Download Liu Zhi`s Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law

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Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012) 312-326
Rectifying God’s Name: Liu Zhi’s Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic
Law. By James D. Frankel. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011.
Pp xxi + 248. ISBN 978-0-8248-3474-6. $48.00.
Long peripheral to the field of Islamic studies, Islam in China has recently received
more attention, much of it driven by translations of the corpus of works known as the
Han Kitāb, a Chinese-Arabic syncretic term combining “Chinese” with “(Muslim)
book.” In fact, the Han Kitāb is a number of works, written by Chinese Muslim literati
between the 1630s and 1730s, covering Islamic theology, history, philosophy, and law.
Established scholars, recent Ph.D.s, and current graduate students in China, Europe,
and the United States are in the midst of translating this quasi-canon, the most sustained intellectual effort by Chinese Muslims to make Islam cognizable in Chinese
thought. Chief among these works is James Frankel’s Rectifying God’s Name: Liu Zhi’s
Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law.
Frankel examines the translation of Islam in China through the life and works of
Liu Zhi (ca. CE 1660–ca. 1730), one of the chief architects of this effort. e book
provides a nuanced analysis of one part of Liu Zhi’s “Tianfang trilogy” (p. xix), the
Tianfang dianli (Ceremonies and Rituals in Islam), the only Han Kitāb text that deals
with ritual law matters and that has received official recognition by Neo-Confucian
orthodoxy. “Neo-Confucianism” actually refers to a host of different and sometimes
contradictory reinventions of Confucian thought, beginning in the Song Dynasty (CE
960 to 1279). Scholars, backed by imperial authority, sought both to expunge from
Confucianism the mystical elements of Buddhism and Daoism that had influenced it
over the previous centuries, and to borrow selectively from the alternative traditions
to compete with these traditions for ideological preeminence. Tianfang dianli is thus
a work of extreme importance to understanding the accommodation of Islamic law
to Chinese legal culture, which never had a notion of divinely revealed law.
Working in both Chinese and Arabic, and touching upon not just Islamic and
Neo-Confucian doctrines but also Buddhist, Daoist, Christian, and Jewish theologies,
Frankel’s methodology is that of an “adjustable lens” (p. 3) that focuses on the particularities of Liu Zhi’s translation of key Islamic terms and concepts, and, at the same
time, considers broader concerns of philosophic-religious syncretism. Frankel summarizes his central thesis as follows: “Accommodating his thought to the rational
standard of contemporary Chinese thought, in his presentation of Islam Liu Zhi
downplayed the role of revelation, expounding instead theological concepts, with
frequent reference to natural law and sophisticated metaphysical arguments of NeoConfucian lixue (lit. “study of principle”) (xix-xx).
In Chapters 1 and 2, Frankel provides the historical and social context for Liu Zhi’s
writing of the Tianfang dianli. Liu Zhi wrote in a self-conscious tradition, building
upon the work of what could be called the first generation of Chinese Muslim literati.
Beginning in the mid 16th century, these scholars sought to translate Arabic and Persian
texts for non-scholarly Chinese Muslims whose mother tongue was Chinese and to
whom the languages of Islam were alien (p. 26). e second generation of Chinese
ʿulamāʾ (p. xxi) composed original works that described Islamic beliefs and doctrines
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012
DOI: 10.1163/156851912X639527
Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012) 312-326
317
by using the idiom of Chinese language and thought, and, especially of Neo-Confucian
orthodoxy. ese scholars, such as Wang Daiyu, Ma Zhu, and Liu Zhi, were the
principal translators of the foreign faith in China, writing both for Chinese Muslims,
subject to tremendous acculturation pressure by the Han Chinese who comprised the
vast majority of China’s population, and for a non-Muslim audience for whom Islam
was potentially heterodox. ese authors wrote a Confucianized form of Islam with
the intention that both audiences, Muslim and Han Chinese, would better comprehend Islam.
Beginning with Chapter 3 and continuing through Chapter 6, Frankel shifts from
context to content, and this analysis comprises the main contribution of his work.
e significance of Tiangfang dianli is that it has become the foundational text for
explaining Islamic ritual law through Chinese Neo-Confucian cognates. Liu Zhi
emphasized the aspects of sharīʿa dealing with religious duties over its purely “legal”
areas. e day-to-day ritual law was placed in the context of a broader cosmological
and abstract examination into the nature of God. By “matching concepts” (p. 155-6),
Liu Zhi worked across the two traditions as a kind of bricoleur, assembling cultural
bits in a work of philosophical, theological, ethical, and legal synthesis. Specifically,
Liu Zhi used Neo-Confucian concepts such as dao as one (Islamic) way within the
Way (p. 59), jiao (Teaching) as the (Muhammadan) vehicle that manifests the dao (p.
68), sheng (sage) as a category for the Prophet Muhammad (p. 81), and li, which
means, in different contexts, either principle, as in the unchanging dao, or ritual, as
in the practice of sacrificial rites, which Liu Zhi equated to Islamic propriety (p. 101).
Additionally, in Chapter 6, Frankel explains how Liu Zhi created neologisms such as
“zhenzhu” (true lord) to provide a term that resonated with the concept of God in
Chinese Neo-Confucian orthodoxy (p. 161).
Frankel’s work does justice to the complex intellectual labor performed by Liu Zhi,
who has attained near sagehood in the eyes of many Chinese Muslims. Simply put,
anyone working on Islam in China should consult Frankel’s book. is study of Liu
Zhi’s work raises two broader interrelated issues. Beginning where Frankel leaves off,
with the legacy of Liu Zhi among Muslim minorities in China today (p. 181), I would
underscore the revered position of Liu Zhi in the collective consciousness of Chinese
Muslims1 who continue to read, debate, and memorize Liu Zhi’s writings, including
Tianfang dianli. e way in which they do so is telling. Many Chinese Muslims understand Liu Zhi to be offering a kind of vision of the reconciliation of Islam with Chinese
culture, particularly Neo-Confucianism. at is, Liu Zhi’s writing is both prescriptive
and descriptive, but perhaps more of the former than the latter, more ‘ought’ than ‘is’.
1)
N.B. China has ten officially recognized Muslim minority groups that can be categorized,
roughly, into “Chinese Muslims,” “Turkic Muslims,” and “Mongolian Muslims.” e
largest group of the first category is known by the ethnonym Hui in China, whereas the
second category includes the Uyghur, much discussed in Western media. is discussion
pertains mostly to Chinese Muslims although Mongolian Muslims who live in proximity
to Chinese Muslims share a similar intellectual patrimony. e same cannot be said for
Uyghur who are unaware of Liu Zhi or the Han Kitāb.
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Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012) 312-326
Tianfang dianli is less an ethnography of ritual law among Chinese Muslims and more
a blueprint of how sharīʿa should be practiced. After all, Liu Zhi was essentially trying
to persuade both his Chinese Muslim audience and the non-Muslim ethnic Han
majority that Islam makes sense in the Neo-Confucian mold and is not a threat to
state orthodoxy. Liu Zhi was writing about an ideal, that of a syncretic utopia. In
practice, however, that ideal may not always be realized. Chinese Muslims themselves
may not be consciously aware of the tension and dissonance between their Islamic and
Chinese dual inheritance. ere are numerous conflicts between traditional Chinese
custom and sharīʿa in the fields of inheritance, marriage, divorce, and property. ese
conflicts do not add up to an existential crisis, but they do evidence a legal personality
that is more complex than one of simple harmony between the Islamic and Chinese
sources of law. us, while Frankel uses “simultaneity” as a metaphor for the integration
of Islam into Chinese thought, there may be other ways for scholars to analyze and
describe Chinese Muslims as legal persons of multiple legal orders.
Secondly and related, Frankel’s interpretation of Liu Zhi’s conceptualization of
Chinese Muslim identity as one of simultaneity requires that for each key Islamic legal
term there must be a Chinese analogue. Fa (law), a central concept to Liu Zhi’s thought
and the interpretive linchpin of Frankel’s analysis, shows the limits of this approach.
Frankel argues that Liu Zhi’s innovation was to posit fa as a link between the everyday
and the transcendent. at is, Liu Zhi introduced the new element fa as necessary to
establish the jiao (p. 71). Liu Zhi conceived of fa as the basis for distinguishing right
from wrong that helps people to live in accordance with the Way (p. 72). In addition
to fa’s function as a bridge between jiao and dao, Frankel describes the nature and
origin of Liu Zhi’s fa as revelatory, a concept which has no antecedent in the Chinese
lexicon—unless one counts the Buddha as “Chinese.” To get around this lack of a
Chinese analogue for revealed law, according to Frankel, Liu Zhi used fa to approximate the Arabic term furqān, which Muslim scholars have interpreted as Qurʾānic
revelation, and which Liu Zhi, Frankel posits, employs to stand in for revealed scripture
(p. 77). But according to Frankel, Liu Zhi locates law as revealed scripture in furqān,
an Islamic and not a Neo-Confucian concept. Tautologically, according to Frankel,
Liu Zhi finds a basis for revealed law in the Chinese lexicon through the Arabic concept
for revealed scripture. Fa fails as a matching concept because it has no ‘match’ (as
revealed scripture) in Chinese thought and as a neologism because there were already
established traditions of fa.
To address the first issue (ways of conceptualizing Chinese Muslims as legal subjects)
through the second (fa as the matchless analogue), I detour to the contested place of
fa in Chinese intellectual history. Fa as “law” and its relationship to li (rites) has been
at the center of ideological debates in Chinese discourse since the writings of the two
dominant schools of thought, the Confucianists and Legalists at the dawn of dynastic
China (3rd century BCE). Whereas followers of Confucius endorsed li as the means
by which social harmony and hierarchy is cultivated between ruler and ruled, the
Legalists advocated clear man-made laws applied to all. To put it too simply, Confucian
li, as a politico-ethical order based on etiquette, was opposed to the Legalists’ definition
of fa as positive law. While Confucianism became imperial orthodoxy, legal codes,
Book Reviews / Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012) 312-326
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including harsh penal laws, were used as a means of governance in what the Chinese
legal scholar Qu Tongzu termed the “Confucianization of the law.”2 In other words,
the tactic of the Legalists was enveloped by Confucian ideology, one subsumed by the
other. While there was co-existence between the two interpretations, there was also a
dialectical tug-of-war: conflict and struggle.
is return to the Confucianist/Legalist debate is helpful in considering the
interpretive frame within which to understand the relative positioning of Islam, and
specifically Islamic law, vis-à-vis Neo-Confucianism in Tianfang dianli. Frankel notes
that Liu Zhi borrowed heavily from Sufi thought in his interpretation of Islamic ritual
law. Sachiko Murata puts particular emphasis on the Sufi influence in Liu Zhi’s works
in her translations of his Zhenjing zhaowei (Displaying the Concealment of the Real
Realm)3 and Tianfang xingli (Nature and Principles in Islam).4 To wit, Liu Zhi wrote
of the “three vehicles”—licheng (vehicle of ritual), daocheng (vehicle of the Way), and
zhencheng (vehicle of truth)—which correspond, respectively, to sharīʿa, ṭarīqa, and
ḥaqīqa. e three vehicles represent the trajectory of the Sufi’s experience towards
knowing God. Each level is encompassed by the level above it. Levels beyond sharīʿa
are famously antithetical to rationalization; instead, they emphasize intuition and
personal communion with God. In the Chinese context, rationalization takes the form
of Neo-Confucianism. Frankel identifies instances of Liu Zhi’s harmonization of Islam
with Neo-Confucian thought, such as the imperative to know God (p. 135), or his
explanation of the pork taboo as being based on harmful physical and spiritual consequences rather than divine commandment (p. 149). Yet at the core of Sufi thought
and Liu Zhi’s interpretation of Islam, the relationship of the three vehicles with NeoConfucianism, with its characteristics of language and learning, is not one of simultaneity but antinomy, although the former may be encompassed by the latter at a
higher level of abstraction. is is not to say that Chinese Sufis avoid integrating NeoConfucian thought into their practice.
Ultimately, Frankel concludes that Liu Zhi could not bridge the theological gap
that divided Islam and Neo-Confucianism, but that syncretism was a means to an
end, namely to reach both Muslim and non-Muslim audiences, and not an end in
itself (pp. 180-1). Despite the issues I raise above, Frankel’s book is a major achievement
in tracking the thought of a key figure in the intellectual history of Islam in China
and marks a new generation of scholarship on the Han Kitāb and Islam in China,
generally.
Matthew S. Erie
Cornell University
2)
Qu Tongzu, Zhongguo falü yu zhongguo shehui (Chinese law and Chinese Society) (Shanghai,
1947).
3)
Sachiko Murata, Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light: Wang Tai-yu’s Great Learning of the Pure
and Real and Liu Chih’s Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm (Albany, 2000).
4)
Sachiko Murata et al., e Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic ought in Confucian Terms
(Cambridge, 2009).