Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Time: 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM (Chicago Time)
Venue: Online via Zoom

How do Muslims in China live, worship, and sustain their traditions under a Communist one-party state?

In this talk, Dr. Michael Brose explores how Islam has taken shape within the People’s Republic of China—a state that formally guarantees “freedom of religion” while still regarding faith as “the opiate of the people.”
Dr. Brose will introduce China’s ten officially recognized Muslim ethnic groups—including the Hui, Uyghur, Kazakh, Dongxiang, Salar, Tajik, Uzbek, Bonan, Tatar, and Kyrgyz—and discuss where they live, how they differ in culture and language, and how they practice their faith in modern China.

The lecture will also consider how China’s broader project of Sinicization—building a unified national identity centered on Han culture—shapes religious and ethnic life. Islam, with its global connections and strong communal identity, presents a unique challenge to this effort.
Two key regions illustrate these contrasting experiences:

Xinjiang: Home to the Turkic Uyghurs, whose history, language, and Islamic identity have come under intense state control and repression. (Read more)
Yunnan: A region where Chinese-speaking Hui Muslims maintain deep trade and cultural links with Southeast Asia, offering a different example of how Islam coexists with Chinese society. (Read more)
By comparing these two cases, Dr. Brose sheds light on how Islamic identity and practice have evolved under Communist rule and how Muslim communities continue to navigate faith, ethnicity, and belonging in modern China.

Dr. Michael Brose is a Professor of Practice in Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.

His research bridges Chinese history, Central Eurasian Studies, and Islamic studies, with a focus on the Hui Muslim communities of Yunnan Province. His work examines mosque architecture, the halal food industry, and the political economy of Muslim life in contemporary China.
Dr. Brose is also active in digital history, using GIS and network analysis to study data from Chinese historical sources such as gazetteers and tomb inscriptions.

His publications include:
– “China and Transregional Halal Circuits” (Review of Religion and Chinese Society)
– “Permitted and Pure: Packaged Halal Snack Food from Southwest China” (International Journal of Food Design)
– “Globalization and the Chinese Muslim Community in Southwest China” (Asia Pacific: Perspectives)

He has also written on Mongol and Ming history and on the Uyghur elites of medieval China, combining quantitative and historical methods to study social networks across Eurasia.

Date: Monday, September 22, 2025
Time: 6:30 PM on Zoom
Venue: Online via Zoom

Registration (Required):
Free livestream. Please register to receive link.

Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

He obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Global Institute.

Dr. Hashemi was previously the founding Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. While there, he was also Co-Director of the Religion and International Affairs certificate program, as well as the Political Theory Initiative.

His intellectual and research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and political theory, in particular debates on the global rise of authoritarianism, religion and democracy, secularism and its discontents, Middle East and Islamic politics, democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies and Islam-West relations.

He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (Melville House, 2011), The Syria Dilemma (MIT Press, 2013), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2017) and a four-volume study on Islam and Human Rights: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies (Routledge, 2023).

He is the editor of the Oxford Handbook on Islam and Secularism (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and his next book project focuses on explaining the global divide over Israel/Palestine.

He is frequently interviewed by PBS, NPR, CNN, CBC, Al Jazeera, Alternative Radio, Pacifica Radio and the BBC and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Al Jazeera Online, CNN.com among other media outlets.

He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).

Learn more about him here.

Dr. Homayra Ziad is a spiritual seeker, scholar-activist and nationally recognized interfaith practitioner, and she has served in spiritual care and leadership roles in both Muslim and interreligious settings. Earning her doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale, with a special interest in Islamic spirituality, philosophical Sufism, and Indo-Persian textual traditions, Dr. Ziad has served universities, seminaries, and faith-based nonprofits with her community-engaged teaching and scholarship grounded in equitable, compassionate relationship-building. She was Senior Lecturer and Director of the Program in Islamic Studies at Johns Hopkins University where she received the undergraduate teaching award, and was recognized for her innovative teaching and mentorship. Before this, she was Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Trinity College and then Scholar of Islam at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where she spearheaded public engagement on Islam.

For two decades, Dr. Ziad has created educational and spiritual care programs that connect religion with the arts, public health, and mental health, and she has supported educators, activists, artists, and religious leaders in navigating pluralism and fostering networks of social change. While at Hopkins, she led a national faculty fellowship on community-engaged learning in Islamic Studies, partnered with American Muslim Health Professionals to mobilize students to address vaccine hesitancy and access in Muslim communities, and co-created Art, Religion and Cities with colleagues at Morgan State University and the Walters Art Museum. She also served on the founding teams of 99 Clay Vessels, an arts and social justice project by and for Muslim women, and Healing Khayal, a music and healing residency for young artists in Pakistan. Dr. Ziad was on the Board of the ACLU of Maryland and served for two years as Board President.

Dr. Ziad was founding co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s (AAR) Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group. She writes for academic and popular venues, consults on programs for film and media, and is co-editor of Words to Live By: Sacred Sources for Interreligious Engagement (Orbis Press, 2018). Most recently, she served as Director of Campus Partnerships at Interfaith America. 

“We are so thrilled to have Dr. Homayra lead our Divinity Program and take our Hassan Institute to new levels of transformative engagement and impact. Her wisdom and pastoral spirit will bring so much guidance and support to our M.Div. students, and her rich interfaith experience and international network will elevate and expand the work of the Hassan Institute, in sha’ Allah. Welcome Dr. Homayra!”

Dr. Timothy J Gianotti, President