[Another essay from the course on modern China.]
When discussing the Panthay Rebellion (1856-1873) and the Tungan Rebellion (1862-1873), commonly referred to together as “the Muslim rebellions,” a cluster of critical questions immediately present themselves for thorough deliberation: Were the Muslim rebellions principally the result of a fundamental ideological conflict between the Han majority and Muslim minority groups, or did the social, political, and economic conditions of the time simply exacerbate the latent differences in ethnicity and religious worldview? Is it possible to identify distinctly Islamic traits in the so-called Muslim rebellions? To what degree can these rebellions be categorized as “religious”? In what follows, I do not expect to arrive at definite answers to these questions, for that task seems patently absurd, even quixotic; however, that these questions so readily present themselves yet so easily resist simple, reductive answers, implies that perhaps it is the questions themselves that deserve closer inspection. This essay will argue that the Panthay and Tungan rebellions are misrepresented in Western scholarship because of the continued use of misleading categories and unreflective application of Western terminology.
The first major categorical problem facing scholars is the extent to which the rebellions can be characterized as religious, or as so many scholars awkwardly insist, “Muslim.” The characterization of these rebellions as Islamic is particularly problematic, since it appears to serve foremost as a way of emphasizing difference rather than a way to denote the essential character of the rebellions. When examining the way the events unfolded, this hasty categorization is challenged by two key facts. First, Liu and Smith note that the Muslims living in Kansu specifically had “comparatively easy” access to the Islamic world, a point that seems well evidenced given widespread international trade and the dynamic spread of new religious doctrines and practices into China (214). If these rebellions were indeed an Islamic project, why then did the greater Islamic world utterly ignore the Chinese Muslims during the course of the rebellions? Neither Smith and Liu nor any other source I have consulted makes any mention of monetary or moral support provided by an Islamic state, nor is there mention of the Chinese Muslims in rebellion utilizing their contacts in attempt to secure such assistance. Mario Poceski, scholar of Eastern religious history, provides another fact that complicates the generalizing of some scholars. Poceski notes that some non-Muslim ranks fought alongside Muslim rebels in the Panthay and Tungan rebellions, while some Muslims covertly “collaborated with the Qing armies, joining them in the military campaigns against ‘disloyal’ and seditious Muslims” (233-234). In what sense, then, can these rebellions be considered “Muslim”?
I suspect that part of the reason for this misrepresentation has to do with the way many Western scholars misunderstand Islam and tend to make mistaken assumptions about Muslims. To what degree are the differences between Chinese Muslims and the larger realm of Chinese culture intrinsic, and to what degree are they unduly emphasized and essentialized by Western scholars? Poceski, for instance, argues that Chinese Muslims experience a kind of discomforting liminality as they attempt to negotiate their identities as Muslims living in China: “Muslims had their own ceremonies, narratives, religious observances, dietary proscriptions, and dwelling arrangements,” which “led to the creation of exclusive boundaries” and “fostered a sense of…distinctiveness”; therefore, many Chinese Muslims would have “felt greater affinities with others of the same faith…than with the Han Chinese” (232). However, since Poceski does not provide any primary sources to verify this argument with an actual human voice articulating his or her own concerns, there is no reason not to assume that this is entirely speculative. As a historian, Poceski is incapable of knowing how human beings from another time felt about their religious, ethnic, cultural, or national identity. Instead, Poceski is much more accurate when he affirms, “We can hardly speak of a common identity that is universally shared by all Chinese Muslims, even though they are often stereotyped as a unified group with shared characteristics” (234). Nevertheless, the Western construction of a monolithic, rigidly exclusivist Islam has had profound effects on scholarship.
The misuse of the word jihad in Liu and Smith’s article demonstrates the lack of nuance symptomatic of this misunderstanding of Islam. Liu and Smith write, “Ch’ing administration there [in Sinkiang] had many weaknesses, and until 1860 the dynasty was barely able to maintain order in Altishahr against the periodic jihad (holy war) of the Afaqi khojas and their Turkic-speaking followers” (221). Here, Liu and Smith use the term jihad with what strikes me as an undue air of familiarity and simplicity, translating it haphazardly (and parenthetically) as “holy war” without any further comment, adding before it the adjective “periodic” to further provide the reader with a fabricated sense of familiarity, while also cleverly defining “holy war” as a kind of routine, unspectacular aspect of everyday Muslim life. It should also be noted that Liu and Smith do not (or cannot) present a single primary source to verify that these rebellions were considered jihad by any of the Muslims in revolt or their religious leaders. Instead, their cavalier use of the term jihad represents the misconceptions many scholars harbor about Islam. Alternatively, the anthropologist Talal Asad provides a brief but vastly more nuanced discussion of the term and the way it has been used historically in his book On Suicide Bombing. Asad argues that jihad, far from being a central aspect of Islamic thought or practice, is in actuality an extremely controversial issue among Islamic jurists, and there is not, nor has there ever been, a consensus on either the actions that qualify as jihad or the social and political conditions that necessitate Muslims taking up jihad. Furthermore, the translation of jihad as “holy war” is also an invention of the West: “Because there has never been a centralized theological authority in the Islamic world, there was never a consensus about the virtue of religious warfare” (11-12). Asad, a vastly more attentive scholar, demonstrates the need for nuance when approaching subjects like this, while also uncovering a latent Western bias against Islam.
Now I want to turn from the problems Islam in particular poses to Western scholarship and focus on more general problems in the unreflective projection of Western categories onto non-Western history. The particularly problematic category I want to deal with in this section is religion, along with all the terminology (often theological rather than historical in nature) that comes with it. To define these rebellions as religious in nature implies that there is a behavior or motivation that is intrinsically and objectively “religious.” But what does it mean for behavior to be religious? How is religious behavior different from other modes of human expression? I should note here that there is, obviously, no scholarly consensus on the definition of the words religion or religious or even their very usefulness and applicability in non-Western contexts; still, the most erroneous possible viewpoint is that religion, which is clearly a Western category constructed by Western scholars, has an essential, irreducible core that allows its universal applicability, regardless of social and historical context. I do not mean to discount completely the role worldview played in the specific language of these rebellions, for that would be as erroneous as presupposing the preponderance of religious ideology in this history. What I do suggest, though, is that not only did religion influence the way the rebellions unfolded, but issues specific to the time and place likewise influenced the way religion was practiced in the area. In short, historians need to develop a way of talking about the religious identity of those in revolt without dwelling on it. If religion is to be a useful category in non-Western history, it must be unburdened of the cultural assumptions and semi-theological appeals that seek to grant some of its historically specific functions a transhistorical status.
This essay has demonstrated that the categorization of the Panthay and Tungan Rebellions as “Muslim rebellions” is inaccurate and bears the marks of biased scholarship. Even if Muslims were the principal actors in this episode of history, the rebellions cannot be lumped together by this single commonality since the Muslim communities in rebellion were both distinct from one another and internally diverse. In addition, I questioned the assumption of a universalistic definition of the word “religion” and its application to this history. The task now facing scholars is the development of more accurate categories and a careful revision of the categories already in common use.
References
Asad, Talal. On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Liu, Kwang-Ching and Richard Smith. “The Military Challenge.” In The Cambridge History of China, 211-225. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Poceski, Mario. Introducing Chinese Religions. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.
Schoppa, R. Keith. Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2011.
