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Kristian Petersen. Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab. New York: Oxford University Press. 2018. Hardback ($99.00). 304 pp. 5 illustrations. ISBN 9780190634346.
By Alexander Wain, International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies
This excellent and eminently well-researched book systematically elucidates the contextual development of the fascinating Sino-Islamic philosophical tradition known as the Han Kitab. Oft-neglected within the field of Islamic Studies as a whole, the Han Kitab tradition represents a unique, Chinese-language reconceptualization of Islam set within the context of traditional Chinese thought. Focusing on three particularly prominent Han Kitab writers - Wang Daiyu (1590-1658), Liu Zhi (1670-1724), and Ma Dexin (1794-1874), the latter of whom has never been studied in depth before - Petersen seeks to not only facilitate a better understanding of this tradition, but also subvert conventional essentialized notions of Islam.
As Petersen outlines in his introduction, scholars of Islam, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, often work to a common assumption: that Islam exists (whether now or in the past) in a true or pure form represented by an authentic center (Arab Islam), around which a deviant periphery revolves. In consequence, Islamicists concerned with those Muslim communities resident at a distance, whether geographically or culturally, from this perceived center tend to speak in terms of divergence. Utilizing terminology like syncretic, they characterize their chosen communities as a product of the corruption of two or more original components (Islam and an indigenous non-Islamic culture) to form another (a vernacularized Islam). For Petersen, however, such essentialized notions of Islam are both simplistic and unrealistic; all Muslims are social actors who build upon prior narratives to produce a variety of Islams structured around specific geographic and cultural circumstances, which in turn serve to legitimate those constructs in the eyes of their adherents. With regards to the Han Kitab, this Sino-Islamic tradition is based on exchange, movement, conversation, negotiation, and dialogue (p. 3) and ultimately functions as a means by which Sino-Muslims can identify and communicate their locality within the larger Muslim community (p. 7).
This preoccupation with human agency and the ability to re-express ideas permeates Interpreting Islam in China. Reading each of his three authors through the prism of their specific historical contexts, Petersen attempts to identify the stimuli underlying...