No.53 Seminar ： Islam holding dialogues with China
- Tatsuya Nakanishi (The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research)
- 2013/01/08 4:00pm
- The Hakubi Center for advanced research (iCeMS West Wing 2F, Seminar Room)
- Japanese
Summary
I would like to talk about cultural dialogues which Chinese Muslims have actually held in order to mediate between Islamic and Chinese Civilizations. The so-called “Chinese Muslims” are Chinese speaking Muslims who are descendants of Muslim immigrants to China (not Turkish speaking Muslims living in Xinjiang). They established their own communities in all over China at latest in the early 16th century and have constituted an inseparable part of the Chinese society until now. They are mostly equivalent to ones called “Huizu”. Huizu has 10 million populations. This number is more than populations of many nations, but it is much smaller than Chinese populations (about 1.3 billion). They have been a minority in China. So they have had to bridge between Islamic and Chinese Civilizations in order to survive in Chinese society. For example, they needed to harmonize between Islam and Chinese traditional thoughts (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and reconcile between the Islamic law and Chinese law. It is useful for us to reflect on their historical experiences, if we try to think about dialogues among Civilizations in this world today.