Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how a Muslim minority can maintain religious autonomy from the contemporary Chinese state that actively oppresses religion. Specifically, it focuses on processes whereby Hui Muslims carry out informal and highly mobile Islamic pedagogical practices in Kunming, Yunnan Province.

Paper long abstract:

Although there has been an abatement of religious policies in the post-Mao Chinese state, for example allowing the reconstruction of mosques, the government still tightly restricts many aspects of religious life. Officially, religious activities are to be conducted in authorized religious institutes. Moreover, although official mosques are legally secured to hold religious activities, they must follow instructions laid out by the government. Consequently, most mosques have become places where Muslims cannot conduct religious activities freely.

In sum, because of governmental limitations, mosques cannot sufficiently work as Islamic educational institutions. Therefore, Muslims informally conduct Islamic learning activities. However, the location of such pedagogical practices is highly unstable because such activities are in constant danger of prompting the policing and enforcement of governmental regulations. Instead of direct and situated resistance to the state, religious teaching and learning practices have become a 'hit and run' affair; activities are often temporarily halted and locations shift in order to dodge governmental regulations. Such activities are mobile and fragile because participants are always faced with the possible intervention of the government. Via such clandestine methods Hui Muslims cannot be completely oppressed by the government. In fact, it is because of such unstable practices that the propagation of Islam continues effectively if intermittently.

Thus, Hui Muslims maintain autonomy by "movement" as a refuge from the state rather than engaging in firmly located politics against the state. Autonomy for them is in incessant movement rather than in aiming to be free from situated subordination.