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1.2 Research Question
There is limited prior study about Indonesian Muslim communities in Taiwan. Therefore, to initiate this topic I would like to know and analyze the social adaptation of Indonesian Muslim communities with Chinese Muslim communities. The main question in this research is: How does the social adaptation of Indonesian Muslim communities with the Chinese Muslim communities in Taiwan?
1.3 Research Purposes and Importance
The number of Muslim in Taiwan is growing in the past 20 years, especially with the coming of Indonesian Muslim worker. Because there is still limited study about this topic, my purpose and importance of study is to initiate an academic writing related to current development of Indonesian Muslim communities, and also social adaptation of Indonesian Muslim communities with the Chinese Muslim communities in Taiwan, especially in Taipei, Taoyuan, Chungli, Taichung and Kaohsiung. These areas are selected based on the presence of Mosque and the number of Muslim that reside in the city.
In some extend, it can be one part of studies of multicultural life of Taiwan in general. It also can be suggestion for both Muslim community and Taiwan government, for policy making process on social and multi-cultural integration in Taiwan. Furthermore, I do hope that this research can enrich the study of contemporary Islam and Muslim in Taiwan, specifically related to Indonesian Muslim communities in Taiwan.
1.4 Research Methods & Methodology
To make an objective view and academic studies for this topic, I use wide range of primary and secondary sources. I conducted intensive field research and observation in Taipei, Taoyuan, Chungli, Taichung and Kaohsiung for two months (June – July 2014) mainly in the mosque, especially during Ramadan or the fasting month on July 2014, Friday prayer, and Muslim communities’ weekend activities.
From the observation, the highest interaction between Indonesian Muslim communities and Chinese Muslim communities happened in the mosque. Masjid or mosque plays very important roles for Muslim, not only in term of religious needs, but also social aspects.
Mosque known as a place for Muslim to do the worship. However, mosque not restricted
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to being a place of worship, a location for performing rituals, or a social and political dimension of the Muslim community, instead, it has served as a symbol of belonging and identity (Abdel-Hady, 2010).
Figure 1.1 Field Work Agenda
For primary data, I did in-depth interview with Indonesian Muslim students, workers, and Imam/ staff of the mosque in those cities. The average time that I needed for each respondent for the interview was 45 to 60 minutes. Although it was not fulfil the standard time for an in-depth interview, but from various informant and sources I can cross-check and get the key points of the interviews. However, further research might be required to get a better findings. All the interviews were being recorded (audio), and after I finished it, I wrote the transcript of discussion and made field notes about my observation. While for secondary data I used references from journals, books, articles and news related to my research topic.
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1.5 Literature Review
1.5.1 The Spiritual Life of Indonesia Migrant Workers in Taiwan (2009-2011)
A thesis written by Yu Li-na (Chinese name of Yuherina Gusman), an Indonesian that graduated from National Central University – Chungli, titled “The Spiritual Life of Indonesia Migrant Workers in Taiwan (2009-2011)”, will be used as reference to understand the background of Indonesian workers, as the biggest Muslim number in Taiwan, and their spiritual life.
She was applying surface reading in looking at Indonesia Muslim migrant workers life in Taiwan. She found some importance of realities that cannot be understood by non-Indonesian or non-Muslim if it is only read in terms of the differences of cultures and beliefs (Gusman, 2011: p.84). Difference of cultures and beliefs have significant impacts for the life of Indonesian migrant workers.
She concluded and suggested some recommendations regarding regulation and policies on Indonesian Muslim workers, such as:
1) Standard of Contract
Without proper legal protection and a standard contract, each new employment contract brings with it the risk of reduced freedom of mobility and exploitative employer demand. The workers hardly have any chance to improve their situation. For Muslim migrant workers, the missing standard contract makes the need of their beliefs remain un-seen.
2) Reduce the Power of Agencies/ Broker
Most Indonesian Muslim migrant workers accept many mistreatments that violate their belief and psychologies because of their low bargaining power towards agencies.
3) Extended training and information for all involved government agencies 4) Develop A Plural Visions
With the global migration, it makes the society become more complex in terms of religion and ethnicity. Employers and employees are from different countries and cultures and this creates the modern plural societies, thus building the plural vision can be both alienating and inspiring, a source of awareness and dissatisfaction, and a source of pleasure and apprehension.
5) Affirmative Policies
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There should be affirmative policies from Indonesian government through political or cultural diplomacies.
6) Empowerment Activities
1.5.2 An Explorative Study on the Taiwanese Muslim (2012 - 2013)
The most recent studies about Muslim demography and analysis in Taiwan, is the writing of Prof. Kuo Wen-ban, an associate professor from Department of Sociology in National Taipei University. His works titled "An Explorative Study on the Taiwanese Muslim (2012 - 2013)” for Institute for Asian Muslim Studies in Waseda University. Kuo explained about how the Taiwanese religious studies in general and sociology of religion in particular had contributed very little to the better understanding of the Muslims in Taiwan, and only a few anthropological field researches which conducted by researchers for their research projects or graduate students for their degree thesis (Kuo, 2013: p.2). He argued that perhaps it was due to the inaccessible of Muslims from general social survey and because of its relatively small size. The knowledge of the Muslims in Taiwan is more from the daily experiences, than from systematic investigations.
For his research, he conducted survey to Muslim respondents who residing in Taiwan, both Chinese/ Taiwanese Muslim and also foreign Muslim (mainly from Indonesia, and a small number of Pakistan and Myanmar respondents). Kuo's research emphasizes demographic studies and analysis about immigrant Muslim in contemporary Taiwan. He mentioned that marriage between immigrants Muslim with Taiwanese is higher in Muslim from Pakistan, Myanmar rather than Muslim from Indonesia. Most of Indonesian Muslim practice endogamy. And he argued that the longer the immigrant Muslim have stayed, the greater marriage rates with Taiwanese.
These Muslim immigrants come to Taiwan mainly because of economic reasons. From Kuo's survey, the income level of the Indonesians is the lowest, while the income distribution of Muslim from Pakistan and Myanmar (then called as Others Muslims) is similar to Taiwanese/ Chinese Muslims. He also argued that there is a positive correlation between year of stay and monthly income: the longer one have stayed, the more income they obtain (Kuo, 2013: 5).
Kuo also mentioned four reasons of coming to Taiwan: 1) Economic reasons (earn money and being told there was a job), 2) Improving one's ability (to study and training), 3) Social
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reason (invited by friends and family/ relative), and 4) Technical reason (easy to enter Taiwan and introduced by broker). He mentioned most of Indonesians' reason is economic reasons and technical reasons. While Others Muslim is to improving one's ability and social reasons.
His survey covered some questions, such as: general conditions and respondents background, life in home country, life in Taiwan related to work, religious life (including access to halal food/ restaurant, access to mosque/ prayer room, and access to da'wa (calling people to Islam), life in Taiwan related to language comprehension, satisfaction to some aspects such as; work, residence, family, medical care, and financial condition, and the interesting part is satisfaction towards relations with people from respondent's country and relations with Muslims.
1.5.3 Cohesion and Cleavage in a Chinese Muslim Minority (1973)
The first and mainly-cited reference on anthropological studies of Chinese Muslim as ethnic minority and Islam as a religious minority in Taiwan was a dissertation written by Barbara Linne Kroll Pillsbury from Columbia University in 1973, titled Cohesion and Cleavage in a Chinese Muslim Minority. Most of her research was conducted in the capital city of Taipei where the concentration of Muslims is the greatest, but she also investigated the secondary cities and towns which the Hui associational networks reached out. She spent about two years living and conducting field research in Taiwan to collect her data through passive or adaptational research and participant-observation research.
Pillsbury’s main questions in her research (p.6) are to what extent has shared religion functioned as an integrative force in providing bases for association and for community solidarity in the urban milieu? To what extent have forces of conflict which characterize the community neutralized the existing cohesive forces? What is the nature of the boundaries existing between the Hui community and non-Muslims and how they maintained while its individual members learn to survive in the dominant Han society without being assimilated by it?
Her dissertation consists of four parts. The first part presents the ethno-historical background of the “Hui-minzu” or Hui ethnic-minority, including the problem and its social, economic, religious and political setting. Mainlanders Muslims on Taiwan after 1949 concentrated primarily in Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taichung. Most of their profession were
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career military personnel, civil servants or small businessmen, a small number of restaurant business owner, a few of farmer and none of sailor (p.3).
Because of the civil war, the Muslims who crossed over to Taiwan in 1949 were become as refugees. They settled wherever and work wherever they found an employer in Taiwan.
Pillsbury mentioned that their geographical origins, linguistic groups, and occupational backgrounds in mainland China were varied. But with the single element which drew them all together while setting them apart from other Chinese was Islam (p.4). For each new Muslim arrival on Taiwan access to the Muslim associational networks that had already come, for procuring housing and employment. Through this networks there developed multi-stranded relationships of mutual dependency among the Hui. Even though their diverse origins and socio-economic statuses, the Hui assumed themselves to be a single community united through Islam, as the expression said: “All Hui under heaven are one family” (p. 5).
The second chapter in this first part deals with factors Hui perceive as cohesive or integrative, those which have created a strong in-group sentiment among individuals and families of very disparate origins. First of all, Pillsbury explained about isolation and sinification1 of religions in China. Similar to Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism, Islam was “foreign” religions imported into China (p. 8). However, although Islam has been existed in China for thirteen centuries in China, Islam which underwent a high degree of sinification never became the part of the Chinese religio-cultural mainstream. Then Pillsbury describes the development of Islam in China2.
From Hui historians, he divided the development of Islam in ancient China into several periods (Sun 1963: 144-145, in Pillsbury 1973: 11-20):
1) Period of penetration (early Tang dynasty)
During this period, many traders and mercenaries sent by the Caliph to assist the Chinese emperor in quelling a Tatar rebellion. They rewarded with land and permission to settle in China’s chief cities. Those merchants who came and settled known as “barbarian guests”, and they took Chinese wives.
1 Sinification or Sinicization is a term to define the process of acculturation in China. Sinicization and the cultural contact with the Chinese (including the influence of Confucianism), continues to produce an acculturation of different background (Katzenstein, 2012).
2 Islam followed two routes to China, first by sea (Maritime-Silk Road) and later by land (the fabled Silk Road across Central Asia into Turkestan) (Pillsbury, 1973: p. 8-9)
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2) Period of expansion (during Tang dynasty 618 – 906 and Song dynasty, 960 – 1279) During this time, the trade in which Arab and Persian Muslims were middlemen, grew steadily. The Muslim population was able to increase and spread inland.
3) Period of influence (during the Yuan dynasty, 1279 – 1368)
Under the Mongol emperor, there are more Muslims rose to high military and civil office. The freedom of travel throughout Central Asia, encouraged great cross-cultures and cross-people: Chinese into Central Asia and Arabs, as well as Turks and Persians into China. It’s encouraged an influx of Muslim merchants, doctors, scholars, astronomers, astrologers and high-ranking military men who became Mongol’s advisors, military sides and staff officers (Pai Shou-I, 1951: 21-22 in Pillsbury, 1973: 12).
4) Period of weakness
Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, Chinese Islam remained in protracted isolation from the Islamic world community. The Ming pursued a policy prohibiting foreign dress, foreign languages and foreign names. It is during this period that Chinese Islam underwent its greatest sinification.
According to Ting (1058: 349 – 350, in Pillsbury, 1973: 13-15), there are four aspects of sinification process:
a) Adoption of Chinese surnames. They chose the Chinese surname which sounded most similar to his original Arabic, Persian or Turkic name, such as;
Ma, Ta, Ha, Ho, Na, Sa, Ting, etc. All Muslims on Taiwan have both Muslim and Chinese personal names as well as a Chinese surname
b) Adoption of Chinese dress
c) Adoption of Chinese food habits, such as techniques of preparation and the use of chopsticks.
d) Adoption of local Chinese dialects, in came to replace Arabic and Persian language.
Another factor that contribute to Muslim isolation was Manchu persecution. The Manchus adopted a deliberate divide and rule policy of setting the Muslims against
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the Chinese. There was a series of rebellions in Gansu, Yunnan, and Northwest China.
5) Period of Renaissance
The Islamic minority in China began to break out from isolation with the collapse of Qing dynasty. They tried to back into the Islam mainstream through
“sunnification”3. Some factors that made Chinese Muslim can break out the isolations are:
a) Cessation of large-scale hostilities
b) Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine in 1911 about “harmony and quality of the five races”4 which officially put the Muslims on an equal footing with the Chinese
c) The increasing number of Chinese Muslim who were able to make the pilgrimage to Mecca because of the new freedom of movement and improved transportation.
For the third, fourth and fifth chapter in first part, it consist of the social setting, economic setting, religious setting. Part three discusses conflict within the community which the Hui perceive as dis-integrative and working against the cohesive factors (the cleavage in the community: political organization). While the concluding part focuses on maintenance of social boundaries between the Hui minority and the Han majority, specifically on the threat of assimilation (Pillsbury, 1973: p. 2-3).
1.5.4 Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality (1998) There are several terms that often being used to call the Muslim in China, such as; the Hui, the Hui Muslim, Chinese Muslim, and Muslim Chinese. What are the differences? To have basic knowledge and understanding about Chinese Muslim, I will briefly reviewed two books written by Dru C. Gladney, who is one of the leading scholars that have expertise in China’s ethnic minorities, especially on Muslim minorities. These books titled “Ethnic Identity in China; The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality” and “Muslim Chinese:
Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic”. They explain how are the Muslims “made”
3 This term refers to reform aimed at purifying Islam of local unorthodox beliefs, practices, and laws which contradict the tenets of Islam (Pillsbury, 1973: 20-21).
4 Five races are Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui and Tibetan
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in China and how their ethnic and cultural identity formed in China, as well as explanation of the term “Hui” identity.
The “Hui” is the largest Muslim society among 55 official ethnic minorities in China, in which 10 of them are Muslim. Gladney wrote this book based on his field research for period of years, meeting and talking to Hui in more than 400 households throughout China (from north to south and east to west). He found a problem to discover how the Hui view themselves, how they recognize who is Hui. In the introduction, he said that he felt an ambiguity for the status of them. He said, “After almost 3 years of fieldwork in China, the longer I searched for the Hui, the less I understood what made them Hui (p.1)”.
Compare to another 55 ethnic minorities in China, the Hui has the most special case among the others since the Hui distinguished separately and they are out of the four commons category outlined by Joseph Stalin. They generally do not have their own language, peculiar dress, literature, music or the other cultural inventories by which more colorful minorities are portrayed. George and Louise Spindler, the editors said that; for the Hui there is no
“we”, because the Hui consist of widely divergent communities living within varying ecological contexts and experience their ethnicity in radically different ways, and they inhabit every major metropolitan area of China and are considered China’s major urban ethnic group. Moreover, they are internally diverse and their presumed ethnicity so ambiguous, so that they are out of the Stalin’s category.
To get further understanding about this matter, Gladney explains the root cause of this problem. He mentioned about the uniting of China through the politics of ethnic identification and Han nationalism, as well as explanation about “unofficial” ethnicity.
China’s centralized, state-sponsored policies as well as cultural politics and identity, directed at Muslims and other minorities. Gladney asked; “Why would anyone want to be recognized as an official minority nationality? And why would the government want to recognize them in the first place?”
Later on, he describes more about who are the Hui. Gladney tries to identify the Hui and the background of the making of the Hui nationality as their ethnic identity in China. The explanation is through ethnicity theory from many approaches, such as: the Chinese-Stalinist approach, the Culturalist approach, the circumstantialist approach. Then, Gladney gives more specific case studies about ethno-religious resurgence in a northwestern Sufi
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community, fundamentalist revival in Na homeland and the ethno-religious roots, also socioeconomic context and local government policies of Na identity. In the end of his book, Gladney explains about ethnic national identity in the contemporary Chinese State.
Compare to other book, Gladney gives detail explanation about the “ambiguity” status of the Hui as an ethnic in China. Specifically, he gives the reader basic understanding about Hui’s identity as Muslim minority nationality, before explaining some case studies and the Hui’s life nowadays. After read this book, I can understand more about the “uniqueness”
of Hui’s identity and status as a minority ethnic in China, and its consequences and impact on some issues/ phenomenon in current China’s situation.
1.6 Conceptual Framework
1.6.1 Immigration, Acculturation and Adaptation (1997)
John W. Berry is a scholar from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. In 1997 he wrote an article titled “Immigration, Acculturation and Adaptation”. His main question is how individuals who have developed in one cultural context manage to adapt to new contexts
John W. Berry is a scholar from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. In 1997 he wrote an article titled “Immigration, Acculturation and Adaptation”. His main question is how individuals who have developed in one cultural context manage to adapt to new contexts