some Chinese traits and has been sinicized. It

22

is weakened by the decrease of religious knowledge caused by

the lack of proper Islamic teaching.39

Private religious schools are banned in politically

sensitive regions such as Beijing, which is under strict

control as the political centre of the country, or Xinjiang

which is under pressure from the separatist claims of the

Uygur, or again the Qinghai, because of the 1993 unrest. In

other places, the schools are strictly controlled, after a

decade of sometimes anarchical growth which was only checked by

financial limitations. Donations from foreign Muslims must be

handled by the official Chinese Islamic Association and its

local branches, otherwise they are illegal and must be hidden,

after a legal Act passed in 1994.40 Religious schools undergo

administrative harassment, and are sometimes closed down. Their

reviews are often banned and often have to change their

titles.41 These difficulties date from 1996 and have been

increasing since 1999 because of distrust for the Falungong.

They have been focusing on Islam after the September 11 attacks

in 2001.42 This is why the growth observed in the 1990s is39 Muhammad Amin Ma Enxin. «Preface». In Hafiz Hakimin, Ma Jiankang(transl.) Yisilan xinyang 200 wen [Two Hundred Questions on the Muslim Faith]. Yunnan: anonymous publisher,2000, 2. Ma Jiankang, a teacher at the Najiaying Islamic Cultural (Yunnan)also translated a book by a professor of Medina: Abu Bakr Jabir al-Jaza’iri, Ma Jiankang (transl.) Jiushi zhaohuan [Ninety Appeals]. Najiaying,1998, 235 p. 40 Zhongguo Musilin [Muslims in China], 1994, n°3 (90), 5.41 Elizabeth Allès, Leila Chérif-Chebbi, Constance-Hélène Halfon. «L’islam chinois, unité et fragmentation». Archives de Sciences sociales des Religions, juillet-septembre 2001 n° 115, 26-28.42 The authorities are expressing official concern about Bin Laden's influence over Uygur groups in Xinjiang, which are supposed to be armed, and they repress all unrest in the area. See Amnesty International. «China’s anti-terrorism legislation and repression in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region», March 2002, 25. China was aware of the phenomenon long before the September 11, 2001 attacks: Wang Wei, Wang Ling, Gong Jia.

23

checked. This is also why the number of passports issued to

individual students wanting to study in Muslim countries has

been reduced. The number of these students may be estimated at

several hundreds a year since the mid-1990s.43 Malaysia and

Pakistan used to be favourite destinations because of

geographical proximity, but Saudi Arabia offers better

financial prospects and Syria offers better learning conditions

to learn Arabic.

Islamic discourse and antagonist Islamic positions have

increased over the last few years, and religious education is a

key issue in the debate. Some Muslims express great

frustration regarding the regime, which slaughtered thousands

of Muslims after the example of Mao Zedong, and which now keeps

them in dire poverty due to the unequal rate of economic

development between the East and the West of China --a gap

which deepened over the last twenty years.44 Half of all

Chinese Muslims (except the Turkish-speaking populations of

Xinjiang, which are outside the scope of this article) live in

poor and arid Northwest provinces, the provinces of Ningxia,

Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang. They are condemned to remain

undereducated because of the increase, since the 1985 and 1993

reforms, in the cost and selective practices of the Chinese

educational system. The Muslims also complain that religious

Yinshen daheng Ben.Ladeng. The World’s most dangerous terrorist. Changchun: Changchun chubanshe, 1999, 264 p.43 Jacqueline Armijo-Hussein. «Resurgence of Islamic Education in China».ISIM Newsletter, n°4, p. 12. Jacqueline Armijo-Hussein is currentlyresearching Muslim students abroad.44 Wang Yongliang. Xibei Huizu shehui fazhan jizhi. The Hui’s Society of the Northwest China. Study of the Developmental Mechanism. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1999, 219-221.

24

schools and stays abroad are hindered from functioning

normally.45

Conversely, functionaries and Hui members of the CCP, and

even, recently, Hui academic researchers, have been highly

critical of the fundamentalists and find that young women in

head scarves and men in loose trousers and Muslim skullcaps are

seeking to shock the dominant non-Muslim society. In the

intellectual field, all the translations from Muslim books and

modern essays privately published to discuss Islam or more

recently for school instruction are regarded by Hui

intellectuals as "popular culture" and no serious research has

as yet been published on the subject, whereas this has been

going on for about two decades and such books and reviews

circulate widely. This literature is considered to be of poor

quality and censured as addressing a poorly educated audience.

This apparent lack of interest46 may spring from a form of

self-censorship, a desire to underplay the radicalism of this

literature to avoid drawing the authorities' attention to it.

A noticeable point is how religious schools, after twenty

years' existence, are said to be totally inefficient in

educating young people and in providing them with the general

education necessary to make careers. They also tap the

resources of the communities which they belong to. Such45 Elizabeth Allès. “L’enseignement confessionnel musulman en Chine”. Perspectives chinoises. Décembre 2002, n° 74, 21-30.46 Except for two laudatory articles written by young and perhaps naïve Hui researchers concerning Muslim reviews: Yang Wenjun “Wenhua zijue yu qingshen kewang – Dushi zuqun yanjiu: “ Kaituo”  yi zhong wenhua xianxiang. The Cultural Consciousness and Spiritual Thirst : Studying of the Urban Ethnic Groups – a Cultural Phenomenon about the Journal of Kaituo”. Huizu Yanjiu, 2001 n°1 (41), 70-75; Zhao Guojun & Ma Guifen. “20 shiji 80 niandai yilai Zhongguo musilin minjian kanwu de xiankuang yu tedian” [Characteristics and Situation of China Muslim Popular Magazines since the Twentieth Century’s 1980s]. Huizu Yanjiu, 2003 n°2 (50), 86-90.

25

criticism has been heard from Muslim researchers in 2001,

whereas the same group used to be rather proud of the schools,

and this reversal is a symptom of a change in the attitude of

the authorities concerning religious schools. The change

includes local instances of harassment and a new intention of

the official China Islamic Association to exert control upon

the schools. Thus the Yunnan Islamic Association set the

guidelines for mosque schools. They are to apply the

provisions of the Religious Affairs Board to harmonize the

contents of courses with those of the Yunnan Islamic Institute.

The majority of pupils must be locals, must bring a financial

contribution to the running of the schools, and the schools'

size is limited so that it will not affect the community's

budget.47 These provisions aim at preventing young people from

migrating in an uncontrolled way across the territory, in

search of radical communities, or just of free housing and

studies. In the Yunnan, the Najiaying School enjoys an

ideological reputation which makes it attractive, along with

the welcoming conditions found in this wealthy Muslim village,

so that many poor young Northwesterners move there, and many

more dream of doing so.

A semantic change is to be noted concerning activities

disapproved of by the authorities, such as a school, a

discourse, an attitude which contrasts with the dominant

conformism. Persons who were raised in the Ikhwan tradition

but move apart from it are thus called "Salafiyya", after a

secession which took place among the Ikhwan in Linxia in the

late 1930s and was repressed by the warlords. The secession47 Zhongguo Musilin. 2001 n°1, (130), 53.

26

was led by an Ikhwan imam of Linxia, Ma Debao (1867-1977) who

went on pilgrimage with the Muslim warlord Ma Lin (1876-1945,

Ma Qi’s brother) in 1936. Ma Debao was directly influenced by

Saudi wahhabism, during a period where Arabia was under Saudi

rule. He claimed, of course, to give the real interpretation

of Islam. The doctrine is based on taking as model of a pure

Islam the first three generations of Muslims (al-Salaf), and

rejects the Islamic jurisprudence schools. In rituals, during

the prayers, believers are to raise their hands three times,

whereas the other Chinese Muslims raise it only once; so his

movement was called “The Three Elevations Sect” Santai pai. But

the Ikhwan and the warlords fiercely opposed Salafiyya. As a

result, it had little influence even in its birthplace, Linxia,

where it was centred on only one mosque, Xinwangsi. However,

also due to the incredible lifespan of its founder, it kept

developing under the communist power, especially in 1979 and

further.48 But, apart from what might be called traditional

Salafiyya, the new trend that appeared in late 1980s,

influenced by foreign Islam, especially from Pakistan and Saudi

Arabia, is referred to as Salafiyya, and might be called modern

Salafiyya. It seems that every new trend which appears, in

China, promoting a scriptural Islam, and which is not

officially approved, is called Salafiyya. For instance, one

man, who although educated in the Ikhwan tradition had studied

in Pakistan, founded a school in 1992 and kept Saudi

connections to finance his school, was called a Salafi. He

moved from Linxia to open his school in a nearby smaller town48 For a brief survey, see Mian Weilin. Zhongguo Huizu yisilan zongjiao zhidu gailun [Survey of the religious system of Islam of the Hui in China]. Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1997, 380-393.

27

in 1992.49 He used a pseudonym to publish a translation of a

book by Yusuf al-Qardhawi and wrote an essay quoting lengthily

the Muslim brothers Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al-Banna, or the

Pakistani Mawdudi. His essay is revealingly entitled [Still

Far from the True Spirit of Islam] Hai yuan de Yisilanjiao zhen

qingshen.50 While trying to visit his school in 1996, while he

was absent, I was met with a rather cold attitude. The girls

or women's section of the school, which had been announced in

1996 as an additional building to the existing school did not

yet exist in 2001. Several provinces (Mongolia, Gansu,

Ningxia, Yunnan) provide examples of religious schools which

function out of the authorised conformist framework, in smaller

towns or villages with a majority of Muslim inhabitants.

Moving away from cities makes it possible to develop in a

favourable dominantly Muslim environment, to enjoy greater

freedom of speech and feel less pressure from the authorities,

and even from competing religious currents.

B - Objective Alliance or Ideological Concord?

Hostility and incomprehension are neither total nor

definitive, and observers cannot but find that the

fundamentalists have been, and still are, the regime's allies,

in spite of all the circumstances described above. The

49 The private (but authorized) Muslim review Kaituo, 1996, n°4, 29, publishes an advertisement about the conditions for registration in this school.50 Hange. Yaiyuan Yisilan Zhen qingshen [Still Far from the True Spirit of Islam]. Linxia: anonymous publisher, 1993, 128 p. Yusuf al-Qardhawi, Hange (transl.) Yisilan jiben tese [Particularities of the Principles of Islam]. Anonymous publisher, 1997, 211 p.

28

question which arises is therefore that of the causes of such a

concordance.

1 - Involvement with the Regime's Missions of Propaganda

is an Index of Alliance

Before 1949, the modern schools acted as go-betweens to

relay the CCP's nationalist, anti-Japanese propaganda. This

went on from the late 1930s to the late 1940s. In the

Northwest, the propaganda was conducted right under the noses

of the warlords who were funding the schools. Communist

penetration into Muslim schools was facilitated between 1937

and 1940 by the alliance between the nationalist government and

the CCP to fight Japan. Once the Japanese were fought out of

the Northwest, the government once more cracked down on the

CCP. The Party settled in Yan'an in the Shaanxi Province in

1935 after the Long March and there, discovering a dense Muslim

population, started inquiring into religious questions and

especially Islam. As early as 1936, the CCP ruled in favour of

a very strict respect of Hui "customs", especially the

prohibition of pork, which was the most delicate issue with the

Han (Chinese) majority. Such provisions, among which the

prohibition to enter a village without the imam's leave, to

enter the mosque, to eat pork, and even to use non-Hui

containers to draw water, gave it the support and regard of

Muslims, otherwise under pressure from the warlords’ abuses

(taxes and the compulsory draft of one young man per family).51

51 Wang Yonliang, 200. Xu Xianlong, 184.

29

Education was the Party's favourite medium to spread

propaganda and recruit militants. In Lanzhou (Gansu), Yang

Jingren (1919-2001)52 was a student at the secondary school and

a Party member. With two comrades he conducted propaganda even

inside the Association for the Advancement of Muslim Education,

of which he later entered the hierarchy as Secretary of the

Directing Committee. He taught in a Lanzhou secondary school

created by the Association.53 When the school closed down in

1941, the Association moved to Pingliang (Gansu) which was the

location of the Longdong Normal School. This school took up

(in 1938) the activities of the Shanghai Islamic Normal School

which the Japanese invasion had caused to close. The head of

the Shanghai school was one of the Four Great Imams of the

republican period, Da Pusheng (1874-1975), who was given leave

and financial support by Chiang Kai-shek himself to open a

Normal School in the West. For a period, the well-known imam

Wang Jingzhai headed the Department, which instructed future

imams. Ma Rulin (1910-1989), a pedagogy expert and Party

member worked at Lanzhou and in the Ningxia, where he headed

the Ningxia Secondary School. The warlord Ma Hongkui said

about him that he introduced the Communist Party to Ningxia.54

52 Yang Jingren was born in Lanzhou (Gansu) and officially adhered to the CCP in 1937. He was a member of various Muslim associations before he joined the Party, based at Yan’an (Shaanxi). Zhu Jielin, 249-250.53 Yang Jingren. “Kang Ri zhanzheng shiqi de Lanzhou Yisilan xuehui he Huimin jiaoyu cujinhui”[The Association for the Study of Islam and the Hui People’s Association for the Progress of Education in Lanzhou during the Anti-Japanese war]. In Gansu Huizu xiandai shi ziliao xuanji [Selected Materials of Contemporary History of the Hui of Gansu]. Lanzhou : Minwei yanjiu suo, 86-91.54 Wang Xiling. “Yisheng wei dang-yu yingcai. Fang minzu jiaoyujia, xuezhe Huizu Ma Rulin” [ALife for Party and Education. A Visit to the Hui Pedagogue and Scholar Ma Rulin]. In Wang Xiling ed. Minzu cuiying [Nationalities Talented Men Gathering]. Lanzhou: Gansu renmin chubanshe, 1989, 96.

30

He taught at Longdong from the end of 1937 to 1940, but

resigned and went to Ningxia in protest against the school's

shady management and against the repression which in 1940 again

befell Party members and sympathizers, especially school

members, without the headmaster's opposing it. In 1942, Da

Pusheng retired and became a member of Congress and Ma Rulin

then took over the school. An activist educated at the Beijing

Hui school exposed the anti-Japanese activity of the CCP's

Eighth Army. Yang Jingren and the Party official Ma Yin (1919-

1991) both held positions there.55 After 1949, Ma Yin held

positions as Deputy Secretary of the Chinese Islamic

Association and as editor of the Association's review, [Muslims

of China] Zhongguo Musilin.56 At the Hui school of Zhangjiachuan

(Gansu), the Party propagandist was Shen Xiaxi (1921-),57 who

chaired the Chinese Islamic Association from 1987 to 1993.

Educational institutions were thus handy relays of the CCP's

propaganda towards the Muslim population. Many ties were

established in these modern fundamentalist schools between

revolutionary militants, pedagogues, imams, teachers and

students. Individuals who were most devoted to the Party were

55 Ma Rulin. “Pingliang guoli Longdong shifan” [The Longdong Normal School at Pingliang]. In Xibei Huizu yu yisilanjiao, 242-246. Ma Yin. “1939 nian Pingliang dixia gongzuo huiyi” [Memories of the Clandestine Work in Pingliang in 1949]. In Gansu Huizu xiandai shi ziliao xuanji, 98-101. 56 Ma Yin was head of the Minorities Institute established by the CCP at Yan’an from 1940 on. Zhongguo Huizu dacidian [Great dictionary of the Hui Minority of China]. Yinchuan: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1992, 362.57 Shen Xiaxi was head of three schools in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia after 1938, and became an imam (ahong) in Zhangjiachuan. Under the new regime he was head of the Linxia Prefecture, and later on vice-chairman of the Qinghai Islamic Association. He became vice-chairman and later chairman of the Chinese Islamic Association. He also chaired various social and associations of friendship with foreign Muslim countries.

31

given official positions in political, religious and

educational affairs.

Once it took over, the Party had to compromise with the

existing situation, and to cope with the current standard of

education of the clergy and with the existing intellectual

milieu and religious circles. From then on, to dispatch its

instructions, it had to rely upon individuals who had received

enough education to use the medium of written Chinese and

therefore to use clergy members who had gone through modern,

Chinese-taught schools. The founder of the Ikhwan movement, Ma

Wanfu, a Dongxiang and not a Hui (the Dongxiang are ethnically

a population of several hundred thousand people mostly living

in Gansu, speaking a Mongolic language), first refused to speak

Chinese or teach in Chinese, but his movement was forced to

turn to Chinese when the warlords instrumentalized the

movement. The CCP then found, in most Ikhwan mosques, imams

who were able to use written Chinese, which was not the case

with mosques belonging to other currents.

It picked young men from the modern schools to become

medium -or high-ranking officials and trusted the

fundamentalists with the management of the China Islamic

Association. The Association, with its provincial branches, is

the only association entitled to represent Chinese Muslims of

all currents and of all nationalities including Xinjiang

Muslims. It carries on the Chiang Kai-shek government's first

attempt to integrate the representation of Islam. As regards

education, the new regime took over the existing schools, only

32

changing their names, and introducing a reference to "the Hui

people" (Huimin), and later on to the “Hui nationality” (Huizu),

while ignoring all religious contents. It only allowed one

properly speaking religious school, the China Islamic

Institute, founded in Beijing in 1955, and gave the

responsibility for it to fundamentalists. For instance it has

had such teachers as the Azharite Ikhwan imam Pang Shiqian

(1902-1958), who in 1937, in his province of Henan, founded a

"Muslim Corps" of young recruits to fight the Japanese

invasion.58 The Institute derives from the early fusion of the

Chengda Normal School with a Hui school in the fifties. The

Institute, apart from an interruption during the Cultural

Revolution, has been turning out, with mediocre success, young

men destined to become "good imams", and admits practising

imams for advanced training.

The Party was also able to rely upon Eastern networks of

intellectuals who had founded reviews and were leading schools.

In comparison, the Qadim system was, and still is, less well

structured, since each mosque is independent and each

initiative, such as the decision to found a school, is

consequently isolated and remains publicized locally rather

than nationally. Finally, the Party took over the structure

set up by the Ikhwan in the Northwest. Without actually

following the strict hierarchy of Sufi brotherhoods, the Ikhwan

set up a system centred around a central mosque, the "hayy

mosque", i.e. a large mosque controlling several smaller ones

through the choice of their imams and the common gathering of

all the congregation for the Friday prayer and the main58 Elizabeth Allès. Musulmans de Chine, 184-187.

33

religious events. It is in this way that religious officials

and religious structures ranking on a national scale have been

essentially constituted by the fundamentalists, and it is only

a logical consequence of this that they should be present in

the CIA. The CIA allows them to receive public funds,

especially for educational purposes.

2 - The Issue of Ideological Concord

Does the factual objective alliance of Muslims and the CCP

rely upon a corresponding ideological alliance? In 1941, the

Party issued a book entitled [The Question of the Huihui

Nationality] Huihui minzu wenti and developing views on the

subject. In the book, Qadim mosques and Sufi brotherhoods,

which through the centuries acquired many lands and buildings

thanks to the zakat tax, are described, in Marxist terms, as

being landowning capitalists and as having created a hereditary

system (the brotherhoods) in order to secure this capital. The

Sufi brotherhoods were thus considered as having set up an

agrarian feudal society, and were censured as being great

landowners and selfish exploiters of poor peasant people.59

The Ikhwan and the Salafiyya, being recent movements, had not

accumulated the same wealth, or the same financial resources,60

59 Huihui minzu wenti [The Question of the Huihui Nationality]. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 1982 (1980), 56-60.60 The Sufi brotherhoods receive great donations from the believers during the various ceremonies, whereas it is the common practice for other Qadim imams to receive money, or at least food, when they come for readings of the Koran on private ceremonies such as weddings, funerals etc. Thence comes the slogan popularized by the Ikhwan: “One must not eat while reading[the Koran], one must not read while eating” nianle buchi, chile bu nian. Conversely, in observance of the Five Duties, the Ikhwan and the Salafiyya alike revived the practice of zakat (“charitable almsgiving”), which had

34

and were therefore seen as more attentive to the sharing of

wealth.61 Moreover, the Party's preference is to be understood

as a preference for two new religious currents, which like the

Party itself were turning their backs on the past.

For reasons connected to the foreign policy towards the

Muslim world, Muslim fundamentalists are put forward to present

the Chinese Islam as rigorous and orthodox. Globally speaking,

Islam is currently under the influence of Saudi Arabia, if only

because of its financial importance, and especially through the

Islamic Development Bank. The colourful Chinese brotherhoods,

or the traditionalist Qadim imams who mispronounce the Koran in

Arabic do not make very respectable Muslims. This is one of

the fundamentalists' favourite arguments against the Qadim

system. Their own priority is the learning of the Koran by the

tajwîd, the chanting of Koranic verses.62 Such is also the view

of the CIA, as is demonstrated by the "Koranic readings

competitions" it has been organizing and much publicizing

throughout China for a few years.63 Moreover, the

fundamentalists, who see the "five duties" as absolutely

essential, are very attached to the Mecca pilgrimage, and see

themselves as the main representatives of Islamic China abroad.

They also complain that Saudis look down on them and treat them

sunk into oblivion in China, in order to secure funds. Wang Yongliang. “Yihewani zongjiao gexin zhuzhang shulüe” [A Brief Inquiry into the Reformative Religious Doctrine of the Ikhwan]. Ningxia shehui kexue, 1990 n°6, 41-47.61 Huihui minzu wenti, 58-64.62 A preacher from Bukhara and living in Arabia came to Ningxia in the thirties and is lovingly remembered: Jin Zhanxiang. «Habibula zai Yinbei chuanjiao«taijiweide» [Habibullah's Spreading of the Tajwid in Northern Yinchuan]». Zhongguo Musilin, 1994 n°6 (93), 31.63 «The Fourth Meeting of the Annual Competition of Complete Readings of theKoran Has Taken Place in Beijing». Zhongguo Musilin, 2001 n°4 (133), 4.

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as second-rate Muslims when they go on the pilgrimage.64 Their

orthodox appearance, much noted abroad, allows the Chinese

government the boast of its support of Islam. The

fundamentalists were also particular in adhering quickly to the

modernization and open policies now preached by the government.

There are those who have denounced the westernization of

ideas, but opening up to the world also allows exchanging views

with foreign Muslims. Since the 1990s, modern Muslim education

as it is organized by the fundamentalists has been inspired by

the same sources as foreign Muslim tendencies, adapting its

teaching material, especially its textbooks, using computers

and even forsaking pure theology, which in its Chinese form is

incomprehensible to foreign Muslims, in favour of technical

excellence and spoken Arabic. This technology-oriented form of

education is easily apprehensible by Muslims abroad, and

appears reassuring to the Chinese authorities. A recent and

symbolically significant fact is the 1996 construction in

Tianjin, the great port nearest Beijing, of a specialised

secondary Institute of Technology for "nationalities", to which

the Islamic Development Bank donated $ 5.8 billion. It

accommodates 1,000 students of all nationalities, including

non-Muslims. Yet the student advertisement published in the

CIA’s review [Muslims of China] Zhongguo Musilin mentions the

recruiting of Muslim students. The Institute has an Islamic

cafeteria, but no mosque, or at most a prayer room discreetly

64 For instance the azharite Na Zhong, questioned during a visit to Mecca bySaudis on the depth of the Chinese Muslims' faith, replied in Arabic that it was deeper than the faith of westernized Saudis! See Gao Fayuan, Xiao Mang. “Xuezhe de mozhi shenyu xundaozhe de xue. Na Zhong chuanlüe. Scholar’s Ink is Thicker [amore accurate translation would be "heavier"] than the Blood of the Shahid”. Huizu yanjiu, 2001, n° 2 (42), 90.

36

called "minority rite room".65 The Islamic Bank, which in 1985

financed the construction of four Islamic institutes, now turns

to other technical schools and granted funds to two smaller

ones in Xian (Shaanxi) and in a district of the Jiangsu, for

lesser sums ($ 2 to 300,000). Only one project concerns one

part of the construction of a religious school, connected with

the great Ikhwan mosque of Lanzhou.66

This new orientation towards scientific and technological

schools raises the question of the possible dead-end

constituted by schools offering a mixed, religious and general

course: such schools do not turn out competent clergy but do

not either provide students with a high enough standard of

general education to make them ready for higher education. For

instance one famous Muslim teacher, Lin Song (1930-), an author

of a rhymed translation of the Koran, censures the

disappearance of Muslims from higher education in Arabic in

China, whereas at the beginning of the 1950s they used to be

almost the only recipients of such education, and China used to

boast great Muslim scholars such as Ma Jian, Na Zhong

(1910-)67, Na Xun (1911-1989)68 and others, all educated at al-

Azhar. Indeed, nowadays, to enter an Arabic course at

University, students must sit an English examination, which

Muslim students can in no way pass. Lin Song also laments the

low standard of achievement of students who go abroad to Muslim

countries on their own funds to study, thus finding progress

65 Zhongguo Musilin. 2001 n°2 (131), 44-55.66 www.isdb.org.67 Author of Alabo tongshi [A General History of the Arabs]. Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1997, 2 vol., 648, 649.68 Originated from Najiaying (Yunnan), he translated The Thousand and One Nights from Arabic.

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impossible and returning home little more useful than they

started out.69 The new orientation towards technical fields

meets demands for modern and world-oriented education on the

one hand, and on the other hand allows fundamentalists and

communists to find a neutral common ground.

In the perspective of Chinese society, these

fundamentalist movements that reject other, different religious

currents perfectly suit a regime which seeks to unify its

diverse social components. Those who pretend now not to belong

to a particular religious current, under the pretext that there

is only one Islam, belong to the same "neo-fundamentalist"

trend. The Chinese sphere reveals different types of Muslims.

Members of the Ikhwan or Salafi clergy move out of their

original sphere to join more open milieus: for instance

intellectuals, often University academics, practising Muslims

from educational institutions, retired teachers from the same

background, intellectuals with no particular function or former

students abroad not intending to become imams find occupations

as teachers at religious schools, contributors or editors of

religious reviews, library staff, intermittent researchers,

essayists or translators working for the much-censured private

reviews. The denunciation of conflicts among these “religious

groups” jiaopai argues in favour of a new Islam, renovated,

united and rid of past errors.

One of these intellectuals, Jiang Jing (1939-), who taught

at the Henan Province University and received a Doctorate in

69 Lin Song. “Quanmian tigao musilin wenhua suozhi. Dali peiyang gaoceng ci jianrui rencai” [General Enhancement of Muslim Culture. Devoting Energy to the Fostering ofHigh-ranking Talents in Fields of Excellence]. Zhongguo Musilin. 2002 n°2 (137), 15-19.

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the United States while staying there from 1983 to 1989,

recently published an article in Kaituo to protest the

continuation of brotherhood conflicts which in the worst cases

may bar future spouses from marrying, prevent a Muslim from

worshipping in a different mosque from his original one, holds

out for derision a member of an opposite congregation because

he pronounces differently the "Salam 'alaykum", etc.70 Jiang Jing

notably published a book devoted to the personality of Fatima

(the Prophet's daughter) in 1999 in the "Chinese Muslims for

the Twenty-First Century" series,71 a series published by

private publishers in Linxia (Gansu), some of whom are members

of fundamentalist educational institutions. These editors

published children's albums for Muslims. In 1999 they

published a literature textbook containing a few excerpts from

classical Muslim or Chinese works, and a substantial number of

excerpts from contemporary Muslim authors, Chinese or foreign,

among whom, predictably, Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al Banna, Yusuf

al-Qardhawi and Mawdudi.72 Strangely, except for the

introduction and the afterword, and a few variations in the

commentaries to the texts, the book is published by the

University Press of Lanzhou.73 The authors present the book as

70 Jiang Jing. “Zhongguo yisilan ge jiaopai yao tuanjie, bu yao fenzheng” [All Muslim Religious Groups of China Must Unite instead of Fighting]. Kaituo, 1999 n°4 (29), 12-16.71 Jiang Jing. Yisilan shengnü Fadima [Islam Saintly Woman Fatima]. Linxia: anonymous publisher, 1999, Chinese Muslims for the Twenty-First Century series, 128.72 Musilin yuwen. Musilin mingjia mingzuo wenji. Musilin xuexiao tongyong jiaocai [Muslim Literature. Excerpts from Great Works by Famous Muslim Authors. Teaching Material for Muslim Schools]. Linxia, 1999, 355.73 Shaan Zirong, Ma Li, Tang Guoxiang. Musilin mingjia mingzuo jianxi [A Brief Analysis of Famous Muslim Authors and Works]. Lanzhou: Lanzhou daxue chubanshe, 2001, 477 p.

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being the first of its kind and as being the produce of their

own work and say they asked for advice from the greatest Muslim

teachers of China. The book is supposed to be used to teach

nationalities (i.e. minorities), whereas the preceding edition

was addressing Muslims. The second textbook was approved by the

Ministry of Education and supported by the Lanzhou Board of

Religious Affairs which is the entity defining the government's

Muslim policy and supervising the CIA and its local branches.

This rather amusing example hovering between plagiarism and an

adaptation of a book for an official edition shows how local

and national authorities can give their assent to a modern form

of religious education, the safest means to unify Chinese

Islam. In return, whatever the resentment caused by impeding

obstacles, the government's authority is not discussed or

questioned.

In the field of the transmission of knowledge, Chinese

Muslims, especially fundamentalists are aware that they need

central government support in order to set up and develop their

activities, even though there are stopped in some places, or at

some periods. Moreover, the mutual support between

fundamentalists and communists is to be understood as

indicating an ideological concord resting on a common view of

the individual. In both cases, indeed, the individual person

must be relieved of the weight of the past, i.e. for one party

the traditional Qadim or Sufi version of Islam, and for the

other party, the feudal and the capitalist society. Both

40

preach the coming of the new man, the responsible individual.

This new Chinese man must be created with the help of education

and propaganda. The goal differs: for one party, the goal is

the creation of the communist man, for the other, it is the

creation of the true Muslim, suitably educated and having a

responsible attitude in control of his faith. Education is the

field where those changes can take effect.

Both communists and fundamentalists currently feel the

need for change in the field of education and of the

transmission of knowledge, and though their ultimate goals

differ, the means to reach these goals are at present following

similar paths, in spite of occasional and local divergences.

For the present day, fundamentalists are engaged in a double

play. On one hand they want to obtain the more freedom for

their educational activities, on the other hand, they have to

control their most extremist wing, which we called modern

Salafiyya, in order to avoid a reaction from authorities that

will damage all Muslim activities. They are aware that they

can not succeed without state encouragement or at least non-

interference in a country where they are a small minority.

Some clashes occur from time to time between the Muslims and

their Han neighbours that lead to the intervention of the local

authorities. In Yuxi (Yunnan) in 1990 and in Yangxin county

(Shandong) in 2000, some Muslims died because local authorities

that have overreacted or failed to manage peacefully a

religious or community conflict.74 Muslims, aware of being a

small minority, need central state support in order to get an74 Lipman Jonathan. “White Hats, Oil Cakes, and Common Blood: The Huizu in the Contemporary Chinese State”. Workshop on China’s Management of Minorities, Washington DC, February 2001, 22 p.

41

equalizing balance of treatment. In both cases, human being

losses have received compensations and no advertising has been

done to those clashes. Conversely, Xinjiang Uyghur do not

benefit from the same indulgence and are subject to harsh and

public repression. Even if restrictions increased, as it seems

to be since 1996, where, as in Ningxia, schools are subject to

more scrutiny, protests will remain discrete and collaboration

between fundamentalists and communists will find new fields of

expression as we saw for technical training schools.

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