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316 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. 318 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) 312-326 319 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).