Religion of the Father: Islam, Gender, and Politics of Ethnicity in Late Socialism Guangtian Ha Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 ©2014 Guangtian Ha All rights reserved ABSTRACT Religion of the Father: Islam, Gender, and Politics of Ethnicity in Late Socialism Guangtian Ha This dissertation examines the ethnicization of Islam among a specific ethnic group in China, namely the Hui. It is based upon sixteen months of multi-sited fieldwork conducted in China’s Henan Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region from 2010 to 2012. I argue that the particular ethno-imaginary of the Hui and their positioning vis-à- vis the Han majority – that they are both non-Han and more Han than the Han – are predicated upon a particular sexual economy. Islam is situated in an imagined dissymmetrical exchange of woman as that whose presumed truth can procure for the Hui the feminine “Han blood.” The “nativization” of Islam among the Hui, i.e. its supposedly never complete “sinicization,” occurs through the figure of the Han woman. In Part I of this dissertation, I trace the itinerary of this figure in both historiographical narratives of the Hui in the early twentieth century and the organizational variations of their contemporary life as Muslims in a swiftly-changing China. In Part II, I move to a more general level, and study two major institutions in the Chinese state’s governance of ethnic difference, namely ethnic regional autonomy and ethnic cadre. I situate them within the socialist tradition and unpack their specificity in contrast to other political configurations in the governance of ethnic difference (e.g. liberal multiculturalism). I suggest that this socialist governance of difference is defined by a biopolitical logic, and argue that the link to sexuality that is intrinsic to the concept of biopolitics renders the Hui a particularly privileged site for exploring the complex relationship between the socialist politics of ethnicity and the socialist governance of sexuality. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 Islam, Gender, Recognition ......................................................................................................... 8 Ethnicity, Difference, Socialism ................................................................................................ 24 Outline of Chapters ................................................................................................................... 43 PART I CHAPTER 1 Narratives of Exclusion: History, Ethnicity, Politics ........................................................ 50 Ethnicity as Icon ........................................................................................................................ 63 There Is No Such a Thing as a Han Muslim.............................................................................. 82 A Different Political Islam ........................................................................................................ 93 Conclusion: Between the Han and the Uyghur ....................................................................... 109 CHAPTER 2 Niche of Islam: the Disputed Space of the Mosque ........................................................ 112 Locating the Mosque ............................................................................................................... 117 Codifying Democracy ............................................................................................................. 133 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 151 CHAPTER 3 The True Believer Does Not Know ................................................................................ 155 i A Gendered Genealogy of Dao ............................................................................................... 162 Materiality of Faith .................................................................................................................. 187 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 206 CHAPTER 4 Servant of God: The Clerical World of Hui Islam .......................................................... 209 Training the Cleric ................................................................................................................... 214 Mobile Islam ............................................................................................................................ 233 Conclusion: Bearing the Unbearable ....................................................................................... 251 PART II CHAPTER 5 Spectres of Socialism, Politics of Ethnicity .................................................................... 255 CHAPTER 6 In the Name of Autonomy, or, Does “the Ethnic Question” Exist? ............................... 282 Twin Pillars of Autonomy: Territory and Population ............................................................. 291 Neither Liberalism nor Soviet Socialism, or, the Translation between the Political and the Biopolitical .............................................................................................................................. 311 CHAPTER 7 Good Sentiment, Bad Sentiment: Political Representation and Ethnic Cadre ................ 317 Becoming an Ethnic Cadre: the Story of Qixiang ................................................................... 318 Paradox of Representation ....................................................................................................... 329 Politics of Denial ..................................................................................................................... 341 ii Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 349 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 352 EPILOGUE Gender, Again ................................................................................................................. 359 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 369 iii Acknowledgements Thanks to anthropology, we know that gifts, as long as they are indeed gifts, can never be fully compensated. No return can ever be sufficient. This argument rings particularly true when one needs to sit down and recall all the debts one has incurred in the course of writing a PhD dissertation. One realizes how much one has been changed, and to what extent these precious changes cannot occur without the help, support, and enlightenment of one’s generous mentors. Myron Cohen, my supervisor, has given me much freedom in exploring the richness of Columbia anthropology, and has offered critical advice when this exploration risked losing track of my central questions. His encyclopedic knowledge of China and insistence on the importance of sound ethnography constantly push me to the limit of my training and remind me of how much I still need to learn about China and anthropology. I thank Rosalind Morris, without whose impeccable tutelage and patient instruction I will never be initiated into the brilliant world of structuralism. Her critical attitude to contemporary theories of gender and sexuality and her insistence on the particular contribution anthropology could make to this field always compel me to reflect on what it means to work interdisciplinarily without reducing the specific acuity of anthropology. Elizabeth Povinelli’s work on late liberalism is a constant inspiration for me. With a high level of intellectual excitement and a broad vision, she raises questions that always point me in new directions. I would not have thought about theorizing the socialist politics of ethnicity without her extraordinary work on the liberal politics of recognition. Katherine Ewing and Gray Tuttle, as two outside members of my dissertation defense committee, iv have also offered important advice. I am grateful that they agreed to be on my committee when they were already busy with other defenses. I should thank all those whom I have interviewed in my fieldwork, both ordinary Hui and Hui officials, from whom I have learned so much. But the irony of writing on religion and ethnicity in contemporary China is that one precisely cannot name those who should by all means be named. They have taken the risk of speaking to me, and have treated me as a friend and a family member. Yet they must remain anonymous. This dissertation is written in the hope that one day their names will not have to remain hidden. For those whose names can be revealed, I thank Shui Jingjun, who invited me to give a talk in the Henan Academy of Social Sciences when I was in Zhengzhou for fieldwork. Ma Jianfu shared with me his rich ethnography of the county of Haiyuan, from which I benefited a lot. Without the generous help of Ma Xiaoyi, I could not have gained access to Jahriyya Sufism. Luo Yanhui’s optimism and her amazing knowledge of the best food in Yinchuan made my stay in Ningxia considerably