China and Islam The Prophet, the Party, and Law [Paperback]

This book is the first ethnographic study of Muslim minorities' practice of Islamic law in contemporary China.As the first ethnographic study of the practice of Islamic law by Chinese Muslims (Hui), this book will appeal to students and specialists who study the state and religion, legal pluralism, and conflicts of law from the perspectives of anthropology, law and society, Asian studies, and Islamic studies.As the first ethnographic study of the practice of Islamic law by Chinese Muslims (Hui), this book will appeal to students and specialists who study the state and religion, legal pluralism, and conflicts of law from the perspectives of anthropology, law and society, Asian studies, and Islamic studies.China and Islam examines the intersection of two critical issues of the contemporary world: Islamic revival and an assertive China, questioning the assumption that Islamic law is incompatible with state law. It finds that both Hui and the Party-State invoke, interpret, and make arguments based on Islamic law, a minjian (unofficial) law in China, to pursue their respective visions of 'the good'. Based on fieldwork in Linxia, 'China's Little Mecca', this study follows Hui clerics, youthful translators on the 'New Silk Road', female educators who reform traditional madrasas, and Party cadres as they reconcile Islamic and socialist laws in the course of the everyday. The first study of Islamic law in China and one of the first ethnographic accounts of law in postsocialist China, China and Islam unsettles unidimensional perceptions of extremist Islam and authoritarian China through Hui minjian practices of law.Introduction: the Party-State enters the mosque; 1. History, the Chinese state, and Islamic law; 2. Linxia at the crossroads; 3. Ritual lawfare; 4. Learning the law; 5. Wedding laws; 6. Moral economies; 7. Procedural justice; Conclusion: law, minjian, and the ends of anthropology. China, Islam, law: three major forces shaping our world encounter each other in the ol##