Nowhere beyond good and evil: Muslim activism in China as ethical critique, 1929 to 2001.

Abstract

<italic>Nowhere Beyond Good and Evil</italic> is an ethnography and history of Chinese-speaking Muslims and their efforts to situate Muslim communities within Chinese society. I conducted archival research and fieldwork from 1999 to 2001 in Beijing and in Lanzhou, a provincial capital on the upper reaches of the Yellow River. I also visited activists' projects in Henan, Shaanxi, and Qinghai Provinces. The dissertation focuses on activism in the three domains of education reform, translation, and the publication of periodicals, while also touching on entrepreneurs who finance activism. For the Republic, I show how activists went against the secularizing trends of the time by trying to make an Islamic way of life meaningful in China. For the era of Reform and Opening, I describe how activists were able to challenge the authoritarian rule of the state while many urban Chinese tended to acquiesce, in particular after 1989. I also show how activists have successfully resisted the trends toward an apolitical life mired in commercialization and consumption by finding collective meaning in religious faith. Describing activism as a politics of conscience, this dissertation is my attempt at writing about morality and ethics at the intersection of emotion and politics. I have looked to Talal Asad, Max Weber, and Friedrich Nietzsche for help in envisioning a politics of conscience.