Chinese Islam, Born of Iranian Islam
According to the Iran Book News Agency (IBNA) – Reza Dastjerdi: ‘Hankitāb’ is the process of translating and compiling Islamic books into Chinese, and its works also serve as a gateway for us Iranians to better understand Eastern teachings. According to the scholars of this movement, Islam has no conflict with the Three Teachings, and today, there is a version of Chinese Islam that is a valuable treasure for the intellectual history of China. ‘Hankitāb’ scholars succeeded in expressing Islamic teachings with such a Chinese flavor that these works were well-received even by non-Muslim Chinese scholars. What follows is the outcome of IBNA’s interview with Maliheh Rahmani, translator and researcher, also the translator of Sachiko Murata’s book ‘The Dao of Islam’, one of the prominent works that has analyzed the religious and cultural concepts of Islam from a new and different perspective.
What led you to the topic of Chinese Islam? I ask this because our knowledge of this subject is very limited.
For a long time, I have been interested in Chinese tradition, especially Daoist tradition, and also in Islamic mysticism, particularly Ibn Arabi. Through the translation of the book ‘The Dao of Islam,’ I became acquainted with its author, Ms. Sachiko Murata. After this book, Ms. Murata began working on the ‘Hankitāb’ works of Chinese Muslims and has been translating these works into English for a long time. ‘Hankitāb’ refers to works written by Muslim thinkers in China, in which Islam, and especially theoretical Islamic mysticism, is explained within the framework of Neo-Confucian tradition – which means combining two of my long-standing interests! After ‘The Dao of Islam,’ I also went on to translate one of the important ‘Hankitāb’ works, which is Ms. Murata’s latest published work. However, as you mentioned, our knowledge of this subject in Iran is very limited, and although a part of another work by Ms. Murata in this regard, titled ‘Chinese Lawa’ih of the Light of Sufism,’ has been published, this book has almost remained unread and ignored.
When did Islam enter China and how did it penetrate the country despite its geographical isolation?
Islam entered China in approximately the first century Hijri. In China itself, there are legends about the arrival of Muslims in this land, and figures from early Islam are introduced as those who brought Islam to China. In any case, Islam entered China in its early days during the Tang Dynasty, probably via the Silk Road and Muslim traders. However, the mass entry of Muslims and their gaining social status occurred due to the Mongol invasion of China during the Yuan Dynasty. In fact, just as many Easterners went west with the Mongol invasions, many Westerners also came east, and many Muslims from Central Asia entered China and even the imperial court. For example, Wang Daiyu, a prominent Muslim scholar in the 17th century, states that his ancestors, who were astronomers from Iran, entered the imperial court three hundred years before him at the invitation of Emperor Gao to reform the Chinese calendar. Many Iranians who entered China, either for trade or because of their knowledge and art, settled in this land and its various important cities of that time. These Muslims, after being accepted into society and receiving Chinese surnames, completely transformed into ‘Chinese’ Muslims after several centuries. These Muslims have no relation to the Uyghur ethnic group, who are of Turkic origin and language and lived in the land of Turkestan bordering ancient China.
When we speak about ‘the difficulty of penetrating Chinese society’ at that time, we must realize that our intention is not the impassability of China’s routes or the difficulty of entering Chinese territory! For thousands of years, people from India, Iran, and Rome traveled easily to China by land and sea via the Silk Road. Rather, the intention is that China’s largely Confucian class-based society made it very difficult to be accepted as a ‘non-outsider.’ ‘China being confined by mountains’ should also not be understood geographically; rather, this way of thinking in China is a metaphorical expression of its being ‘protected and impenetrable.’
What are the characteristics of the Chinese version of Islam and how does it differ from Islam in other regions?
First, let me say that the phrase ‘Chinese Islam’ means nothing other than Islam itself. The ‘Chinese’ suffix merely indicates the ‘flavor,’ or rather, the mold and garment that the essence of ‘Islam’ has taken on. Henry Corbin also uses the phrase ‘Iranian Islam.’ Some do not like these phrases, correctly arguing that Islam is Islam, and it has no Iranian, Chinese, or Indian variations. When we say Chinese Islam, we do not mean that we are dealing with something completely different, but rather the unique flavor that Islam has acquired by being in China. For example, when a Chinese Muslim sage wrote a book about the life of the Prophet of Islam, he tried to emphasize the Prophet’s ‘heavenly charisma’ rather than historical events, because this charisma of sages and wise men is a familiar and deeply rooted concept in Chinese tradition. So, this is a ‘Chinese Sīrat al-Nabī’ (biography of the Prophet) in the sense described. Or, in a book written about Islamic metaphysics, the Chinese Muslim author tried to emphasize dualities, such as the two attributes of God, ‘Power’ and ‘Knowledge,’ and then name other dualities, for instance, the duality of intellects and souls in the angelic realm, because dualities are very important in Chinese tradition, and the entire universe originates from the primal duality of heaven and earth, or Yang and Yin. A very important difference in this way of expressing Islamic concepts compared to other civilizations where Islam entered, goes back to the Chinese script itself. This script is ideographic and pictographic, so phonetic transcription and the introduction of foreign concepts into it are very difficult. For example, consider the word ‘kitāb’ (book) in the phrase ‘Hankitāb’; to transcribe it phonetically, three words are used: ‘kē,’ ‘tā,’ ‘bú,’ meaning ‘to overcome,’ ‘pagoda,’ and ‘cloth’! Now, if someone wants to write a book on Islamic concepts in Chinese, to avoid difficult phonetic transcriptions, they can translate the desired Islamic concept into an equivalent concept in Chinese tradition. This is what began in the 16th century in China, and Muslim sages in China, for various reasons, began writing books in Chinese. The result of their work is the collection known as ‘Hankitāb.’ In ‘Hankitāb’ texts, various Islamic topics are expressed in Neo-Confucian terms, which was the dominant tradition in China at that time. We can call this form of expressing Islamic topics within Chinese concepts ‘Chinese Islam.’
Islam and Buddhism, as two Eastern and Western religions, have many differences, making dialogue between them difficult. How did the exchange of ideas take place?
There is much to say about the similarities or differences between Islam and Buddhist tradition, and this is not the place for that discussion. However, in short, the Islamic spiritual tradition and the Buddhist tradition are very close in many respects. Our focus here is 16th to 19th-century China, and naturally, Chinese Buddhist tradition and how Chinese Muslims interacted with it. It is interesting to know that at the beginning of Islam’s entry into China, during the Tang Dynasty, one of the words Muslims used to express ‘God’ was ‘Buddha’! Wang Daiyu, a prominent Muslim sage in the 17th century, frequently debated with Buddhist monks. He even recorded his conversations with a prominent Buddhist monk in one of his works and stated that this monk became his student after several days and nights of discussion! Naturally, some beliefs of the Buddhist tradition, such as the belief in reincarnation, were in conflict with the beliefs of Chinese Muslims. Furthermore, Muslim sages criticized the lack of a ‘positive aspect’ in Buddhist metaphysics and its purely apophatic nature. However, this criticism did not mean that they did not use Buddhist teachings to express Islamic concepts and did not benefit from this intellectual background of Chinese rationality. For example, Wang Daiyu used the Buddhist teaching ‘ten thousand dharmas return to the one’ to express the concept of ‘numerical oneness’ or the ‘wahidiyyah’ (singleness) stage in theoretical mysticism.
Please explain the ‘Hankitāb’ project. What is the core theme and what are its characteristics?
For centuries, Chinese Muslims had to study classical Islamic works in Persian and Arabic. From the 16th century, as Islamic schools with various educational systems emerged across China, the need for Chinese sources to study Islam grew stronger. Following this need, a group of Muslim scholars began translating important Islamic works into Chinese. One of the most important of these works was ‘Mirṣād al-ʻIbād’ by Najm al-Din Razi. This Persian work was so significant in China that legends formed around it: that ‘someone’ saw his grandfather in a dream pointing to a tree in the courtyard, telling him to dig there, and upon waking and digging, he found a box containing a book, and… this ‘discovered’ book was ‘Mirṣād al-ʻIbād.’ Jami’s Persian works, such as ‘Lawāʾiḥ’ and ‘Ashʻiʻat al-Lamʻāt,’ were also among the first to be translated. Indeed, the presence of Naqshbandi Sufism among Chinese Muslims contributed to the importance of these works among them. Books based on these translated works were also compiled in Chinese. This movement of translating and compiling Islamic books into Chinese and their resulting works became known as ‘Hankitāb.’ ‘Han’ was a word Chinese people used for China, and ‘kitāb’ (book), an Arabic word transcribed with its Persian pronunciation, was used to denote the Islamic nature of these works. The important point here, as mentioned, is that the writers of ‘Hankitāb,’ to express Islamic concepts, used various Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist concepts (the Three Teachings). Part of this was due to the unique characteristics of Chinese script, but also to introduce Islam to China’s elite and scholarly classes. ‘Hankitāb’ scholars succeeded in expressing Islamic teachings with such a Chinese flavor that these works were well-received even by non-Muslim Chinese scholars. For example, the book Liu Zhi wrote about Islamic Sharia was widely welcomed by the scholarly class in China, as they found it to be a book that spoke of ‘Li,’ meaning ‘rites’ and correct social actions that bring about balance. Liu Zhi’s artistry was that, in composing this book, instead of emphasizing the details of religious rulings, he highlighted and made comprehensible the Islamic ‘Li’ for the Chinese audience. ‘Hankitāb’ scholars also tried to express topics related to the origin and end of the world in a Neo-Confucian framework in such a way that it could influence these teachings and open a new horizon for the Three Teachings.
What are the differences and similarities between Iranian Islam and Chinese Islam?
If we take Iranian Islam and Chinese Islam in the sense described, both share the characteristic of having a local flavor. Islam was primarily introduced to China by Iranians, and Iranian Sufism was also present among Chinese Muslims. Thus, Chinese Islam was born through Iranian Islam. It was mentioned how much Persian works like ‘Mirṣād al-ʻIbād,’ ‘Lawāʾiḥ,’ ‘Ashʻiʻat al-Lamʻāt,’ ‘Maqṣad Aqṣā’ by ʻAzīz al-Dīn Nasafī, etc., played a role in the formation of ‘Hankitāb.’ The similarity between Iranian Islam and Chinese Islam lies in these teachings; for example, in both, the way Islamic teachings are expressed, whether Iranian or Chinese, the concept of ‘farr’ (divine glory) and ‘charismatic human’ has a long history and deep roots. For Iranians and Chinese alike, this concept was understandable due to their cultural and intellectual background. However, the difference between these two expressions of Islam relates to the Neo-Confucian context of Chinese Muslims. The way the origin of the world is expressed through this intellectual background has differences compared to Iran and other Islamic lands. The absence of concepts like ‘God’ or ‘creation ex nihilo’ in the Chinese context led the ‘Hankitāb’ writers to resort to other corresponding concepts, the details of which cannot be mentioned here. The same applies to the expression of the concept of ‘resurrection.’
Today, Muslims in China are under pressure. What is the cause of this pressure? Is it political, or does it have social and cultural origins?
What I have explained so far was about Muslims in China from the 16th to 19th centuries. Regarding their current situation, I am not qualified to comment or have much information. We all know that ‘Communist ideology’ tolerates no belief other than itself, and it is evident that Muslims, like Daoists, Buddhists, and Christians in China, are under pressure. It is necessary to re-emphasize that we are talking about Chinese Muslims, not Uyghurs, who are neither Chinese-speaking nor ethnically Chinese. The pressure on Chinese Muslims might be greater than on other religions in China due to their co-religionist status with the Uyghurs, but due to the closed media environment within China, we do not have accurate information on the extent and nature of this pressure, and the dominant world media, which are dependent on rival powers to Communism, cannot be fully trusted not to exaggerate these pressures!
How much familiarity with the Chinese version of Islam exists in Iran?
Almost none! Although this movement was greatly influenced by Iran, it is almost unknown in Iran. So far, only one book from this movement has been translated into Persian: the book ‘Chinese Lawa’ih of the Light of Sufism.’ This book is by Sachiko Murata, which is actually an English translation of the Chinese translation of Jami’s ‘Lawa’ih,’ along with translations of parts of several other works to introduce them. Unfortunately, in the Persian translation, the respected translator apparently did not see the need to translate Jami’s ‘Lawa’ih’ since it was originally in Persian, and practically only the first part of the book, which serves as an an introduction to its second part, has been translated, leaving this book incomplete! The Chinese translation of Jami’s ‘Lawa’ih’ is a masterpiece of adapting Islamic mystical concepts to Chinese concepts, and if this Chinese text translation were included in the book alongside the original Persian ‘Lawa’ih,’ by placing the Persian and Chinese versions of a single text side by side, many subtleties and foundations of Chinese thought in ‘Hankitāb’ texts could have become tangible for the audience.
