The new 'Religioscapes': Cultural politics and Muslim populations in China and France

This paper will present a comparative historical analysis of Muslim minorities in France and China, analyzing state policies towards the Muslim minorities and the Muslim response to those policies. In France, the democratic negotiations between state and minority are constructing new definitions of what it means to be a citizen, allowing the French state to fashion policies geared towards a multicultural approach rather than the traditional assimilative process. This is producing a proliferation of Muslim identities that are both domestically and internationally oriented to France and the global Islamic ummah or nation. In China, policy towards the Muslims reflect their minzu policies that managed the Muslim minorities as the 'Other.' Conversely, the minzu referenced the Muslim minorities to the global Muslim ummah by maintaining the language of integration through localized Islamic identities, thereby allowing for the development of a succinct domestic and foreign policy based on the political and social happenings of the global Islamic ummah.