Sachiko Murata

The presence and history of Islam in China is not well-known. Since its arrival into China during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), Islam and its traditions have become an inextricable part of the fabric of the Chinese tradition. By the time of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE), Chinese Islam had evolved its own indigenous identity and, by the seventeenth century, specifically Chinese formulations of Islamic teachings began to emerge. This edited volume presents the most authoritative contemporary scholarship on the topic of the Islam-Confucian synthesis in China. It introduces to an international audience the hybridization of traditions throughout the millennia of Chinese history. The experience of the Islamic-Confucian synthesis is a historical example of cross-cultural thinking and mutual borrowing. It testifies to the fact that there is no incommensurability between cultures that cannot ultimately be accommodated. In this accommodation is the potential for mutual and creative growth, novelty, cultural renaissance, and the flourishing of the human spirit.

The first study in English of Islamic thought in China, this book shows that this tradition was informed by both Sufism and Neo-Confucianism; translations of two classic works are included. Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light investigates, for the first time in a Western language, the manner in which the Muslim scholars of China adapted the Chinese tradition to their own needs during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book surveys the 1400-year history of Islam in China and explores why the four books translated from Islamic languages into Chinese before the twentieth century were all Persian Sufi texts. The author also looks carefully at the two most important Muslim authors of books in the Chinese language, Wang Tai-yü and Liu Chih. Murata shows how they assimilated Confucian social teachings and Neo-Confucian metaphysics, as well as Buddhism and Taoism, into Islamic thought. She presents full translations of Wang's Great Learning of the Pure and Real—a text on the principles of Islam—and Liu Chih's Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm, which in turn is a translation from Persian of Lawa'i?, a famous Sufi text by Jami. A new translation of Jami's Lawa'i? from the Persian by William C. Chittick is juxtaposed with Liu Chih's work, revealing the latter's techniques in adapting the text to the Chinese language and Chinese thought.

An exploration of the fundamental beliefs of Islam which covers the faith's four dimensions: practice, faith, spirituality and the Islamic view of history, as outlined in the Hadith of Gabriel. Interweaves teachings from the Quran, the sayings of the Prophet and the great authorities of Islam.

The Tao of Islam is a rich and diverse anthology of Islamic teachings on the nature of the relationships between God and the world, the world and the human being, and the human being and God. Focusing on gender symbolism, Sachiko Murata shows that Muslim authors frequently analyze the divine reality and its connections with the cosmic and human domains with a view toward a complementarity or polarity of principles that is analogous to the Chinese idea of yin/yang. Murata believes that the unity of Islamic thought is found, not so much in the ideas discussed, as in the types of relationships that are set up among realities. She pays particular attention to the views of various figures commonly known as "Sufis" and "philosophers," since they approach these topics with a flexibility and subtlety not found in other schools of thought. She translates several hundred pages, most for the first time, from more than thirty important Muslims including the Ikhwan al-Safa', Avicenna, and Ibn al-'Arabi.