Mohammed Turki A. Alsudairi, professeur invité de l’EHESS
Mohammed Turki A. Alsudairi, Lecturer at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (Australian National University), participe au programme Professeurs invités de l’EHESS, sur proposition de Marie-Paule Hille (CCJ-CECMC), en janvier-février 2026.
Biographie
Conférences
Dans le cadre du séminaire de Masha Cerovic, Lina Tsrimova, « Histoire croisée de la Russie et du Moyen-orient (XIXe-XXIe siècles) », salle A502, bât. EHESS, 2 Cours des humanités, 93300 Aubervilliers.
Mardi 6 janvier 2026, 10h30-12h30
This talk explores the shifting ways in which China was imagined as a potential site of Islamization starting from the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. While previous scholarship examined this fear/fantasy among European Orientalists and Christian missionaries, I shift our attention to the writings of the latter in dialogue with other (Arabic and Ottoman Turkish) discursive nodes and networks in the Middle East, as well as those of Chinese Muslims, highlighting the triangular production and co-constitution of this narrative, i.e., of China on the precipice of joining Islamdom, on a global scale. I argue that the emergence of this narrative signals the conception of religion, by the late nineteenth century, in quantitative (demographic) and spatial (cartographic) terms. Situated at the crossroads between imperial anxieties (with all sorts of perils), anti-colonial aspirations, and minority counter-claims, the imagining of an Islamized China was born from a particular expression of religious geopolitics that was rooted in the European imperial quandary (and problem-projection) of governing large swathes of territory inhabited by Muslim populations, but which was inflected by other colonial angsts (such as that of the Chinese ‘Yellow Peril’). As the talk will demonstrate, the notion of an Islamized China was entangled with other processes ranging from the invention of global religions (à la Tomoko Masuzawa) to the construction of the Muslim world (à la Cemil Aydin), among others. The talk will also consider the afterlives of this fantasy, during the Cold War and beyond.
► China and the Question of Palestine
Dans le cadre du séminaire de Véronique Bontemps, « Penser l’expérience palestinienne à partir de Gaza : histoires, cultures, sociétés », salle 3.08, Centre de Colloques, 93300 Aubervilliers.
Vendredi 16 janvier 10h30-12h30
On popular Arabic-language Shi’ite websites, one can find an amusing apocryphal narration about the first meeting between Ahmad al-Shuqayiri, the first Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Mao Zedong, sometime in the mid-1960s. To the former’s plea asking “to be taught revolution,” the latter deflectively retorted “how could I teach you revolution, when you have the revolution of Imam Hussein [to emulate]?” Though undoubtedly a myth (and part of a fascinating hagiographic tradition in its own right), this short story inadvertently captures an enduring theme in the optics surrounding Sino-Palestinian relations: of high-hopes combined with limited (or even non-) delivery. The talk explores the twists and turns of China’s official relationship with various Palestinian actors and its evolving approach towards the Palestine Question from the mid-twentieth century to the present. It also highlights the forces that feed into expectations of a larger Chinese role, and the realities (internal or regional) that circumscribe China’s ability (and desire) to exert substantive influence in relation to the conflict.
► The Ikhwani Hard-liners and the Maturidi-Hanafi Lineage of a Movement
Dans le cadre du séminaire de Dominique Avon, « Histoire intellectuelle du sunnisme contemporain – Savants et discours religieux à l’épreuve du socialisme », EPHE, MSH, 54 Boulevard Raspail.
Mardi 27 janvier 2025, 9h-10h30
The talk focuses on the ‘hard-liners’ (yingpai), a subcurrent of the Ikhwani who primarily define themselves as guardians of the Maturidi-Hanafi nexus of Chinese Islam. Since their emergence in the 1980s, the hard-liners have repeatedly come into the public eye due to their sectarianism, as well as their espousal of several controversial and non-mainstream views. These include takfeer (excommunication) of the Salafis, opposition to ‘praying behind’ (genbai) the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca during the Hajj, their refusal to permit women to attend religious schools, and most recently, their vocal opposition to the appointment of Ma Yuexiang, a perceived soft-liner, as the head of the Dongguan Grand Mosque in 2018. The talk attempts to tackle several questions, including: Who are the hard-liners? What are their beliefs? How did they emerge? In a broader sense, this talk, which draws on polemical works, audio-visual materials and online sources, also seeks to highlight how these hard-liners, and their concern with the preservation of Hanafi-Maturidi identity, forces us to rethink the conventional assumptions held about Ikhwan in general as a Wahhabi-inspired movement, and which are common across Western and Chinese scholarship.
► On Sectarian Governance of Muslims in the People’s Republic
Dans le cadre du séminaire de Stéphane Dudoignon, « Atelier Eurasie centrale », salle 5.001, Bâtiment recherche sud, cours des humanités, 93300 Aubervilliers.
Mardi 3 février 2026, 11h-13h
The pre-emption and management of threats to governmental authority and societal stability arising from intra/inter-Muslim sectarian disputes (jiaopai jiufen) has been a longstanding preoccupation of a succession of Chinese states since the seventeenth century, and particularly so in the Northwest, where many sects and tariqas (menhuan) are fixtures of the Islamic religious landscape there. This interest in the “sectarian question” (jiaopai wenti) has certainly held with the People’s Republic, though theoretical attitudes and implemented policies for how best to manage the infighting of the sects have undergone significant change over time. This talk outlines the evolution (and draw out the patterns) of what could be described as a state tradition of sectarian governance wherein Muslim communities were made legible –and managed accordingly– through a classificatory taxonomy of groups/sects (paibie/jiaopai shibie). In reconstructing the party-state’s discordant vision and management of Muslim sectarianism over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I purposefully seek to go beyond previous approaches surrounding state-religion relations that had typically conceptualized the party-state’s governance of “Islam” in an undifferentiated manner, oftentimes focusing on ethnicity or religiosity as key markers of concern. Throughout this talk, I showcase the centrality of sects and sectarianism as operative notions and, more importantly, their relevance and utility in the Chinese political context as instruments of authoritarian rule.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Monique Abud (22 décembre 2025). Mohammed Turki A. Alsudairi, professeur invité de l’EHESS. Carnets du Centre Chine (CNRS/EHESS). Consulté le 15 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15emu


