Jihad o rivoluzione? Percorsi martirologici ed escatologia politica nell’Islam cinese

Abstract

Abstract Messianic Islam and socialism are often contrasted as either fighting each other or joining their forces against colonialism. If in late imperial China the Islamic legal duty of jihād (lit. struggle) was a byproduct of anti-dynastic uprisings by means of which reformist movements—linked to alienated offshoots of Naqshbandiyya Sufism—sought to legitimate religiously-based violence against the Qing state, during the country’s transition toward a republican system of government such duty became aligned with the state-driven program of nation-building and Chinese-distinctive brand of socialism. By so doing, the jihad added momentum to the Xinhai Revolution initiated by Sun Yat-sen, and its military ideology amalgamated with Sun’s political philosophy which was eventually remoulded by Muslim progressive circles within the Kuomintang or close to Mao Tse-tung’s Red Army and the soviet-style regime installed in Yan’an. Based on the analysis of hagiographical materials and periodicals of the first half of the 20th century, the paper sheds light on this critical juncture in the history of modern China that saw statesmen, revolutionary leaders, and religious élites validate jihad and discourses of pan-Islamic solidarity in a combined effort to boost national unity among ethnic minorities and armed resistance to foreign aggression.