Dislocating China : Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects

Rating:
Summary: A question of religion or ethnicity
Review: THis book committs several flaws right off the bat. FIrst of all it fails to make a disinction between religion and ethnicity. China has both religious and ethnic minorites, although these do not always go hand in hand. But in order to appease the left this book works hard to show that 'muslims' are being suppressed and defined racially as 'others'. But one must find it hard to beleive that the book ignores the persecution of chinese christian, merely because devoting any time to such a subject wouldnt make it readable to the anti-christian sorts who enjoy books on minorities. Unfortunatly this is the great flaw here. The Book totally ignores the actual ethnic minorities of china in order to create a fake ethnic minority of the Hui, who are in fact Chinese. The real ethnic minorities exist along Chinas borders, in Tibet, Xinjiang and other places. A tregedy of a book that had greatness in its grasp. China is a country with many minorities, but this book shows the ultimae flaw of trying to creat minorities out of thin air and then trying to apply western ideas such as 'racism' onto and asia society where such ideas are either foreign or nonsense.

Seth J. Frantzman