Nous aurons le plaisir d'accueillir au GSRL vendredi 13 juin, de 9h30 à 12h30 (salle 311), Ildiko BELLER-HANN (University of Copenhagen) et Chris HANN (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), actuellement en résidence à l'IEA de Nantes, qui interviendront dans dans le cadre d'un séminaire conjoint des programmes "Islam, Politiques et Sociétés" et "Religions et sociétés en Asie". Leurs présentations porteront sur

Ethnicity and Islam in Xinjiang, Past and Present

Socialist China projects itself as a multi-ethnic state comprising 56 ethnic groups, ten of which profess Islam. However, such classifications have always been problematic, in the imperial past as today. The first part of the presentation will explore historical diversity within the Islamic community in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, focusing on the changing relations of Chinese Muslims (modern Hui) with Turkic speaking Muslims (modern Uyghur) in Uyghur language representations of local history. Stories situated on the margins of mainstream, official history reflect the oscillations between mutual support and enmity. The second half of the presentation will focus on the current conflictual situation in Xinjiang, in which Islam is stereotypically associated with fundamentalism, Uyghur separatism, and even terrorist violence. But notions of “political Islam” do not have much traction in a region where many Muslim groups live alongside each other but have minimal interaction. We shall illustrate the kaleidoscope of religious and secular collective identities with ethnography from the oasis of Qumul (Hami).