Recasting Islamic Thought in China: Conceptual Reconfiguration and Interreligious Dialogue in the Han Kitab Tradition

This article examines how Chinese Muslim scholars in the Han Kitab tradition reinterpreted Chinese concepts to articulate Islamic thought within the Chinese intellectual world. Drawing on close readings of the writings of Wang Daiyu (c.1584–1660 CE), Liu Zhi (c.1670–1724 CE), Ma Zhu (c.1640–1711 CE), and Ma Dexin (c.1794–1874 CE), it analyzes three sets of concepts: Tian; Taiji and Wuji; and sagehood, the Great Mandate, Xin, and Xing. The analysis shows that Han Kitab scholars did not simply translate Islamic ideas into Chinese terms. Rather, they modified the meanings of established Chinese concepts, repositioned them in relation to other concepts, and assigned them new explanatory roles within an Islamic theological framework. These reinterpretations allowed concepts relating to divine transcendence, cosmological order, human perfection, and moral cultivation to take on new functions within Islamic thought. This article argues that such conceptual reconfiguration offers a useful way of understanding Sino-Islamic intellectual engagement.