James D. Frankel, a native New Yorker, holds a Bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies and postgraduate degrees in Religion from Columbia University. His expertise is in the history of Islam in China, and his scholarly interests emphasize the comparative history of ideas and religious and cultural syncretism. His doctoral dissertation is on the subject of Chinese Islamic scholarship and literature of the early Qing (1644 – 1911) period, specifically the writings of the Chinese Muslim literatus Liu Zhi (ca. 1660 – ca. 1730). Dr. Frankel's first book, Rectifying God's Name: Liu Zhi's Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law, (University of Hawaii Press, 2011), expounds on the same topic. He has lived in China and has traveled extensively in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, where he has met with scholars and religious leaders of Muslim communities. Dr. Frankel teaches and researches in the areas of Islam, comparative religion, Chinese religions, religious fundamentalism and mysticism.

He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is also the Director of the Centre for the Study of Islamic Culture.

How my journey began

I was standing outside the main gate of the four-hundred-year-old mosque on Niujie, or Ox Street, trying to flag down a taxi at around 2:30 p.m. Niujie is located in the southwest quadrant of central Beijing and I had to get northwest, which would require driving through the heart of the city, past Tian’anmen Square. It was Friday afternoon, so I desperately wanted to beat the afterwork rush. A few cabs passed me by, and I had to wonder whether they did so deliberately. In my mind I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt; perhaps they were changing shifts or responding to a call. But since I was in a bit of a rush, my paranoia kicked in and I suspected discrimination. In those days, there were few foreigners in that part of town. Let me re-phrase that. There were very few foreigners of my kind, that is, white ones. There were plenty of brown folks lingering around the mosque after Friday prayers – mostly South Asians and Middle Easterners. There were some who looked Central Asian, Uyghurs perhaps, so technically they were not foreigners at all but Chinese citizens.

At last, a red-coloured taxi pulled up and I got in. The driver was friendly enough, and I could tell he wanted to talk to me. Since I had told him my destination in Mandarin, and my pronunciation was sufficiently standard for him to assume I spoke some Chinese, he broke the ice by asking me where I was from. That was a typical question coming from Beijing cabbies and I anticipated what would come next: What brings you to Beijing? How long have you been here? What’s your job? How much do you earn? And so on... I was well-rehearsed in the five-minute taxi conversation. He asked me what I was doing here?’ Based on previous experience I thought he meant Beijing, or maybe China, so I told him I was doing research. But he clarified, ‘Ni zai Niujie gan ma?’ (‘What are you doing in Niujie?’) I’d never been asked like that before. The question was so specific and a bit unsettling.

This driver threw me for a loop. I told him I was there visiting the mosque. He retorted, ‘Wei shemme?!’ (‘Why?!’) I wasn’t sure how to respond. I tried to explain that my research was about Muslims in China. He somehow wasn’t satisfied with this answer. So, I went out on a limb and told him I was Muslim and was there to worship. His expression betrayed his shock as it took him a moment to say anything. Then he exclaimed, ‘Danshi ni shi baide waiguoren!’ (‘But you are a white foreigner!’) I immediately understood his meaning. He could not imagine that a white person could be a Muslim because he never encountered such a thing. I explained that I am an American and my family are not Muslims, but that I had converted to Islam years before. It seemed that this was even more incredible to him. He didn’t say it, but I presumed that he was wondering why a white person, and American no less, would ever make such a choice. Perhaps I was wrong, but I certainly felt as if he thought this was a bad choice because he had a negative impression of Islam.

I didn’t have to wait for confirmation of my assumption. He told me that Islam is the religion of people from poor countries. I asked him, ‘What about Saudi Arabia?’ He had no answer. Then I challenged him further, ‘What about Muslims here in China?’ Suddenly he answered with the self-confidence of someone who believed he was an expert on the subject, ‘Dangran, tamen bushi zhende Zhongguoren. Tamen yiding shi luohuo de.’ (Of course, they are not real Chinese people. They are certainly backward.’) He continued, ‘Tamen gen women bu yiyang.’ (‘They are not like us.’) Maybe I should have left well enough alone, but I couldn’t resist asking, ‘Who are not like you? Which Muslims?’ He replied, ‘Tamen suoyou de.’ (‘All of them.’) I should have expected this answer, but now I had to seek further clarification. ‘How about the Hui? They seem pretty Chinese to me. They speak Chinese, and they look just like Han people to me.’ He looked at me as though I’d just made a joke that wasn’t very funny. ‘Bu hui renzhen! Ni kanguo tamen le?’ (‘You can’t be serious! Have you looked at them?’)  ‘Yes, and I still can’t see the difference’, I replied. Then he said something I could never have expected: ‘Tamen you yangmu.’ (‘They have yangmu.’) I was perplexed. ‘Did he just say what I think he said?’, I thought to myself, ‘Yangmu? Does that mean what it sounds like? I think he just said, “sheep’s eyes”. I asked him what he meant exactly, and he made it very clear that’s what he meant: ‘They have sheep’s eyes.’ I was dumbfounded. I need to know what this meant, but I couldn’t muster the words to inquire. I didn’t have to. My driver volunteered the answer, ‘Tamen you yangmu yiwei tamen de zuxian jiu shi zhi yang. Zhe yeshi tamen chi nemme duo yangrou de yuanyin.’ (‘They have sheep’s eyes because their ancestor is a sheep. That’s also the reason why they eat so much mutton.) As a scholar of religion, I wanted to explain to him that his explanation contradicts Durkheim’s theory that the ancestral totem animal was precisely what was forbidden by taboo to eat in primitive societies. But I feared my Chinese wasn’t good enough to express it, and even if I said it correctly, would it have made any difference? I think my driver’s ideas were probably firmly fixed. I remained quiet for the rest of the ride. Fortunately, we arrived at the destination soon after that.

Many non-Muslims in China have some prejudices about Islam and Muslims, though this example was quite extreme. The lack of understanding by Han Chinese is really quite incredible when one considers that Muslims have been living in China for well over a thousand years – almost since the beginning of Islam itself. Moreover, there is hardly a city in China where one cannot find a Muslim community and at least one mosque. Beijing alone has almost two hundred thousand Muslim residents, and over seventy mosques. Being a minority, Chinese Muslims are required to know about Chinese culture and history, but this obligation is not reciprocal.

As uninformed as most Chinese citizens are about Muslims in their own country and about Islam in general, outsiders are even more ignorant. When told that there are Muslims in China and they have been there for so long, members of the general public around the world are caught utterly unaware. Those who consider themselves well-informed about world affairs may have read about the Turkic Uyghur Muslims who live in China’s westernmost Xinjiang region. Stories about the Uyghurs and their conflicts with the government of the People’s Republic appear with ever greater frequency in the Western press. But even these people are often surprised to learn that most of China’s Muslims are Chinese speakers and like Han Chinese by all appearances. But anyone who wishes to understand the socio-political situation in China today, and the geopolitical relations between China and the Muslim world, would be well-advised to learn more about the overlap, historical and contemporary, of these two great civilizations.

Personal Reflections