As argued in the recent scholarship (see above), the contemporary con-ception of religion in China is distinctly modern in origin. The word itself (zongjiao) was adopted from Japanese at the end of the 19th century, its meaning heavily influenced by Western, particularly Christian notions of religion as a ‘formally constituted social organization associated with a body of written doctrine that expressed both cosmology and an ethical system’
(Szonyi 2009: 317). Any existing religious practices which could not be sub-sumed under this definition were relegated to the category of superstition (mixin), also newly introduced and subject to various attacks. The discourse on religion was just one strand of the wider ideological project of transition-ing China from tradition to modernity. It was therefore closely linked to the discourses of nation, science and development, which came to dominate the thoughts of Chinese elites of the time.
Where religious practices could be made to fit the new conception of religion, a process of institutionalisation was initiated. In 1912, immediately
after the establishment of the Republic, the first such systematic attempts were made by creating national Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian and Mus-lim associations. Their purpose was to organise clerics and adherents into unified, hierarchical institutions. The former three projects largely failed, and later on Confucianism was even excluded from the list of religions.
Although considered for the position of state religion at first (like Shinto in Japan), the need for a radical break with the imperial regime resulted in
‘the abrogation of all kinds of state and ritual doctrine’ (Goossaert 2008:
220). Thus, in China, the process of secularisation ran parallel to religious institutionalisation.
For Islam, institutionalisation coincided with the introduction of the Ikhwan (yihewani) movement (inspired by the same sources as the Muslim Brotherhood) by imam Ma Wanfu, upon his return to his native Gansu in 1895 following several years of study in Arabia. The religious reformist trends, however, were soon combined with nationalist ideas, which were promoted, first, by those Hui who studied in Japan in the beginning of the 20th century, and then, by those who were sent to Al-Azhar in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s. Their joined struggle for the creation of nationwide Hui educational and charitable organisations resulted in the formation of an ideal of a Muslim citizen, characterised by his dual loyalty, to the nation(-state) on the one hand and to Islam on the other (Chérif-Chebbi 2004; Mat-sumoto 2006). The support for the modernisation and unification of Hui (in more than just religious terms) led the yihewani into close cooperation with the state. This not only changed the movement’s nature in China from oppositional to collaborative, but also guaranteed it a strong influence over various other Muslim associations in Republican China.2 Due to their mod-ernist orientations and their solid infrastructure in the form of networks of mosques and schools covering certain parts of China, yihewani imams were given the most prominent role in the China Islamic Association that the Communists established in 1953 (Chérif-Chebbi 2004; Gladney 2008), despite the fact that in the Northwest they were closely connected to war-lords who supported the Kuomintang during the civil war.
The newly established PRC built its religious policy around many of the Republic’s ideological and practical formulations. It recognised five offi-cial religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism and established one or more national-level patriotic associations for each of them. They were to act as intermediaries between the state and local reli-gious communities, but their main task was and remains carrying out the Party’s religious policy and gaining support for its various other ideological projects. Political and economic campaigns of the early years often targeted those practices, places of worship and clerics that were excluded from or marginalised within the institutionalised religion, like Sufi orders in the case of Islam. However, even official religions were labelled as feudal superstition (fengjian mixin) during the Cultural Revolution. Considered an obstacle to class struggle, they came under severe attack, since their eradication would
presumably quicken the progress to Socialism. In 1975, resistance to reli-gious repression resulted in the largest Hui-state incident in the PRC’s his-tory, a massacre of more than 1,000 villagers in Shadian (Yunnan province) by the People’s Liberation Army.
Reform period leaders, however, have taken a more flexible position towards religion, recognising certain forms of religiosity again while still disapproving of or proscribing others. Both the political and economic con-text in post-Mao China has allowed for, or even encouraged revival of, many religious movements as well as the emergence of new ones. A document with the title The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question During Our Country’s Socialist Period,3 which was circulated as an internal Party document in 1982, but had been discussed by the Party leadership already in 1978, outlines the principles for management of religious affairs dur-ing the last three decades. Most importantly, it recognises that religion is a complex and long-lasting phenomenon, and that the excesses of the Cultural Revolution only turned people against the Party. Furthermore, it points out that religion has implications both for ethnic relations within China and for China’s international relations.
This is of particular importance in the consideration of Islam. Since most Muslims belong to various religious ethnic minorities, that is, ‘eth-nic minorities in which nearly all the people believe in one particular reli-gion’ (MacInnis 1989: 22), Islam (like Lamaism), in certain regions at least, enjoys a special protection against Christian proselytizing, in an attempt to avoid tensions and the consequent threat to national unity (Fällman 2010:
959–960). Such alignment of ethnicity and religion also implies that reli-gious practices can be defended as the customs (fengsu xiguan) of particular minorities. On the other hand, the document warns that Islam’s interna-tional character can make Muslims vulnerable to foreign manipulation with the goal of destabilising China (MacInnis 1989: 23–24). Although the global discourse of the war on terrorism is now regularly instrumentalised by the Chinese government to justify religious and political repression in Xinjiang,4 Islam is generally viewed with less suspicion than Christianity due to the anti Western-imperialist rhetoric and sentiments China shares with many Mus-lim majority countries as well as to the lack of Islam’s political influence in more recent historical periods (cf. MacInnis 1989: 23–24).5
In the past few years, certain new developments could be observed in regard to the official treatment of religion. First, a level of complexity has been introduced in the discourse on religion, running from the permitted
‘normal religious activities’ of ‘proper religions’ to less dangerous forms of ‘superstition’ to the ‘abnormal religious activities’ and ‘evil cults’. Also, Chinese popular religion is by and large no longer disparaged. Further-more, the Communist Party of China (CPC) now quietly accepts religiosity in its own ranks. According to some studies, at least a third of the total 60–70 million members belong to a religious organisation. Having joined the Party for the economic and social benefits provided by membership,
they perceive religion as a part of their private sphere and therefore not in conflict with the Party’s declared atheism (Hornemann 2007). Finally, CCP’s fears of the mobilising power of religion and the challenge it could present for its authority are increasingly weighed against the positive influ-ence of religious individuals and organisations in the social and economic development of the country. In a speech in 2007 at the first Politbureau meeting dedicated exclusively to religious issues, Chinese President Hu Jin-tao stressed the contributions that religion can make in the new political goal of creating a ‘harmonious society’ (Hu 2007). These are exemplified in the varied provisions of education, welfare and disaster relief initiated by religious philanthropic organisations.
The changes, however, should not be considered as a challenge to the secular nature of the Chinese state. As the radically different treatment of the same religious practices among Hui and Uyghur demonstrates, the dis-tinction between appropriate public, and hence normal, religious activities and those which are not is not based on differences in doctrine or practice.
Rather it rests on the criterion of what is perceived to be a threat to social stability and the Party’s ideological monopoly, which remain exclusively under the government’s purview (cf. Potter 2003; Veselič 2011).