Research subjects and ritual studies

There are ten Muslim nationalities recognized in China: Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Qirghiz, Uzbek, Tatar, Salar, Dongxiang, Bao'an, and Tajik.Footnote ² Among them, Hui people use mainly Chinese language, Uyghur, Kazakh, Qirghiz, Uzbek, Tatar, and Salar are Turkic-speaking, Dongxiang and Bao'an are Mongolian-speaking, and Tajik is an Indo-European-speaking group. In addition to their linguistic cultures, their different geographic locations and historical experiences are also important factors contributing to their religious traditions.

The Hui and Uyghurs, the two largest Muslim groups, each with a population over ten million, make up about 90% of the total Muslim population of China, and can be taken as representative of Muslim groups in China (Table 1). Hui people are scattered all over China, having folk traditions closely related to Han Chinese, while the Uyghur population is concentrated in the Southern Xinjiang area, using Arabic letters in writing and having cultural traditions similar to other Turkic and Indo-European speakers in Xinjiang and Central Asia. Thus, the study of their religious traditions can serve as theoretical and methodological references to understand all Muslims in China.

Table 1. Populations of ten Muslim groups in China

The data quoted from China Statistical Yearbook 2021, complied by National Bureau Statistics of China (source: https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/ndsj/2021/indexch.htm).

Academic studies on the religion of Muslim groups in China have two main trends. One focuses on Islamic traditions of the so called “three big religious sects, four great Sufi families” (sanda jiaopai, sida menhuan) (Ma Reference Ma1983) and the other concentrates on folk beliefs such as saint mausoleum worship (mazar, gongbei) (Dawut Reference Dawut2001; Ma Reference Ma1987) and various magic and shamanism practices (jadu, peri-bakshi) (Wang Reference Wang and Shinmen Wasushi2003, Reference Wang2010). However, academic understanding of the complexity and pluralism of Muslim religion in China, especially from the perspective of rituals, is far from complete. Here, to make my question clear, a brief glance at the related academic discussions of religious pluralism and rituals is needed for our further investigation.

The term religious pluralism has two dimensions: one indicates the complex nature of a religion, and the other concerns academic discussions and ideological trends that compare different religions (Li Reference Li2007). The religious pluralism used in this paper is close to the former meaning of a cultural phenomenon indicating mainly the complex composition of Islam, based exactly on ethnographic descriptions of religion as a cultural system, as observed in Muslim rituals in China.

Anthropological studies of rituals have a long history. Catherine Bell pointed out that “the study of ritual began with a prolonged and influential debate on the origins of religion that gave rise to several important styles of interpretation……from which new fields of scholarship emerged” (Reference Bell1997, p. 3). The study of rituals in Muslim societies in China also has a specific background.

A case study of Sufi mystic rituals among Hui Muslims in Ningxia on the chanting practice of ritual recitation by the members of the Sufi order Jahriyya provides us with a precious insight into the soundscape created by Sufi meditators in Northwest China (Ha Reference Ha2013). The author probes the contents and styles of two kinds of Sufi chanting, Awräd (Quranic verses and Holy praises) and Mukhammas (Sufi poems), revealing in detail the vocal techniques to keep reciting balance and build up a kind of collective harmony by which the audience on the spot gets spiritually inspired first, then experiences a state of integration of human relations through voicing and listening. The author starts with a descriptions of Islamic classics, then moves to psychological, and eventually to sociological analyses.

Applying historical and sociological approaches, Ildiko Beller-Hann shed light onto an important side of the core of the Uyghurs' religion, the ritual for dead spirits (Reference Beller-Hann2001). Through examining various rituals dedicated to the dead parents and ancestors, by quoting precious studies and local records from before 1949, she builds up a holistic picture on the death rituals held in that period, including funerals, commemoration rituals, and Barat month rituals. While she makes clear the social functions of various death rituals in benefiting both the dead and living, she finds a very important perspective of viewing the rituals, the gender divisions in the local Uyghurs, in which women played a crucial role that could not be observed in the rituals run by the official Islam. This study of death rituals reveals both the syncretic essence of Uyghur religion and the rituals' function in empowering women.

Rachel Harris and Rahila Dawut investigate mazar (saint mausoleum) festival rituals among the Uyghurs in Southern Xinjiang, concentrating on the links of the ethnic music to the spiritual life of local residents, which is connected closely with the worship of Islamic as well as non-Islamic saints (Reference Harris and Dawut2002). The authors reveal that ritual music, played by the Uyghurs when visiting mazars, are also vessels carrying cultural codes connected to the past traditions either Islamic or pre-Islamic. Since such rituals of the mausoleum worship connected also to similar practices in Central Asian areas, they resist political integration and cross the red lines set by the government administration.

Clearly, the above studies of Muslim rituals afford us with both methodological references, either approaches to formal Islam or some cross disciplinary methods to investigate the supernatural side of the local combination of pre-Islamic customs and Islamic doctrines, and practical materials for us to understand the complex core of Muslim religion in China. However, there are still some unclear points in ritual studies we have to investigate further. Therefore, this paper aims firstly at searching for the essential reason of the harmonious integration of the complex contents of Muslim rituals, that is the historically formed multi-layered ritual structure which makes the coexistence of diverse religious elements possible; and secondly demonstrates the interactive processes among different religious elements and their integrative dynamism by quoting related contemporary studies. The study finds that Muslim religions in China are actually compound cultural systems made of various historically formed and pragmatically organized religious elements. Though Islam basically plays the role of a legitimate religious kernel, the ritual practices are sufficient evidence for this assertion.

Historical formation of the religious pluralism and ritual complex

The formation of the religious pluralism among Hui and Uyghur Muslims to some extent is related to how the two Muslim groups formed, the migration experiences of their ancestors to fuse into local societies in ancient China. That is a basic factor for understanding the religious pluralism in those Muslim societies.

The Muslim ancestors of the Hui entered China from the early Tang Dynasty through oceanic and continental routes. From the oceanic route, Arab and Persian merchants came to China for commercial transactions, and settled down in southeast coast cities, such as Guangzhou and Quanzhou (Wang and Guan Reference Wang and Guan2020). Through the continental route, the military conquest of Arab Kingdoms expanded into Central Asian areas; its diplomats, military officers, and merchants were sent to China and became permanent residents, after two empires confronted in the northwest peripheries of the Tang Dynasty (Li Reference Li2006).

At the first stage of the Muslim migration into China, the Arab and Persian merchants and militaries seldom undertook missionary activities. They had focused on their economic, diplomatic, and military enterprises, whereas they treated missionary works only as socio-cultural exchanges with local Chinese (Bai Reference Bai1982). Increased inter-marriage led to Islamic beliefs being gradually rooted through cultural interactions with their Chinese spouses, descendants, and relatives. There were three historical factors that made Islam successfully fused into local cultural traditions, apart from their successful construction of Muslim communities and Chinese-style patrilineal kinship organizations.

Firstly, the early Muslim migrants accepted Chinese literary education, absorbing Chinese traditional scriptures related to those of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist sources, and succeeded in social occupations. Arab migrant Li Yansheng from Kaifeng was a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations and was appointed as a member of the Imperial Academy of the Tang dynasty. Persian descendant Li Xun and his sister became famous poets in Sichuan province during the same Tang dynasty. The powerful Pu families in Quanzhou in the Song dynasty, the governor of Yunnan province Sayyid Ajall Omer Shams al-Din in the Yuan dynasty (Ma Reference Ma1983) were all distinguished cases to verify that Hui ancestors effectively mastered Chinese knowledge by which they could fit smoothly in local societies.

Secondly, the formation and development of the Islamic-Confucian school in Nanjing from the Ming dynasty demonstrated another aspect of Hui ancestors' efforts to search for ways of sharing theological ideas with Chinese traditions. For example, those Islamic-Confucian scholars such as Wang Daiyu, Ma Zhu, and Liu Zhi (Murata Reference Murata2000) in the late Ming and early Qing period in Nanjing, and Ma Dexin and Ma Lianyuan in the late Qing period in Yunnan (Nakanishi Reference Nakanishi2013, pp. 182–202) were all great masters of both Chinese classics and Islamic teachings. They applied Confucian and Daoist expressions to explain Islamic classics, disciplines, and ritual routines, using Confucian concepts of loyalty (zhongzhen), morality (de), and human instinct (bingxing) to formulate an Islamic definition of personalities, and Daoist concepts of chaos (wuji), the great ultimate (taiji), two opposite poles (yin-yang), and the five elements (wuxing), to describe the creation and moving rule of the universe. All their works provided ordinary Muslims with familiar stories and ethical ideas to understand Islam (Yao and Yao Reference Yao and Yao2017).

Thirdly, local socio-political situations also compelled Hui Muslims to accommodate historical realities, especially entering the Ming dynasty when the imperial government implemented a cultural policy urging Muslims to completely accept Chinese traditions without reservation (Zhao Reference Zhao2008, pp. 223–30). The first emperor of the Ming dynasty called for “driv[ing] out barbarian tribes, restor[ing] China's territories,” and forced Muslim residents to speak Chinese, take Chinese names, wear local clothes, and overall adapt to the Chinese traditions (Ge Reference Ge2002). As a result, the ethnic group of Hui Muslims took shape in mainland China in a way we might recognise today, with their religious traditions related closely to Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist, and other Chinese folk traditions. Therefore, the Hui-Confucian scholars as described above and their educational tradition to “explain Islam by adopting Confucian concepts” came up at a certain historical stage in China, at least from the late Ming period. We have ample evidence to prove that the mainstream of Islamic doctrines and religious routines have gradually became a Hui-Confucian one (mixed also with Daoist, Buddhist, and other folk elements) from about the seventeenth century throughout the present time (Ji Reference Ji2021).

The genealogical origin of Uyghur identity is inherited from their tribal ancestors who migrated into ancient China from the Mongolian plateau after the Uyghur Khanate was defeated by Qirghiz tribes around the middle of the ninth century (Gladney Reference Gladney1990; Yijiahan Reference Yijiahan1991). Many historical records tell us that they were not only Buddhist believers, they also believed in Manicheism, Zoroastrianism, Nestorianism, and Shamanism (Yang Reference Yang2004). The first step of the Islamic conversion happened in the Tarim Basin from about the tenth century. A mythological episode about the conversion of the Qarakhanate's ruler Satuq Bograhan shows the characteristics of Sufi tradition in its early history in the region. The legend tells that one day the king went out hunting; a rabbit the king chased in the woods suddenly became a white-bearded elder who taught Islam to the king, and persuaded the king to convert to Islam. It was said that the elder, Nasir ben Mansur, was a Sufi missionary from Central Asia (Hamada Reference Hamada1991). After that, his fellow missionaries supported a series of wars on local non-Muslim residents including Uyghur Buddhism believers in Kucha, Kurla, and Turpan (Shimata Reference Shimata1952), and eventually made local residents convert to Islam by the fifteenth century (Wei Reference Wei2000).

During the Islamic conversion, which continued until the end of the seventeenth century, those Sufi orders from Central Asia, such as Yasaviye and Nakshibandiye, took turns to promote an Islamization movement in oasis areas, using their political power assumed from local Turkic and Mongolian rulers. Especially during the Yarqand Khanate period (sixteenth to seventeenth century), the Nakshibandiye families, the black mountain sect and the white mountain sect, succeeded greatly in spreading their Sufi traditions while helping those local rulers to build up a “sacred state” for which they played very important political roles (Hartmann Reference Hartmann1905). Just because of their successes both in religious missionary and political struggles, they made their Sufi traditions gradually spread out in the seven cities around the Tarim basin, and even to Hui people in Qinghai and Gansu provinces, and became one of the major Islamic traditions in mainland China as well (Gao Reference Gao1995). Also, a series of military riots led by those Sufi families, from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century around the Tarim Basin area, had shown their enormous influence over the local residents (Fletcher Reference Fletcher and Manz1995). Though the Sufi families were forced into political integration by the central government from the late nineteenth century, those Sufism-related daily routines and folk ritual practices had already taken root in local Muslim practices.

Another undercurrent of Uyghur religious traditions, which originated long ago in their tribal history and survived after Islamic conversion, is Shamanistic belief and its related ritual practices. Different from Manicheism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorianism, which were uprooted or fused into local customs, Shamanism remained with its function mode changed to support folk healing rituals. In an interesting episode, the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin became sick in a village called Meget. Local elders arranged a Shamanistic healer to hold a healing ritual to save his life after he had been unconscious for nearly one month (Hedin Reference Hedin1966, pp. 20–22). The story reveals that Shamanistic elements had been very popular in the ritual practices in local Uyghurs at the beginning of the twentieth century. Similar kinds of ritual phenomena can still be easily observed in various present-day Uyghur ritual practices (Wang Reference Wang1994).

To summarize, Islam came to the Hui society from about the seventh century, and Islamic conversion happened in the Uyghurs until the fifteenth century; Islam in the two Muslim groups has since then been coexisting with various local customs, forming syncretic religious traditions which can be defined as religious pluralism. Thus, while Islam has become the main religion of the two Muslim groups, it coexists with other religious elements forming two different kinds of religious pluralism: the Islamic-Confucian oriented one in the Hui, and the Sufi-Shamanism one in the Uyghurs. Therefore, we can say that the religious pluralism determines the complexity of rituals in each of the two Muslim groups.

Emergence of the multi-layered structure of Muslim rituals

The historically formed religious pluralisms had continued to exist and function in both Muslim communities for several hundred years until the founding of the PRC. Then, a series of socialist movements happened and Muslim ritual customs encountered radical social changes for about thirty years. Though all religious elements in Muslim rituals eventually survived, they were hierarchically re-arranged by a new multi-layered structure under the influences of government administration.

From the beginning of the 1950s throughout the end of the 1970s, the social order in Muslim communities was disturbed as the previous social hierarchy was turned upside down, in which rich classes were put down to the social bottom and poor people got power to become leading classes. Meanwhile, different religious elements of Muslim rituals were also forced to change their appearances. Islam, which was officially admitted as a legitimate tradition, came to play the leading role at the top of the hierarchical structure of Muslim ritual activities, with Sufi traditions downgraded as deviant, as various folk practices were strictly prohibited as harmful superstitious practices. From the beginning of the 1980s, after the Reform and Opening Up policy issued by the central government of the PRC, the socio-political atmosphere became tolerant to various religious beliefs and practices. Muslim ritual activities gradually revived, but the multi-layered structure of Muslim rituals continued to be taken for granted until the present time.

Among the Hui, there are mosques in rural villages and urban streets, playing the role of community centers and being managed by religious professionals (akhon) and community elders (xianglao). Those mosques belong to different religious sects identified clearly by religious leaders' proselytizing orientations and ritual routines. Some of the mosques belong to the traditional sect (gedimu), others are supported by radical groups (ikhwani or sarafiye), or belong to Sufi orders (menhuan). However, all mosques are taken as the symbols of Islam, and they represent the officially admitted legitimate Islam, locating themselves at the top of the multi-layered structure of ritual practices.

Apart from the mosques representing great traditions of Islam, there are various locally originated and popularly accepted folk beliefs. For example, the worship of saint mausoleums (gongbei), which belong to late Sufi leaders and are located usually in the religious lodges (daotang) of Sufi orders, are very popular among the members of Sufi groups among Hui Muslims. Because of their close relations with legitimate Islam, they can be taken as the middle part of the multi-layered structure.

The magic incantation (chuiduwa) used to treat unknown ailments in folk healing rituals is also observed among ordinary residents believing in spiritualists (mola) who have language power to expel evils and bring about good fortunes. Sometimes in severe illnesses, local people will invite Shamanistic healers (maoyan or duashi) to undertake exorcist rituals to drive out evil spirits from human bodies (Ma and Yang Reference Ma and Yang2009). However, all these folk ideas and ritual practices are rejected by Hui elites and harshly restricted by the state's regulatory administration. Therefore, these parts of religious beliefs and ritual activities are located at the bottom of the multi-layered structure of ritual practices.

For Uyghurs, the governmentally permitted Islam, the Suni Islam of the Hanafi school, plays the role of the superstructure of ritual practices. Mosques play the role of religious centers for daily prayers and collectively organized ritual routines, such as Friday sermons (warz), mourning rituals (meyit), and religious lessons on the Quran and other scriptures (dini oqush). As a rule, religious professionals (molla, akhon) should be both elected by local residents and appointed by local governments to the post of preachers (imam) at local mosques. Then they can take responsibilities for all ritual routines with the assistance of some religious intellectuals (muazin) and a group of local elders (aq saqal or chonglar). Those religious professionals serve as Quranic teachers, mosque preachers, ritual guiders, coordinators dealing with civil conflicts and ethical issues, and community representatives in the governmentally oriented political consultant organizations. Mosques, religious professionals, and Islamic doctrines are the three governmentally supported and popularly accepted holy institutions, which are taken as three canons (üch gherip). They are the symbols of the great tradition of Islam, and therefore stand at the top of the multi-layered structure.

Under the great tradition of Islam, there are folk religious elements, composed of Sufism rituals (zikir), saint mausoleum worship (mazar ziyaret), shamanism and exorcist healings (ret qilish), magic rituals (jadu), natural beliefs in mountains, springs and spiritual existences (konliq), and so on. Although Sufi practices and saint mausoleum worship actually have close relations to Islam, quite different from folk beliefs which are absolutely taken as superstitious ones and prohibited officially in Muslim rituals, they are still discriminated by social elites and their existence resented. Therefore, Sufism and saint mausoleum worships are located at the middle, while those so-called superstitious elements are located at the bottom of the multi-layered structure of Uyghur ritual practices.

In summary, the Hui and Uyghur rituals similarly have the multi-layered structure which supports a kind of religious landscape which can be described as syncretism as Clifford Geertz found in Java Muslims (Reference Geertz1976), while the contents of ritual activities are different in local contexts. Among the Hui, the upper layer of ritual practices is officially admitted Islam which takes influences from Chinese religious traditions, with the saint mausoleum worship as its middle layer, and the Shamanism-magic healing practices and other folk beliefs at the bottom of the multi-layered structure. Among the Uyghurs, the mosque-centered official Islam of the Hanafi Sunni sect stays at the top, with the saint mausoleum worship at the middle, and Shamanism-magic healing practices and various natural worships at the bottom of the multi-layered structure.

Therefore, in both Muslim communities, if we consider that the historically formed religious pluralisms determined the complexity of ritual, then we should also note that the multi-layered structure, which was taken for granted, is an essential condition for the coexistence and interactions of different religious elements in ritual activities.

Ritual participation of folk beliefs in the legitimate representations of Islam

Here we will take some religious texts, used at the mosque preaching of those officially admitted religious professionals in Hui and Uyghur communities, as materials to demonstrate the ritual participations of folk beliefs in the canonical representations of Islam, verifying the salient religious pluralism.

The texts are in the style of metrical poems or free verses written or edited by local religious elites, such as mosque preachers (akhon) or Sufi leaders (laorenjia in Hui and ishan in Uyghur), used for the similar purposes of mosque sermons, religious exchanges, or religious instructions. These sermon poems support one of the most important channels for Islamic professionals to express opinions upon various ongoing social events, giving guidance to Muslim residents, and therefore can be taken as effective materials to see the symbolic participations of folk beliefs in the formal representations of Islam.

Islamic sermons (khutba) are regarded as an important part of Islamic tradition from the Prophet Muhammad period. The sermons take place at fixed times with Friday prayers, the prayers at Muslim festival rituals, or some unhappy happenings such as eclipses and droughts. The contents of those sermons, as a series of admonitions, may cover a wide range of socio-cultural phenomena, from political issues, legal regulations, social problems to some small particulars of Muslim life, but a single sermon text must be specific, short, and comprehensive.

In the Hui case, the text we want to introduce here a memoir dictated by the founder of the Sufi order Lingmingtang (“Memoir of Master Lingming,” Lingming Shangren Luezhuan), composed of 733 words. In addition to an introduction of forty-two words, the main text of the memoir has three parts covering the origin of the order, the Sufi views about the formation and movement of the universe, the theological recognition of God, general worldview, the essence of mystic practices, and mutual relations between Islamic theology and Confucian-Daoist traditionsFootnote ³ (Wang Reference Wang2015). We will go on with the discussion by showing three quotations from the memoir.

This paragraph aims at illustrating the basic reasoning of Islamic mysticism about the movement of the universe. In the first two sentences, “fate” stands for the universe while “mentality” indicates its dynamic principle. The following two sentences mean to explain that the miracles of the Sufi meditation may cause symbolic changes in the moving rule of the universe. After that, the memoir introduces the key word “spirit” (chi) into its explanation, which is taken as the energy source of the movement of the universe, emphasizing its importance as a theological essence. The terminologies that appear in this paragraph, such as “fate,” “mentality,” and “spirit,” are critically important also in the philosophical reasoning of Confucian and Daoist traditions.

Here, we can clearly see the connections between the key words used in the memoir and the religious scriptures by those Hui-Confucian scholars. The explanations about the formation and movement of the universe in the memoir are extremely similar to what was written by Ma Zhu in the third chapter of his “Guidance to Islam” (Qingzhen Zhinan); therefore, the contents of this part may possibly be quotations from the latter. Ma Zhu explains the formation of the universe by using dualities of “chaos” (wuji) vs. “fate” (ming) and “origin” (taiji) vs. “mentality” (xing), describing the natural existences and their movement by using the keyword “spirit” (chi), and takes the “spirit” as the energy source creating movements (Sato Reference Sato2006). We can say that the religious thought observed in the memoir connects to Confucian and Daoist traditions.

This paragraph emphasizes the legitimate position of Lingmingtang as a Prophet tradition. Sentences are comparatively short, but signify close connections between Islamic doctrines and Chinese religious traditions. The metaphors of the long, its living places in lakes and seas, all represent the Islamic legitimacy of the order. Clearly, these metaphors are very easy to understand even by non-Muslim people in China.

This is the last paragraph of the memoir, indicating directly the significance of Confucian ideas in the Islamic teaching of the order. The first sentence describes the process of Sufi meditation through which the believers can reform their mental conditions from ordinary human beings to a higher level of wisdom, and at last develop to the highest conditions to be united with God. While the first sentence indicates clearly the highest destination of Sufi meditation, the second sentence then pinpoints the critical importance of Sufi meditation: combining Islamic doctrines with Confucian traditions. Of course, Confucian traditions here are not the ordinary ones but the thoughts of the Hui-Confucian scholars saturated with Confucian ideas.

All the above discussions tell us that one of the thinking sources of Lingmingtang's religious doctrines is the thought of Hui-Confucian scholars who have played a very important role in Islamic missionary activities in non-Muslim Chinese contexts from the seventeenth century (Wang Reference Wang2014). The participations of Confucian and Daoist ideas occur apparently in the Sufi representations of Islamic doctrines.

Now let's see the case of the Uyghurs. Here, I would choose three pieces of the sermon verses used by a Uyghur preacher, which are very interesting to show his attitude toward illegal religious behaviors and those folk religious worships and ritual practices. We can understand clearly that the participation of folk religious ideas symbolically functions as a negative example to form a discursive structure needed in the legitimate representations of Islamic elites (Wang Reference Wang2004).

In the first two sentences, “wrong,” “just,” and “evil” are key words used to declare a fact that some bad and illegal religious behaviors against Islamic doctrines and ritual standards exist among his fellow Muslims. Then, in the third sentence, “rituals,” “lawful,” and “forbidden” are terms used to evaluate various ritual practices with unclear qualities according to Islamic ritual standards. And the last sentence, with the terms “moses” and “perikhon” (Muslim healers in Uyghur eastern dialect), points out that the target the verse criticizes is the Shamanistic folk healers and their unusual ritual practices. Clearly, this verse attacks folk beliefs in Shamanism and exorcism, indicating that those healers (perikhon) are not qualified Islamic professionals.

In verse (2), the first sentence uses three key words “Allah,” “Sufi,” and “rosaries” to indicate a fact that Sufi practitioners are among Uyghur Muslims, reading the Quran and taking rosaries while performing prayers similar to other Islamic professionals. Its second sentence has “hu hu” and “buwi” as key words to show that those Sufi practitioners undertake exorcist rituals (hu, is an onomatopoeia to stand metaphorically for those related ritual activities), some of them are male and others are female (buwi). Then, by using “get money,” the author calls his fellow Muslims to distinguish those male and female Sufi practitioners by their illegal purposes to obtain money from false religious practices. Clearly, this verse shows us that Sufism is also a popular practice among Uyghur Muslims, but being taken as an incorrect religious stream in the legitimate representation of Islam.

In the first two sentences of verse (3), “shaking bodies,” “incantations,” and “buwi” are words indicating those magic practices to cast black curses to hurt other people or compel spiritual existences in crazy body movements, and sometimes also female magicians host ritual practices (buwi also means female magician). Then, the next two sentences have “please demons,” “sins,” and “ignorant people” as key words, to evaluate the qualities of those magic rituals and their practitioners as bad Muslims violating Islamic doctrines, who thus may get punishments from God. This sentence makes clear that there are also various beliefs in magic powers popular in Uyghur ritual practices.

Here, a very interesting phenomena is that the locally originated folk beliefs appear in the formal representations of Islamic rituals, Confucian-Daoist ideas among the Hui, and Shamanism-magic items among the Uyghurs. By using the law of participation to view these phenomena (Levi-Bruhl Reference Levi-Bruhl1966), we can say that those folk beliefs exist not only as a part of Muslim rituals to form religious syncretism, but function also as a structural support to those formal representations of Islam.

Ritual participation of Islam in folk beliefs and exorcist healings

Similarly to the fact that folk beliefs participate in the legitimate representations of Islam in local ritual occasions, we can observe the participation of official Islam in those locally originated folk beliefs and their related ritual practices.