Islam in China
October 27, 2015 2015 Templeton Lecture on Religion and World Affairs Dru Gladney, Professor of Anthropology, Pomona College Xingjiang, the predominantly Muslim northwestern province of China, has been the scene of clashes between Uighurs and the Chinese government in recent years that have attracted wide international notice. The actual experience of Chinese Muslims, however, is much broader and varied than that one example suggests. Of China’s 55 recognized minorities, ten are predominantly Muslim, with the Huis and the Uighurs constituting the largest groups. One of the nation’s leading scholars of Islam in China Dru Gladney has examined the variety of Islamic experience and argues that there is a distinctly “Asian Islam.” What is “Asian Islam,” and what are its implications for China, for Asia in general, and for our understanding of the global varieties of Islamic culture and practice? Join us as Dr. Gladney explores those questions and more. Dr. Dru Gladney specializes in the peoples, cultures, and politics along the ancient and modern Silk Road. He has been a Kukin Fellow at Harvard University, a MacArthur Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), a Senior Research Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, and a Senior Scholar at the Max Planck Institute in Halle, Germany. He is the author of many books and articles on religion and ethnicity in China, and the recipient of numerous grants and awards (Ford Foundation, World Economic Forum, US Dept. of Education, and more). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, with training at Peking University, Xinjiang University, Bosporus University (Istanbul), and Moscow State University.
