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British Raj to China's Hong Kong: The rise of madrasas for ethnic Muslim youth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2014

WAI-YIP HO
WAI-YIP HO*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The madrasa, the Islamic institution of learning, has for centuries occupied a central role in the transmission of religious knowledge and the shaping of the identity of the global Muslim community (umma). This paper explores the sharp rise in the number of madrasas in contemporary Hong Kong. It examines, in particular, how South Asian Muslim youth, after receiving a modern education in a conventional day school, remain faithful to their religious tradition by spending their evenings at a madrasa studying and memorizing the Qur'an. Engaging with the stereotypical bias of Islamophobia and national security concerns regarding the ties of madrasas to Islamic terrorist movements over the last decade, this paper argues that the burgeoning South Asian madrasa networks have to be understood in the context of Hong Kong's tripartite Islamic traditions—South Asian Muslim, Chinese Hui Muslims, and Indonesian Muslims—and within each Muslim community's unique expression of Islamic piety. Furthermore, the paper also identifies factors contributing to the increase in madrasas in Hong Kong after the transition from British colonial rule to China's resumption of sovereign power in 1997.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2: Networks of Religious Learning and the Dissemination of Religious Knowledge across Asia , March 2014 , pp. 399 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank the generous invitation of Mirjam Künkler and Christophe Jaffrelot for the opportunity to attend the panel ‘Networks of Religious Learning and the Dissemination of Religious Knowledge across Asia’, Inter-Asian Connections III, in Hong Kong on 6–8 June 2012, at which a draft version of this paper was presented. The author would like to thank Mirjam Künkler, Christophe Jaffrelot, Eva F. Nisa, Michael Feener, Chiara Formichi, and other panel members for their useful comments and questions. The author would also like to thank Professor James Piscatori for his inspiration and ongoing encouragement. Special thanks to Shauna Dalton for her editing support and manuscript proofreading. Some material for this paper is derived from my research project on ‘Islam and China's Hong Kong’. The author would like to express his gratitude for the financial support for this project received from the Internal Research Grant, Hong Kong Institute of Education and General Research Fund, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (GRF 2013/2014 HKIEd 842513).

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