The Hard Road to Reform: Curriculum Renewal for Muslim Education in Early Twentieth-Century China

Since the early twentieth century, Chinese Muslim elites have been engaged in a movement aimed at developing a new style of education for Muslim children. These Muslim elites traveled to the Middle East and were influenced by the modernizing movement in the broader Islamic world. The new-style schools were no longer attached to mosques, and their curricula emphasized the inclusion of modern secular subjects. Islamic knowledge and disciplines began to be transmitted as modern subjects when taught in modern institutions. Based on the detailed analysis of historical documents, this paper examines the trajectories of several prominent modern institutions in Beijing to illustrate the key aspects of Muslim educational reform. The Muslim elites in charge of this educational reform share the common goals of promoting education and improved livelihoods for the urban Hui Muslims; to date, however, these goals have been only partially met, and a mismatch has emerged between the new knowledge that students have learned and the occupational composition of the Hui people in Niujie (mainly small traders).