Muslim Minorities and Questions of Secularity in China and Beyond
International Workshop at the Centre for Advanced Studies“Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, Leipzig University
9–10 June 2023
Convenors
Yee Lak Elliot Lee (Institute for the Study of Religions, Leipzig University)
Markus Dressler (Institute for the Study of Religions/Modern Turkish Studies, Leipzig University)
Hubert Seiwert (KFG “Multiple Secularities”) andJames D. Frankel (Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
ApproachThis interdisciplinary workshop investigates the role of secularity – that is, conceptual distinctions andinstitutional differentiations between “religion” and its others – in the formation and normalization ofMuslim minorities, with a focus on China. Recent developments in China give a strong impression ofMuslim minorities being subjugated under a state-led secularist regime. Therein, Muslims arediscursively disciplined by means of semantically overlapping binaries, such as religion/secular,legal/illicit, good/bad, local/foreign, and modern/traditional. While this scenario puts emphasis on theagency of the state, our workshop aims at exploring the roles of various actors (including but not limited
to Muslims and state authorities) in resisting, appropriating, altering, and reproducing such binaries tosustain or upset established religious and secular fields. Whereas the Chinese state justifies its approachto regulating Islam by mimicking practices of other countries from which it seeks endorsement, Muslims
respond to the secularist regime by drawing on symbolic and material resources from their transregional
networks. These actors’ manoeuvres point to continuities with and breakaways from longer historicaldynamics, as Muslims settled and displaced in and out of China in past exchanges and conquests along
the overland and maritime “silk roads”, through post-Cold War dynamics of globalization andreterritorialization.

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Workshop Programme“Muslim Minorities and Questions of Secularity in China and Beyond”
Leipzig University, 9–10 June 2023

Schedule
Friday, 9 June 2023
09:00–09:30

Registration

09:30–10:00

Opening and Theoretical Input
Hubert Seiwert (KFG “Multiple Secularities”)

10:00–11:10

Panel 1: Muslim Leadership in Chinese Secularity
Chair: Philip Clart (Leipzig University)
Tiffany Cone (Zayed University, Abu Dhabi)“A Disciplined and Rationalised Charisma: Challenging the Religious (Charismatic) and Secular(Bureaucratic) Binary in a Chinese Sufi Context”
Shaodan Zhang (Xi'an International Studies University)“Islam in the Chinese Religious Landscape: Secularization of Mosque Leadership in Late

Imperial China, 1600–1900”
11:10–11:30

Coffee Break

11:30–12:40

Panel 2: Muslim Diaspora and Global Connectivity
Chair: Markus Dressler (Leipzig University)
Yuting Wang (American University Sharja)“Transnational Resistance in a Digital Age: Chinese Muslims, Halal Bitcoin, and Reimagining
Authentic Islamic Identity”
Nur Yasemin Ural (KFG “Multiple Secularities”)“Muslim Burials in Western Europe: Belonging, Citizenship and Secularism”

12:40–14:10

Lunch

14:10–15:20

Panel 3: Chinese Nationalism and the Remaking of Muslims
Chair: Katrin Köster (Leipzig University)
Jie Kang (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)“Converting Muslims: Chinese Secularity in Religious Encounter”
Gang Li (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)“From Dying for the Cause of God to Dying for Chinese National Patriotism:

Secularization of the Concept of Shahīd in Modern China”
15:20–15:40

Coffee Break2/3

Workshop Programme“Muslim Minorities and Questions of Secularity in China and Beyond”
Leipzig University, 9–10 June 2023

15:40–17:30

Panel 4: Everyday Secularity and Cultural Expression of Muslims in China
Chair: Hubert Seiwert (KFG “Multiple Secularities”)
James D. Frankel (Chinese University of Hong Kong)“Qingzhen is Halāl, but Halāl is Unlawful: Muslims, Islamophobia, and State Ambivalencein China”
Peng Hai (Harvard University)“Before Social Death: Cultural Rule and Ethnic Expression in 1980s Xinjiang ”
Tang Man (Free University Berlin)“’Religion is in the heart’: Contesting Secularity in the Everyday Life of Qinghai Muslims”
19:30Joint Dinner at PAN Restaurant

Saturday, 10 June 2023
09:30–11:15

Panel 5: Islamic Sites in China and Spatial Differentiation
Chair: Birgit Meyer (Utrecht University)
Sylvia Wu (University of Chicago)“Moving the Pious Muslim Bodies and Relocating the Prayers: between the Old and New
Mosques of Hangzhou”
Yee Lak Elliot Lee (Leipzig University)“Muslim Graveyards vs. Urban Gentrification: Contending the Religious-Secular Spatial

Order in Early Twentieth Century Guangzhou”
Pascale Bugnon (University of Geneva)“Secularism and Religious Heritage: Reflecting on Muslim Shrines in Southeastern China ”
11:15–11:30

Coffee Break

11:30–13:00

Concluding Discussion

13:00–14:45

Lunch

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