Editorial

In this issue, we move away from our customary focus on the Muslim
Middle East and Muslims in the West and turn toward Southeast Asia and
China. Here, we find Muslim communities that seem not to be so entranced
by what we in the West consider to be the most pressing issues: the Muslim
world vs. the West and/or modernity, the Abrahamic faiths trialogue, politi-
cal and economic reform, the suitability of western-style democracy in
Muslim countries, and the rise of Islamic “fundamentalism,” “terrorism,”
“extremism,” or whatever similar term the media throws at us.

Excluding Indonesia and Malaysia, the overriding concerns of these
Muslims appear to be different, for they are often viewed as unwanted or
ignored minority communities. For example, Muslims living in Xinjiang,
southern Thailand, and the southern Philippines are confronted daily by hos-
tile or indifferent regimes that want their natural resources and land. Thus,
their main concerns are actual (as opposed to theoretical) justice, being
allowed to remain “different” instead of being forced to assimilate, and pass-
ing on their religious and cultural identities in a hostile environment.

In interfaith terms, their intellectuals are involved in other discourses:
Islam and Buddhism, Confucianism, communism, folk religion, cultural chau-
vinism, and others. To cite an example, one of my Cham Muslim friends from
Vietnam translated the Qur’an into Vietnamese several years ago. According
to him, the hardest part was translating such monotheistic concepts as God,
sin, final judgment, good, and evil into a non-monotheistic language that has
no words for such concepts. One of our articles (Peterson) deals with how
Chinese Muslim scholars of the pre-modern era tried to solve this problem.

Several of our articles deal with China, whose rite of passage into
modernity might have killed a lesser nation. Within the space of 100 years,
it was ruled by a highly traditional empire engulfed in its own hubris, a
nationalist republican regime beset by a virulent communist insurgency and
Japanese invasion, and an extremely radical revolutionary communist
regime. And now it is an economic dynamo, due to its “capitalism with Chi-
nese characteristics.” But what do we know of its Muslims, other than that
the Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang continue to be restive and that the Bush
administration has accepted Beijing’s claim that several of Xinjiang’s seces-
sionist groups have links with the Taliban and al-Qaeda?



We lead off with Philipp Bruckmayr’s “The Cham Muslims of Cam-
bodia: From Forgotten Minority to Focal Point of Islamic Internationalism.”
He introduces us to this resilient community, descendants of the Hinduized
(and much later partially Islamized) kingdom of Champa, the former ruler
of much of present-day Vietnam’s central region. He looks at them before
and after the holocaust that engulfed them, their origin, what was important
to them, and why the Khmer Rouge unleashed their wrath against them.
Going one step further, he explains how this community is now rejoining the
larger Islamic world that had forgotten about it centuries ago. Based on his
fieldwork during the summer of 2005, Burckmayr also informs us of the
new challenges facing the Cham: the influx of alien interpretations of Islam,
conflicts between rural and urban Muslims, the close relationship of the
community’s leaders with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and Cam-
bodia’s new role in the “war on terror.”

In our “Forum” section, Ba Trung Phu introduces us to the Cham Bani
of Vietnam, who live in the traditional Cham heartland and follow the tradi-
tional ways. Having grown up in this culture, he offers an insider’s view of
their version of “pure” Islam. As honored guests of the community’s leader,
my friend (who grew up there) and I attended their tarawih prayers during
Ramadan 1993. This was the first time they had allowed the “other” into their
mosque since the village-wide split that had occurred after orthodox Sunni
Islam arrived in the 1960s. I watched two imams, dressed in white and wear-
ing solar-orb-type hats, recite the adhan, which seemed to take several min-
utes and contained few recognizably Arabic words. I saw the women, none
of whom wore the hijab, and some of the men perform the full-body prostra-
tion that I have seen in Hindu and Buddhist temples. After they joined the
other imams in the front to pray on the community’s behalf in front of tall
grayish-colored candles, we sat and talked with the betel-nut-chewing leader
and slowly acquired an audience eager to learn about us.

Next, we present three articles on the complicated land of China. First is
Kristian Petersen’s “Reconstructing Islam: Muslim Education and Literature
in Ming-Qing China.” In his fascinating article, he traces the Muslim schol-
ars’ long-term (and largely one-sided) scholarly process to convince their
non-Muslim colleagues to accept Islamic knowledge as a legitimate and rec-
ognized part of classical Chinese civilization. Their claim was based on two
major assertions: Muhammad enjoyed the same stature as China’s revered
ancient sages, and Islam was the equivalent of their dao (path). Generations
of Muslim scholars devoted themselves to this, fearing that Islam might one
day vanish due to the Muslims’ growing inability to read the original Arabic-

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and Persian-language texts and because many children were being lost to the
surrounding Chinese civilization. To solve this problem, they developed the
Han Kitab, a corpus of indigenous Islamic literature written in Chinese dur-
ing 1600-1750. Petersen details this process for us, as well as its ultimate fate.

Haiyun Ma’s “Patriotic and Pious Muslim Intellectuals in Twentieth-
Century China: The Case of Ma Jian” follows the career of a Chinese Muslim
intellectual who sought to secure a respected place for Muslims and Islamic
knowledge under the Republicans (1911-49) and the Communists (1949- ).
After a brief account of Ma Jian’s early years, he analyzes this scholar’s
attempts to convince both regimes that allowing Muslim children to acquire
Islamic knowledge in the state-controlled education system would benefit the
people and the nation. Although unsuccessful in this and in his quest to
reform the existing mosque-centered education system that isolated the Mus-
lims from the surrounding Chinese society, Ma Jian left behind a valuable
legacy of translations from Arabic (including the Qur’an), made Arabic and
Islamic sciences for the first time a respectable part of Beijing University’s
curricula, and trained a new generation of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars
to carry on his vision of solidifying China’s ties with the Muslim world. 

Our final article, Ross Cuthbert’s “Beijing Rides the Bandwagon: A Cri-
tical Analysis of Islam and Separatism in Xinjiang,” examines how Beijing,
in the aftermath of 9/11, persuaded the Bush administration that indigenous
Uygur Muslim opposition to repressive official policies was due to the restive
indigenous population’s supposed “Islamist” orientation and “links” with the
Taliban or al-Qaeda. Cuthbert does all of us a service by discrediting Bei-
jing’s foundational document for this claim: “East Turkistan Terrorist Forces
Cannot Get Away With Impunity.” He informs us of why Beijing holds on to
this restive province, how it views the many separatist groups, the problems
associated with translating Chinese into English, and the context in which the
report was released. The article ends with an assessment of Uygur-Han rela-
tionships and existing realities on the ground in Xinjiang.

This ties in well with Rebiya Kadeer’s “Forum” article on living as an
economically successful and outspoken Uyghur woman in Xinjiang. Once
considered one of China’s ten richest people, everything changed when she
began to speak about her people’s plight at the national level. Unfortunately,
this brave woman cannot match the “superstar” status of neighboring Tibet’s
Dalai Lama; nor does “Xinjiang” conjure up Tibet’s long-standing romanti-
cized “mystical” and “exotic” image. As a result, it will be an uphill battle
to raise the concern of western politicians and the general public.

Our other “Forum” article deals with the need for a Muslim-Buddhist
interfaith dialogue. Chaiwat Satha-Anand’s “A Rumor of Anger: Understand-

Editorial iii



ing Muslims’ Voices in the context of ‘Pure War’” discusses how southern
Thailand’s Muslim community views its place within the surrounding sea of
Buddhist Thailand as well as its relationship with a not-always-sympathetic
government located in far-away Bangkok. The author pays special attention
to the issues of cultural insensitivity and rumor in maintaining the Muslims’
sense of alienation. Given the increased level of violence and tension during
the last several years, this article is an eye-opener.

While this issue was being put together, an important event took place:
On 15 April 2006, North American Muslim leaders finally met with the Dalai
Lama, who had requested such a meeting ten years ago. “What was so
unusual about that?” it might be asked. Well, most Muslims do not consider
Buddhism to be a valid religion, for Buddhists have no concept of God, sin,
or the Day of Judgment; believe in reincarnation, the value of monks and
monasteries, and “worship” statues; and, perhaps most importantly, claim
that since God (in the monotheistic understanding of the term) does not exist,
each person must find his/her own way to enlightenment by choosing a suit-
able path, as opposed to listening to the religious community’s leaders. 

The fact that they had to ask the fourteenth incarnation of Avalokitesvara
(The Buddha of Compassion) for advice on how to improve Islam’s image in
the West proves that their strategies have reached a dead end and that new
insight – and perhaps new blood – is badly needed. Maybe by taking this step
they have finally realized that there is more to a genuine interfaith dialogue
and an exchange of worldviews than just talking with fellow monotheists. In
fact, there is a whole world of atheists, communists, secular humanists,
Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists, Shintoists, and followers of traditional
indigenous religions with whom Muslims should be talking. Let’s include
them in our discussions of how to remain spiritual beings in this increasing-
ly materialistic and consumer-driven culture that leaves many of us so frus-
trated at the end of the day.

We have put a lot of effort into this issue in the hope of broadening our
readers’ horizons. It is our desire that Muslims in the West leave their com-
fortable cocoon of fellow monotheists and ethnic cliques and venture forth
into what is “uncharted territory” for so many of us. If we do not expose our-
selves to new ideas and new possibilities, we will stagnate and, maybe one
day, disappear. The meeting with the Dalai Lama is a step in the right direc-
tion. May there be many more – and soon! 

Jay Willoughby
Special Issue Guest Editor

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