Seeking Knowledge Even Unto China:

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" Seeking Knowledge Even Unto China: "
Yang, Yang Oakes, Timothy

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	1105154
Doc. No	:	TLpq2299779957
Main Entry	:	Oakes, Timothy
	:	Yang, Yang
Title & Author	:	Seeking Knowledge Even Unto China:\ Yang, YangOakes, Timothy
College	:	University of Colorado at Boulder
Date	:	2019
student score	:	2019
Degree	:	Ph.D.
Page No	:	223
Abstract	:	This dissertation analyzes Hui Muslims in northwestern China and how they revive new orientations and practices from the global Islamic discourse into the Muslim community in Xi’an. The dissertation explores how the Hui negotiate their everyday ethno-religious identity between the nation-state and the global Ummah. Muslim spaces render different imaginations of global Muslim communities that are locally relevant in producing a transnational sense of place in social and political contexts. Based on ethnographies conducted in the Hui Quarter in Xi’an between 2015 and 2016 and supporting discourse analysis, this dissertation explores three different aspects of forging locally produced transnational connections with the external Muslim world. These include the transfer of Muslim wedding styles from South and Southeast Asia, grassroots Muslim charitable groups and their reference to the Iranian project the “wall of kindness,” and the Hui Muslims’ participation in the government-sponsored annual Hajj to Saudi Arabia. These three different examples emphasize the emergence of transnational Muslim identity in gendered spaces that are associated with women. The Huis’ Islamic revival movements, similar to piety movements in other countries, emerge at the intersection of the state and society. Hui women’s practices of reviving Islam emphasize visuality that connects Islam and aesthetics. The religious-based aesthetics for fashion and the urban built environment manifests in ideal gender roles defined in Islamic contexts. The use of aesthetics also allows Hui Muslims to present Islamic revival as apolitical and hence non-threatening to the Chinese state. The Huis’ use of non-Chinese references, especially China’s crucial connections in the Muslim world, shows that Chinese diplomacy such as the Belt and Road Initiatives is played out differently on the ground. The dissertation engages a conversation between research in feminist geography and the politics of aesthetics with a focus on the geopolitics of transnational urban space.
Subject	:	Geographic information science
	:	Geography
	:	Religion