Islamic writings by Chinese Muslim scholars first attracted the attention of European researchers in the nineteenth century. Intermittently since then, the Islamic thought in these writings, expressed in the terminology and phrases of Chinese traditional thought, has been studied not only by European and American researchers but also Chinese and Japanese ones. The focus of such studies has generally been on elucidating the substantial influence of Chinese traditional thought on the Islamic thought of Chinese Muslim scholars, or on the relationship between Islam and Chinese traditional thought in Chinese Islamic writings, investigated either out of a historiographical concern for how Islam became established in China, or else from a philosophical concern to investigate an example of the “dialogue of civilizations”.

However, about ten years ago much more concrete and specific detail relating to the “sinicization” of Islam, or the particularization of Islam by the influence of Chinese traditional thought, began to emerge in the scholarly literature. It is fair to say that the turn of this century was a dramatic turning point for the study of Chinese Muslim thought by the near-simultaneous publication of epoch-making works that adopted an innovative method.Footnote ¹ The method used was to compare Chinese Muslim writers' Chinese texts with the Arabic and Persian original sources they consulted to analyze the complex composite of Islamic thought and Chinese traditional thought underlying the literal Chinese surface of the Chinese Islamic writings. These pioneering efforts were followed by several excellent studies.Footnote ² Thus remarkable progress has been witnessed in the study of Chinese Muslim thought over the last ten years.

The voluminous work The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms (hereafter referred to as The Sage Learning) by Sachiko Murata, William Chittick, and Tu Weiming, published in 2009, is rightly to be counted among these excellent works. Its main section is an English annotated translation of the most philosophically profound of the Chinese Islamic writings, the Tianfang xingli 天方性理 (translated as “Nature and Principle in Islam”, referred to as Xingli below) written by Liu Zhi 劉智, a Chinese Muslim scholar born in Nanjing who died sometime after 1724. The work also contains an introduction by Murata and Chittick that mainly explains the Islamic and Chinese backgrounds of the key concepts in Xingli, and an epilogue by Tu in which he suggests that Liu's Chinese Islamic discourse would have struck a chord with Confucians and enriched Confucian thought.

Just as another revolutionary book written by Murata in cooperation with Chittick and Tu marked a new dawn in the field of Chinese Muslim thought ten years ago (Murata et al., Chinese Gleams), we may now say that The Sage Learning brings us into the full light of day at the end of a decade of progress in this field. To what extent does the daylight of this new study illuminate the shadows of the Crescent in China?

In this review article, I will firstly affirm the remarkable value of The Sage Learning as an important contribution to the understanding of the “sinicization” of Islam in Chinese Islamic writings, and secondly will point out a few flaws in this otherwise excellent work for consideration in future research.

The only meaningful way to get at the truth of the “sinicization” of Islam in Chinese Islamic writings is to undertake close comparison of Chinese Muslim writers' Chinese texts with the Arabic and Persian original sources they used, investigate the subtle differences between the Chinese translations and the Arabic and Persian originals, and then judge whether these differences resulted from the influence of Chinese traditional thought.

No other path can be taken to reach our goal. To give one counter-example, some researchers, through examination of only the Chinese literal surface of Chinese Islamic writings without reference to the Arabic and Persian originals, have claimed that Chinese Muslim scholars' Islamic thought took on a Chinese characteristic through the incorporation of the term “Great Ultimate” (taiji 太極) of Neo-Confucianism into the theophanic creation process of Islam. But in fact the “Great Ultimate” of the Chinese Islamic writings is a “translation” of the Arabic term jawhar (‘substance’) found in the Persian work Mirṣād al-ʿibād by Najm al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1256).Footnote ³ We cannot and should not claim any Chinese features for “Great Ultimate” in the Chinese Islamic writings without clear proof that its subtle conceptual positioning in relation to jawhar does in fact result from the penetration of the original Neo-Confucian meaning of “Great Ultimate”.

Nevertheless, there are very few researchers who follow this path of comparison with the original-language sources, because it is an arduous one. Needless to say, it requires a large store of knowledge about Chinese traditional thought to estimate to what extent this thought resonates in Chinese Muslims’ translations of their Arabic and Persian originals. Moreover, it requires strict and careful reading of Chinese, Arabic and Persian texts to find and analyze their subtle differences. And it is extremely laborious to search through so many Arabic and Persian works to locate the original sources of Chinese Islamic texts. Thus, we must laud The Sage Learning above all as one of the rare works of scholarship that face up to this formidable challenge.

Murata and her collaborators looked for the original sources of the Chinese text of Xingli mainly in Arabic works such as the Anwār al-tanzīl wa asrār al-taʾwīl of Nāṣir al-Dīn Bayḍāwī (d. 1286), known as Tafsīr-i qāḍī, and the al-Mawāqif fī ʿilm al-kalām of Aḍuḍ al-Dīn ʿĪjī (d. 1356) with the annotation of Sharīf Jurjānī (d. 1413), as well as the Qurʾān and Hadīth, and Persian works such as the Mirṣād al-ʿibād of Najm al-Dīn Rāzī, the Maqṣad-i aqṣā of ʿAzīz Nasafī (d. before 1301), and the Lawāʾiḥ and Ashiʿʿa al-Lamaʿāt of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 1492). These works are listed by Liu Zhi himself in his bibliography to Xingli, included among a total of forty titles of Arabic and Persian works, with phonetic transcriptions of their original titles and translations of their meanings, all given in Chinese characters.Footnote ⁴ These works are also cited according to their translated titles by Liu Zhi himself after each Chinese sentence as authority in the “Root Classic” (Benjing 本經, the head volume 巻首 of Xingli). Actually Liu seems to refer frequently to these as his most important sources in composing not only the Root Classic but also the “Diagrams and Explanations” (Tuzhuan 圖傳) from volumes 1 through 5 of Xingli, which constitute his supplementary explanations of the Root Classic. Murata's thorough team succeeds in locating the original Arabic or Persian source for each of the many Chinese terms and sentences in Xingli.

Her team also shows considerable enterprise in discovering many indirect sources for Xingli among other Arabic and Persian works such as the Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), the Insān-i Kāmil of ʿAzīz Nasafī, the Naqd al-nuṣūṣ of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, and other similar texts. Most of these are works about Ibn ʿArabī's thought, which is dominant within Xingli. Although Liu Zhi probably did not read these works themselves, as his Bibliography does not include them,Footnote ⁵ he is likely to have referred to other Arabic or Persian texts similar in content.

The authors have reliably identified many direct and indirect Arabic and Persian sources for Xingli. At the same time, they have not neglected to clarify the many exemplars in Xingli from Chinese texts such as Confucian and Daoist classics. In doing so, their work reveals the concrete workings of the “dialogue of civilizations” in Xingli.

For example, Liu writes that when the human being fully realizes his nature and rectifies his heart and body he comes to assist in the transformation and nurture of heaven and earth (Xingli 4.5).Footnote ⁶ Our authors properly notice that this passage is likely to have been inspired by the Confucian classic The Great Learning (Daxue 大學) and/or The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸). But they also cite a passage from Jāmī's Naqd al-nuṣūṣ and prove that “parallel discussions can be found under the rubric of Adam's role as God's vicegerent or the cosmic function of the perfect human being” in the Islamic context.Footnote ⁷ Their careful work points out many cases in which Liu composes one and the same passage while holding to both his Islamic and Chinese backgrounds.

In this way, Murata, Chittick, and Tu illustrate how Islamic thought and Chinese traditional thought are harmonized in Xingli by the medium of mutually similar discourses. Their book is without doubt an impressive monument in the study of Chinese Muslim thought. However, there is room for improvement. The Sage Learning seems not to have sufficiently addressed this question: how does Liu Zhi recognize and bridge the subtle gaps between mutually similar discourses of Islamic thought and Chinese traditional thought? To engage with this question is nothing less than to seek out the quintessence of Liu's thought. Digging further into it will elucidate the deeper structure of the harmonious dialogue between Islam and Chinese traditional thought in Xingli. And it is only at this depth that we will see to the bottom of the “sinicization” of Islam.

For the sake of helping to recognize the problem, I shall endeavor to discuss it here, taking as example the terms li 理 (‘principle’) and xing 性 (‘nature’) that Liu uses in the title of his work.

These originally are key terms in Neo-Confucianism. Li means the one principle according to which the whole of all beings in the universe or the universe itself is as it is. It also means the individual principles according to which different kinds of beings are as they are, or the individual patterns of being according to which we recognize the differences in kind between all beings. And li in the latter meaning, that is, li as the individual nature of each kind of being, is more specifically referred to as xing. According to the authors of The Sage Learning, however, Liu uses the term xing to translate the Arabic word rūḥ (‘spirit’) and uses the term li to designate the Arabic word either nafs (‘soul’) or ʿaql (‘intellect’).Footnote ⁸ These Arabic words, they say, come from Rāzī's Mirṣād al-ʿibād and Nasafī's Maqṣad-i aqṣā.

Rāzī explains that God brought the universe into being by creating first the spiritual, invisible world that consists of spirits (rūḥ/ pl. arwāḥ) and souls (nafs/ pl. nufūs), and then the corporeal, material world. The spirit and soul seems to be a kind of life (jān) that sustains the corporeal, material being. The spirit is a kind of life for each category of human beings, such as prophets, God's friends, believers, rebels, hypocrites, unbelievers, and for other living entities, such as angels, genies, devils, animals, vegetables, and also the soul is a kind of life for each lifeless thing, such as the Throne (ʿArsh), the Footstool (Kursī), spheres, planets, minerals, the four elements and so on. Each spirit, Rāzī explains, has its individual property and cannot substitute for any other spirit.Footnote ⁰⁹ In short, he says that God created a proper spirit or soul for each corporeal, material being before bringing it into the visible world.

Nasafī explains that each of the nine spheres has its proper soul (nafs) and intellect (ʿaql), and that each of the heavenly souls and intellects has its proper function (fiʿl) to influence the condition of human beings, such as happiness, sagacity, intelligence, generosity, piousness, high-mindedness, wealth, power, longevity, and so on.Footnote ¹⁰

According to Mirṣād, it is possible to say that the spirit and soul determine the differences between beings before their appearance in the perceptible world. The spirit and soul in this aspect appear to be a kind of nature for the corporeal, material being. Maqṣad's explanation does not preclude regarding intellect as a kind of nature for the sphere. So in a sense it is reasonable to translate these words as xing (‘nature’) or li (‘principle’) in Chinese, as Liu does do. But, according to Mirṣād and Maqṣad, the spirit clearly differs in some aspects from the “nature” of Neo-Confucianism, although the distinction between the soul or intellect and “principle” is obscure. How did Liu deal with these gaps between “nature” and “spirit” when translating “spirit” into the term xing?

A definitive gap between “nature” and “spirit” certainly exists, which can be explained as follows: although “nature” essentially determines only the differences in kind, such as human being and animal, “spirit” determines also the individual differences between categories of human beings, such as prophets, God's friends, believers, rebels, hypocrites, and unbelievers. It is very significant for Neo-Confucianism that “nature” determines the difference not of the individual but of kind, for it means that the nature of human beings is inherently one and the same; that is to say, the nature of the sage or the perfect man potentially inheres in every human being. It underlies the fundamental thesis of Neo-Confucianism that everyone can become a sage (shengren 聖人) through study. Neo-Confucians maintain that individual differences between human beings occur according to the degree of impurity and imbalance of “the vital energy and material stuff” (qizhi 氣質) which they possess; that the nature of those who are not sages is temporarily darkened and contaminated in their vital energy and material stuff; and that anyone can become a sage when he removes the darkness and contamination of the vital energy and material stuff through study and restores the inherent human nature.

By contrast, Rāzī insists in Mirṣāḍ that people consist of four ranks: the first rank is that of the spirits of the prophets and the elect among God's friends; the second rank is that of the spirits of the commonalty among God's friends and the elect among the believers; the third rank is that of the spirits of the commonalty among the believers and the elect among the sinners; and the fourth rank is that of the spirits of the commonalty among the sinners and those of the hypocrites and unbelievers. Rāzī says that only the people of the first rank can pass beyond their proper station and advance from the station of spirituality to the world of divine attributes; the people of the other ranks, when cultivated, advance only within the limits of their own rank and attain the perfection of their own degree, and, although they cannot become people of the next superior rank, they can be with them after attaining perfection.Footnote ¹¹ If Liu uses the term xing as an exact equivalent to spirit, it means that he rejects the possibility that everyone can become a sage and thus abandons the bridge between Islam and Neo-Confucianism.Footnote ¹²

Liu indeed presents nature as the factor determining individual differences between human beings. He describes how the nature of the Utmost Sage (zhisheng 至聖, Muḥammad) divides into natures of diverse ranks such as the nature of great sage, ambassador sage, average sage, great worthy, knower, pure and upright, good people, and common people in the Former Heaven 先天 (Xingli 1.6). This description is based on Rāzī's explanation that the Muhammadan spirit divides into spirits of prophets, God's friends, believers, rebels, hypocrites, and unbelievers in the spiritual world,Footnote ¹³ and also inspired by Nasafī's explanation that the mystical wayfarer consists of nine ranks, namely seal of prophecy, possessor of constancy (ūlā al-ʿazm), messenger, prophet, God's friend, Gnostic, ascetic, worshiper, believer.Footnote ¹⁴

In addition, Liu argues that to which human type (such as sage, worthy, wise, and ignorant) a person belongs is determined and fixed by the rank of his nature and the degree of purity of the vital energy that he is endowed with at birth (Xingli 4.7), and that only the sage can attain the state of the Root Suchness (benran 本然)Footnote ¹⁵ of the Real Ruler (zhenzai 眞宰) that universally penetrates all beings (Xingli 4.6). This argument appears to conflict sharply with the fundamental thesis of Neo-Confucianism.

Yet, Liu does not deny the possibility that everyone can attain the state of the sage. He mentions that all the natures of the diverse ranks, in accordance with necessity and fate, inevitably return to the nature of Utmost Sage and then through it return to the Root Suchness of the Real Ruler (Xingli 2.1).

He likewise says that, when humans realize fully the natures imbedded in themselves (ge ju zhi xing 各具之性), they return to the great nature of the ongoing flow of the Root Suchness (benran liuxing zhi daxing 本然流行之大性), namely, the great, commonly shared nature (gonggong zhi daxing 公共之大性), which then harmoniously enters into the Root Suchness (Xingli 4.5). The nature imbedded in each person is identified with the natures of diverse ranks divided from the nature of Utmost Sage in the Former Heaven. The great nature of the ongoing flow of the Root Suchness or the great, commonly shared nature is the same as the Nature of Continuity (jixing 繼性), that is, the nature of the Utmost Sage.

In this way, Liu suggests that all humans other than the Utmost Sage can also somehow return to the nature of Utmost Sage and then God, whether or not they can become the actual Utmost Sage himself. He seems to regard the nature of Utmost Sage as a common and inherent nature of the human being to restore, whether or not to return to it means to become an actual sage himself.

He states that, although the Real Ruler has no obstacle and the Root Suchness is ubiquitous, worthies, wise men, and the ignorant by themselves create obstacles that separate them from the Real Ruler. The sage is one who reduces all obstacles to the Root Suchness (Xingli 4.8). In other words, the sage returns other people to his state, in which his nature unites with God. At least, Liu provides a way for everyone to recover the nature of the sage through the assistance of the sage.

In addition, he prepares a theoretical framework to ensure the possibility of doing so. He emphasizes that, although the nature of the Utmost Sage divides into natures and principles in the Former Heaven, the divided ones have no this or that; they only have sequence (Xingli 3.11; 4.7). He likewise asserts that to return the Root Suchness imbedded in each person to the Root Suchness shared in common means that the Root Suchness originally has no difference between this and that (Xingli 4.5). We can paraphrase this as follows: to be able to restore the nature imbedded in each person to the nature of the sage and then to God means that this nature inherently has no difference between this and that. And he offers the interpretation that the natures and principles in the Former Heaven divide in the way in which meaning and principle (yili 義理) divide, and their division has no trace (Xingli 2.5). The way of division in which the meaning and principle divide (yili zhi fenbie 義理之分別) is that in which the li of Neo-Confucianism divides into multiple principles as the natures of kinds of all beings while it simultaneously is one and the same as the universal principle (li yi fenshu 理一分殊).

Liu seems to indicate that it is because of the way of division that the divided natures theoretically can converge into one and the same nature. It is likely because of a conception like the Neo-Confucian understanding of nature as principle rather than something concrete that he thought that everyone could recover the inherent nature of the human being. And it means that, based on his interpretation of the spirit as not the being but the principle, he translates spirit as “nature”.

Maqṣad relates that each spirit (rūḥ) of the nine ranks of mystical wayfarers, after leaving its body, returns to its proper intellect among the nine-sphere intellects.Footnote ¹⁶ The spirit appears to be depicted in Maqṣad at least as some substantial being rather than as principle.

By contrast, Liu writes that the fact that principle (li 理) and image (xiang 象) belong together is because their meanings pertain to each other, not because they enclose each other physically. Each heaven pertains to the human nature of a rank because of its level and order among the nine heavens, and the human nature of each rank makes a particular heaven its proper position according to its proximity to the meaning and principle of that heaven (Xingli 2.5). When he wrote this, he must have conceived nature as being equivalent to “meaning and principle” (yili 義理).

Moreover, he calls the nature the principle here against the image that designates heaven. And, he sometimes uses “principle” for the immutable entity (aʿyān thābita). For example, he writes that principles are imbedded in knowledge and images are seen in power when the Real One expands and transforms.Footnote ¹⁷ The immutable entity is the archetype of each being in God's knowledge. Before creating a thing, God conceives what it is. The what-ness of each being grasped by God's knowledge is nothing but the immutable entity itself. So it is not being, but rather nothing (ʿadam) as being, although it exists eternally in God's knowledge. It is rather similar to principle. It is probably because of understanding the nature and the immutable entity similarly that Liu called both “principle”.

Ultimately, Liu's interpretation of the spirit as principle was a manipulative one. He translated it according to this interpretation as nature in an attempt to preserve the possibility for everyone to return to their common and inherent nature and to reconcile the conflict between the fatalism of Islam and the fundamental doctrines of Neo-Confucianism.Footnote ¹⁸ As a result, the term xing (‘nature’) in Xingli becomes something that is neither the “nature” of Neo-Confucianism itself, nor a simple translation of the word rūḥ (‘spirit’). We can recognize the “sinicization” of Islam here.

The authors of The Sage Learning point out that the term xing is the translation of ‘spirit’. They also demonstrate that the various descriptions of it in Xingli are on the authority of Mirṣād and Maqṣad. And they notice that Liu “was careful to avoid saying explicitly that people can actually hope to become sages (in the sense of prophet), although he insisted that everyone should strive for the perfection embodied in sagehood”.Footnote ¹⁹ However, they do not detail how he manipulates the gap between ‘nature’ and ‘spirit’. They also avoid investigating the way in which he reconciles the contradiction between Islamic fatalism and the Neo-Confucian doctrine that everyone can become a sage. So they do not make clear anything about the term xing beyond the fact that it is used as the translation of ‘spirit’.

I would like to give one more example about the way in which Liu Zhi deals with the gap between Islamic thought and Chinese traditional thought. The authors of The Sage Learning demonstrate that the expression One Spot (yidian 一點) that is mentioned as the origin of the human baby in Xingli translates the ‘first substance’ (jawhar-i awwal) of the microcosm, that is, the sperm-drop (nuṭfa), as mentioned in Maqṣad.Footnote ²⁰ The One Spot is indeed parallel to the sperm-drop of Maqṣad.Footnote ²¹ However, careful comparison reveals that the two are not the same. The Xingli One Spot is something formless that appears before the sperm-drop, although it is preserved in the father's spine just as the sperm-drop is. The Daoist Liu Yiming 劉一明 (d. 1821) described something quite similar, the “Real of the One Spot” (yidian zhi zhen 一點之眞), as the origin of the human baby,Footnote ²² although he was active some time after Liu Zhi died. Liu Yiming's Real of the One Spot is not located in the father's spine, but it also is something formless that occurs before the sperm-drop. Liu Zhi probably had in mind both the sperm-drop and a Chinese conception similar to Liu Yiming's Real of the One Spot as the origin of the human baby, and combined the different characteristics of the two. If so, we can recognize the sinicization of Islam here also.

A discussion of this sort was never intended to be within the scope of The Sage Learning's annotated translation. However, such analysis is indispensable for grasping the quintessence of Liu Zhi's thought and unveiling the truth of “the dialogue of civilizations” or “sinicization” of Islam in Chinese Islamic writings. Of course, that The Sage Learning clarified the original sources of Xingli so thoroughly is very meaningful as a foundation for such discussion. We must now aim at the next leap from this launching pad.