A presentation by Hai Peng
Thursday, February 25, 201611:00 AM - 1:00 PM
11372 Bunche Hall
The Republican era (1911-1949) in China is the critical moment when China began to emerge as a modern nation-state. Various collective identities, including one tied to modern nation-state were formed during this era, enabled by print capitalism and relative freedom of expression. The Hui Muslims, who were historically marked by their alien faith in a largely Buddhist-Confucian world order, also began to emerge as a “nationality” despite their wide dispersal across the vast Chinese territory in disarray. This paper traces the life and itinerary of one Hui Muslim intellectual, Noh Muhammad Da Pusheng, who travelled widely in the Muslim World after the full outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. By contextualizing his eight-month sojourn, this paper argues that Hui Muslim intellectuals' contribution to the Invention of modern China is two-fold. With much intellectual and political activism, they enthusiastically sought to subscribe Chinese Muslims to a hegemonic discourse of a modern nation state composed of diverse peoples on the one hand, on the other hand, they also made the unique contribution in deconstructing a competing discourse espoused by Japan, Pan-Asianism. Along those lines, this paper also extends the existing scholarship on Hui intellectual activity of that era beyond a Islamic revival and reform movement aided by a Egypt-China one way traffic of religious pedagogy. By bringing nationalism into the picture, other important sites including the Hajj, the International Holy Convention, and indeed Japan become potential new areas for historical excavation in studying the Hui Muslims' history and their current relationship with the nationalistic historiography in the People's Republic of China.
The presenter's paper was circulated to CAW members who RSVP'd.