Islam

Bibliographic Data

ID3613878
AuthorsDru C Gladney (0000-0003-2812-4147, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume54
Issue2
Pages371-377
Publication date1995-05-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/2058742
OpenAlexW4254117300
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

The study of islam in china has been strongly influenced by what Lila Abu-Lughod (1989:269) termed "zones of theory" in the general Western scholarship of Islam, in which studies of the Middle Eastern "core" have been privileged over Islam on the so-called periphery. Muslims in China, relegated to the distant margins of both Sinological and Islamic scholarship, have rarely received much academic attention. This summary attempts a brief overview of past scholarship on Islam in China and recent contributions to the field. It is concerned primarily with Islam among the people known as the "Hui," as they are the "Muslim Chinese" proper, whereas the other nine Muslim nationalities identified by the Prc government do not speak Chinese as their native languages and belong more properly to Central Asian studies. The 1990 census revealed that there are a total of 17.6 million members of the ten mainly Muslim nationalities, with the Hui numbering 8.4 million. Like the U.S. census, religion is not a category on the Chinese census, so this figure includes some members of these nationalities who may not believe in or practice the Islamic religion, as well as excluding Han and other minority nationalities who might believe in Islam. Though some Muslims, especially Uygur, complain of underreporting of their populations, this is a fairly good initial estimate of the number of Muslims in China, indicating an increase of 1.2 million over the 1982 figure, a 13 percent increase (Gladney 1991:20

Ancient history · Census · China · Geography · Islam · Middle East · Political science · Population · Scholarship · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Asian Studies and History · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Demography · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies

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