Islam's Loneliest Cosmopolitan: Badr Al-Din Hai Weiliang, the Lucknow–Cairo Connection, and the Circumscription of Islamic Transnationalism

Badr al-Din Hai Weiliang, a Chinese Muslim scholar, challenged conventional narratives of early 20th-century Chinese Islam by embodying the tensions between national and transnational Islamic identities. His life—spanning studies in India’s Nadwat al-‘Ulama and Egypt’s al-Azhar, fluency in five languages, and diplomatic work for the Guomindang—demonstrated the interconnectedness of Islamic scholarship and politics across Asia and Africa. Through his writings, including Relations between the Arabs and China, Hai shifted from doctrinal Salafi influences to a cultural-historical approach to Islamic unity, reflecting broader geopolitical disillusionment. The study contrasts his Arabic and Chinese works, revealing how transnational Islamic thought evolved amid national fragmentation, offering a nuanced framework for understanding global Islamic history.

John Chen. (2018). Islam’s Loneliest Cosmopolitan: Badr Al-Din Hai Weiliang, the Lucknow–Cairo Connection, and the Circumscription of Islamic Transnationalism. ReOrient, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.3.2.0120