PROPHET AND THE PARTY

Why has China had such a hard time accommodating Islam? In this piece for The New York Review of Books NYR Daily I look at this question

The idea for the piece came while attending a recent conference on religion and imperial power in the Forbidden City. At the end of the three-day meeting, we visited several religious sites that the emperors used to honor their subjects’ faiths. Interestingly, Islam was not among those patronized by the emperors. I had the pleasure of walking and talking about this with Johan Elverskog,  Southern Methodist University, and was inspired to write this piece.