Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China) by Jonathan N. Lipman (PDF)

Description

The Chinese-speaking Muslims have for centuries been an inseperable but anomalous part of Chinese society–Sinophone yet incomprehensible, local yet outsiders, normal but different. Long regarded by the Chinese government as prone to violence, they have challenged fundamental Chinese conceptiosn of Self and Other and denied the totally transforming power of Chinese civilization by tenaciously maintaining connectios with Central and West Asia as well as some cultural differences from their non-Muslim neighbors.Familiar Strangers narrates a history of the Muslims of northwest China, at the intersection of the frontiers of the Mongolian-Manchu, Tibetan, Turkic, and Chinese cultural regions. Based on primary and secondary sources in a variety of languages, Familiar Strangers examines the nature of ethnicity and periphery, the role of religion and ethnicity in personal and collective decisions in violent times, and the complexity of belonging to two cultures at once. Concerning itself with a frontier very distant from the core areas of Chinese culture and very strange to most Chinese, it explores the influence of language, religion, and place on Sino-Muslim identity.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Islam in China is sadly a story of being ignored and overlooked even among academics. Lipman is one of those few scholars today that write about this fascinating form of Islam and their adherents. The approach Lipman takes is one of adaptation and local circumstances on the subject of Chinese Islam. It’s a objective yet understanding book that sheds light on the Hui Muslim community found throughout China. The book in question mainly talks about the Muslims of Northwestern China especially of the Gansu region. This book gives a comprehensive history of Islam in China from its arrival in the 7th century up to 1930. Valuable study aids include many maps, photos, a glossary, enlightening footnotes, and a fine bibliography for further reading.This book is unique in scope and subject but there a few problems. The limited attention to just the Northwest and the Gansu region is constricting. While the book takes a broad historical approach towards Islam from Tang to Ming China, it further narrows to just the Northwest starting from the Qing Dynasty. The book does mention Islam within the southwest, southeast, and central China but only in passing and with little detail. As the book reaches Qing times, the author’s writing becomes more dull and a little confusing. He just throws names, conflicts, and events with little appropriate background. The writing becomes boring as he starts writing in a almost repetitive style.But even with those flaws, it’s undeniable that this book is one of the best devoted to Chinese Islamic history, sects, philosophy, culture, art, and literature. A essential read for anyone interested in the diverse religious communities in China and Islam in general.

⭐Most Americans don’t know squat about Islam itself, let alone Islam in China. Yet today there are about 15 million Muslims in China, centered mostly in the northwest (Xinjiang province), along the margins of the old Silk Road. And they aren’t just an insignificant minority: in the Middle Ages, for instance, Chinese Muslims played a central role in bridging the gulf between China, the Middle East, and Europe, bringing goods and knowledge both ways. (…)Jonathan Lipman’s “Familiar Strangers” explores some aspects of Islam in northwestern China from the first arrival of Muslims there in the 8th century up through the 20th. Like most similar histories, it revolves around two major dilemmas that have constantly faced Chinese Muslims (as opposed to non-Chinese Muslims living in China): first, is Islam compatible with Chinese culture? and second, can Chinese Muslims themselves properly be considered Chinese? China’s “host” culture has always tended to absorb alien peoples and faiths — whether they’re Mongols and Turks (the so-called “barbarians”), Buddhists from India, or whoever. There were always strangers lurking at the gates of China, drooling with envy or burning with ambition, but almost every one of them who managed to break through eventually assimilated and became, in effect, Chinese: in fact, many sought to do so in the first place. But Muslims were an exception. Their Islamic faith forbade them to have the same kind of relationship with traditional Chinese culture as other groups: for instance, ancestor worship and reverencing the emperor were antipathetic to Islam. Consequently, Chinese Muslims were, while not complete strangers, “familiar strangers”, ethnically Chinese, foreign by affiliation.Lipman’s history isn’t a comprehensive account of Muslim culture on the northwestern Chinese frontier. Instead, it examines how Chinese Muslims reacted to the complexity of belonging to two cultures at once. Lipman explores, for instance, Muslim reaction to acculturation policies under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Muslims’ role as “strangers in bad times” during the Ming-Qing cataclysm in the 1640s. Chapter 3, “Connections: Muslims in the Early Qing, 1644-1781”, analyses the introduction of Naqshabandiya Sufism into China in the early 17th century and the struggle between two rival forms of it — the orthodox Khafiya and the radical Jahriya — in the 18th century, the latter a branch of revivalist Wahhabism, the earliest modern version of so-called Islamic “fundamentalism”. Chapter 4, “Strategies of Resistance,” explores the period between 1784 and 1895, looking at three large-scale Muslim rebellions against the Qing state. Chapter 5 examines Muslim “Strategies of Integration” during the Nationalist period and under the People’s Republic. Finally, Lipman sums his findings in chapter 6.The book is a scholarly read and not always easy going. If you don’t have much previous knowledge of Chinese history, start elsewhere. But if you’ve got the background, it’s a great read.

⭐The first time I got the book from a Chinese Muslim scholar, I began to search what i am Intersted and i got it. I t is about a Islamic sect Xidaodang in which I am one member.Mr. Lipman has been in Xidaotang once and did some research on the group.His book shows his description and study are not only successful, but objective as well.He has his own unique view on Chinese Muslim…

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