Lecture: Practicing Islam in Communist China

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.