Sounding Islam in China

Over 20 million Muslims live in China, comparable to the population of any existing Arab state, but there persists a deep-seated view of Muslims in China as marginal to the Islamic world. In recent years, however, the topic of Islam in China has become of greater interest to policy makers and to academics. There is now little doubt of the rising global connectedness of Muslims in China, nor of the changes that are occurring in Islamic religious beliefs and practices across China. Such changes are occurring against a backdrop of great diversity in local histories of transmission, socio-economic factors, language and life-ways. Many of these diverse local religious practices are currently under pressure from the forces of change.

Sounding Islam in China proposes to use the methodologies of aural ethnography in order to map the Islamic soundscapes of contemporary China. The approach is interdisciplinary in nature, but arises out of recent trends in anthropology and ethnomusicology. Aural ethnography indicates a fieldwork-based approach to sound, experience and meaning, which may be applied not only to formally recognised types of musical performance but to any "humanly produced sounds". This approach impels an emphasis on the insights afforded by embodied, sensorial knowledge. The notion of a soundscape situates this focus within the social environment, assuming that sounds are both produced by, and implicated in the shaping of, social practices, politics, and ideologies.

Chinese researchers, especially those with roots in the communities under study, enjoy greater ease of access to Muslim communities, and possess rich resources of field data and experience, but their access to contemporary trends in research is still relatively limited. For foreign researchers working on Islam in China, fieldwork still presents significant challenges. This project promotes collaboration between Western and Chinese researchers through joint field research, and an international conference. It also plans to disseminate current theoretical approaches to postgraduate students in China through a series of training workshops in the Anthropology of Sound.

Areas of investigation include forms of sounded religious practices, such as the call to prayer, Qur'anic recitation, prayers, sermons, life-cycle and other rituals, and forms of religious expressive culture such as stories or devotional songs. Our focus also encompasses ways of listening, and embodied responses to religious sound and emotion. The project of mapping the pious soundscape takes as its central questions: where are the spaces for the production of Islamic sounds, and how are they being reconfigured in contemporary China? As well as 'live' practices, we are interested in media forms which transmit religious sounds and ideologies, such as DVDs carrying sermons or Qur'anic recitation, home-produced cassettes of zikr, online videos, etc. How are Muslim practices and knowledge being orally transmitted in China today? What can we hear from debates on Muslim identity and faith? Is there evidence of the formation of a Muslim civil society in China?

A key aspect of the project is to disseminate its findings beyond the academy by the establishment of a website within which we will map China's Islamic soundscapes through the presentation of audio-visual material gathered by project participants in the course of fieldwork. The material will be translated and contextualised in a way designed to make it accessible to the wider public. We anticipate that the website will be of particular interest to Muslim communities in the West amongst whom there is growing interest in China's Muslims.

China's Muslim communities are today increasingly under pressure from the forces of change: both from religious reformist agendas which criticise a wide range of 'traditional' practices as incorrect, not proper Islam, and from the Chinese state which responds to the perceived threat of religious extremism by prohibitions, often enough on the same traditions which are threatened by the reformists. For this reason, we believe that there is an urgent need for grounded, detailed ethnographic research on the contemporary state of Islam in China. It is hoped that these findings will help to counter the stereotypes which dog the perception of Muslims within China, and the sharp polarities through which the relationship between state and religion are typically framed.

The project aims to place original ethnographic information on Chinese Muslim communities in the public domain, using the concept of mapping the Islamic soundscape as the key to the presentation of this information through a multi-media website. There is an urgent need to document a range of practices which are being abandoned under the twin pressures of reformist agendas and state prohibitions. The website provides a site for the documentation and dissemination of information about a range of unique religious practices which are fast transforming or being lost.

This information will be of particular interest to diasporic groups of Muslims from China, as well as to Muslim communities in the West, where there is a distinct and growing interest in this large but marginalised community. Representatives of Muslim charities active in China, and with interests in working in China will be invited to attend the conference, and contribute their own insights to discussions. Interested organisations identified include the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and the London-based groups: Al Quran Institute, Islamic Circle, and Dawn Foundation. A Qur'an recital given by a leading reciter from China, held at SOAS in 2014, will draw in London-based Muslim audiences.

The project findings will also inform policy makers and third sector groups such as charities or human rights organisations. Representatives from Chatham House and Amnesty International will be invited to attend the conference. Published articles in English, including a special journal issue devoted to Sounding Islam in China, will also inform these sectors. The P.I. will disseminate project research through public lectures, for example at Asia House, the Royal Asiatic society, and University public seminars.