While the claim made in the synopsis of this edited volume that “as yet very little academic research has been done into the Hui people” is somewhat of an exaggeration, Hui Muslims in China is nonetheless the first such collection in English that purports to treat the Hui as its sole subject. More scholars have lately realized that it is nearly impossible to treat the Hui alone without considering their imbrication with other ethnicities; Hui is less an identity unto itself than a precarious position situated ambiguously amongst other no less fluid identities. This means that despite its stated intention, this volume would nonetheless have to engage with other ethnic groups at varying distances from the Hui in religion and ethnicity.

Indeed, this is precisely what makes this volume an instrumental reference for scholars as well as lay readers interested in Islam in China. Based on presentations at a conference in May 2014 jointly held by KU Leuven and Yunnan University, the articles in this volume provide a wealth of information about the social and ethnic interpenetrations between the Hui on the one hand, and other Muslim as well as non-Muslim populations within and beyond the border of China, on the other. Each of the three parts comprising this volume engages with this central theme in a distinct way.

Part one, “State policies and Muslims,” examines the often divergent impact of inconsistent governmental policies on different Muslim minorities in China. Ross Handler argues that, while limited religious freedom has been afforded the Hui, the Uyghur Muslims, in stark contrast, are often subject to severe suppression. In making this argument he maintains that histories of political independence and the insistence on using their ethnic language have distinguished the Uyghur from the Hui in their relationship with the Chinese state. Handler seems to subscribe to the view that the continual suppression and forced assimilation of the Uyghur is less the original intention of the central government than its distorted implementation by the Xinjiang local government. Reliable evidence in support of this conjecture, however, is in short supply. Aaron Glasserman's chapter reveals how the China Islamic Association – which he perhaps in a tongue-in-cheek manner abbreviates as CIA – is undermined by an intrinsic Hui-centrism. The latter, as he takes care to highlight, is rooted in a certain anti-Sufi modernist vision held by some elite Hui intellectuals in the early 20th century. As such, the patriotism and doctrinal teachings propagated by the CIA, while abetting state ideologies, also give rise to potential sectarian as well as ethnic divisions among the Muslims it professes to represent. The Uyghur are severely underrepresented; though the Sufi Hui may not have been as much marginalized as Glasserman's argument has made them appear.

Two of the three chapters in part two (“Relations between Hui and non-Muslims”) deal with the so-called Parshi Dai in Yunnan. While no consensus has yet to emerge about the exact origin of the name, one probable postulation poses that Parshi is derived from Farsi; and hence Parshi Dai could well mean the Dai who speak the Persian language or the Dai who have converted to the Persian way. This is rather plausible as many Muslims in Yunnan claim descent from Central Asian ancestors. While family genealogies and wishful fantasies mingle in such accounts, the Central Asian link is often beyond doubt. Both chapters offer much ethnographic information about the Parshi Dai in Xishuangbanna; and both authors (Chuang Ma and Feng Yu), for that matter, attribute the origin of the Parshi Dai to the migration of the Yunnan Hui in the Qing dynasty after the fall of Du Wenxiu. The source of this attribution is native records; however, such complete subsumption of the Parshi Dai under the history of the Hui can hardly explain the native ethnonym. In other words, is it possible that such local accounts have inadvertently obliterated the history of another “Parshi Dai” before the arrival of Du Wenxiu's Hui soldiers? This question is not raised in either article, which leads the reader to suspect whether a certain Hui-centrism, criticized in part one, has crept in.

Lesley Turnbull's chapter in part three (Hui identity and Islam) begins by juxtaposing two contrasting views of Islam among the Yunnan Hui she studies: one of the interlocutors, in Kunming, asserts that his Hui identity encodes a “genetic” relationship between him and Islam and thus spares him of actually practicing the religion; while the other, in Shadian, finds ethnicity utterly irrelevant and considers one's Muslim identity determined entirely by the presence or absence of pertinent practice. The first view even supposes that only those who are insecure in their Muslimness would take pains to follow the requisite practice; such a view – ingenious or repulsive depending on your value preference – would surely sound revolting to the second interlocutor. The remaining two articles in this part are noticeable for their venturing beyond Yunnan. Liang Zhang's chapter deals with the Hui in the city of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia, while Hacer Z. Gönül examines Hui university students in Wuhan. The former provides a wealth of information about the local Hui community, though it hardly transcends a preliminary ethnographic report. The latter uses questionnaires to survey the Hui students’ general conditions in the secular urban university environment. Interestingly, the author of this article has also paid attention to Han students’ awareness of Islam and their attitude to Hui peers; both, not surprisingly, are far from complimentary.

Essays growing out of conference proceedings are special in that they at times reveal the constructive tensions implicit at the time of presentation. This is the case with this collection. Some of the authors, such as Gui Rong (who contributes the introduction as well as a chapter in part one), are Hui themselves, and in dealing with a subject dear to heart they may well slip into a certain ethnocentrism. More often than not the Hui are made to stand in for all Muslims in China, and official phrases such as “building a harmonious society” appear now and then in the text. The articles by non-Hui and non-Chinese scholars, on the other hand, tend to pay more attention to the Hui's fluid position vis-à-vis other minorities. The title of this volume is Hui Muslims in China, but fortunately its substance has betrayed its title. In this it joins other recent work on Islam in China to displace a deleterious Hui-centrism that may unwittingly contribute to the continual dissimulation of the inhuman persecution suffered by many Uyghur Muslims in contemporary China.