Kelly A. Hammond's China's Muslims and Japan's Empire is the first English book to systematically examine the real and imagined place of Muslims in Japanese empire building; the role of Japan in Chinese Muslim politics, networks, and identity formation; or the experience of a non-Han community in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). It is a unique and essential addition to the growing scholarship on East Asia's complex relationship with the Islamic world. Genuinely a global history, it spans four continents yet remains careful, clear, and focused on sources—primarily Japanese and Chinese policy papers, intelligence reports, educational materials, and Chinese Muslim periodicals. It convincingly shows that the Sino-Japanese conflict was in no small part a war for Muslim hearts, minds, and bodies, and that Muslims from China participated in consequential ways on both sides.
Japan possessed virtually no domestic Muslim population and no colonial bureaucracy before the Meiji era (1868–1912). Nevertheless, by the early twentieth century, it perceived great geopolitical potential in cultivating relations with Muslims. Seemingly overnight, it developed domestic Islamic studies, issued rhetorical appeals to pan-Asianism and pan-Islamism, and made Tokyo a meeting point for Muslim émigré-activists (p. 109). The 1931 occupation of Manchuria, however, was Japan's main chance to portray itself as a protector of Muslims (before the invasion of Southeast Asia a decade later). Japan intervened particularly in Muslim education, imposing Japanese language alongside Arabic (pp. 93–105).
Hammond argues that Japan considered Chinese Muslims the “linchpin in [its] overtures to Muslims around the world” and indispensable for turning its larger imperial dreams into reality (pp. 70, 145). Japan tested this hypothesis early in the war. In an especially revealing episode, chapter 3 tells the story of Tang Yichen, a Muslim from Beijing who helped establish the Japanese-sponsored All China Muslim League, was present alongside international Muslim dignitaries at the 1938 opening of the Tokyo Mosque, and soon thereafter embarked on a Japanese-sponsored mission to Mecca.
Meanwhile, on the Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang) side, war pressured Muslims to proclaim their loyalty to the government and the nation it claimed to represent. Having thousands of coreligionists living under Japanese occupation was deeply inconvenient for Nationalist Muslim leaders, who insisted that all Muslims in the former Qing territories constituted a single community.
Highlighting the tenuousness of that Nationalist narrative, Hammond reconstructs the stark pragmatism that prevailed among populations caught in the middle. Muslims cited family, economic considerations, native-place loyalty, and access to education and health care as reasons to remain in Japanese-occupied areas rather than follow the Nationalists inland (p. 77). Muslim Nationalist agents infiltrated occupied North China and asked local Muslims why they stayed behind. One replied with another question: “What does Sanmin zhuyi [the official Nationalist ideology] do for Islam?” (p. 79). Assessing such examples, Hammond concludes that “there was nothing resembling a cohesive Muslim nationalist resistance on the ground” (p. 92).
By focusing on war and conflict, Hammond restores a crucial element of contingency to a retrospectively nationalized, ethnicized, and homogenized definition of Chinese Muslim identity (pp. 222, 225). Scholars often regard Chinese Muslim identity as the product of unilateral People's Republic of China (PRC) ethnic policy or bilateral Sino-Islamic cultural exchange. Hammond instead shows that by politicizing Islam, the Sino-Japanese conflict invented or intensified questions about that identity that we might be tempted to take as timeless. (Were they less Chinese than non-Muslim Chinese people? Less Muslim than other Muslims? Proof that China was a meaningless category? Proof that foreign powers did not understand China?)
Japanese and Chinese wartime policies toward Muslims became increasingly parallel. Both linked Muslims with strategic territories such as Manchuria, Gansu, and Xinjiang and vital maritime networks and potential alliances. Both cast themselves as sponsors of Muslims, particularly through educational initiatives. Both took advantage of Muslims’ Arabic knowledge and enlisted them in competing diplomacy, espionage, and propaganda efforts. At the same time, both crafted racialized narratives about Muslims and envisioned assimilating them into a more homogenous future. All of this raises the larger question of where to draw the line between empire building and nation building. Whatever the answer, Hammond shows that the outcome of the war, the sensitivities of nationalism, and our naturalized notions of borders and ethnicity often prevent such questions from being asked. In that capacity, the book should be assigned not only in a range of Asian and global history courses, but even more widely to teach students the meaning of contingency and how to remove the blinders of presentism.
At the same time, the book occasionally associates deconstructing Chinese Nationalist discourse with recovering “successes” of Japan's Muslim policy that “are neglected” (p. 223). Hammond is attentive to the propaganda of both sides, but the double bind of imperialism and nationalism may complicate the book's argument about Muslim agency. Was remaining behind Japanese lines a matter of choice or chance? Did Muslims really benefit from working with Japan (p. 16)? Was Muslim ambivalence really that different from Han Chinese ambivalence (p. 17)? Should we attribute Muslims’ actions and words (such as the aforementioned Sanmin zhuyi comment) to complex identity, or to greater fear of the regime under which one happens to live? Acknowledging the challenges of the sources, questions for future research include: Did Japanese atrocities against the general population include Muslim communities (a Malayan example is discussed on p. 159, but the Manchurian situation remains less clear)? Was there evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice on Japan's part? Did Japan regulate things other than language and curriculum, such as prayer, personal appearance, imam appointments, marriages, or funerals? Did Japan promote a notion of Islamic orthodoxy, or were all Muslims equally objectified in its eyes? The important connection that Hammond draws between Japan's Chinese Muslim policies and its invasion of Southeast Asia heightens the significance of these questions.
Finally, this book matters greatly for the present. Hammond offers the exceedingly valuable insight that Japan's Muslim policies may have influenced those of the PRC. Since 1949, PRC co-optation of Muslims has resembled that of Japan in multiple ways. Outright violence against Muslims peaked during the Cultural Revolution and has again with the internment of Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang. These more recent events demand attention to Hammond's clear finding that in the 1930s and 1940s, Muslims were not so much choosing between resistance and collaboration, but coping with alternative forms of state violence, co-optation, and assimilationism.
