Redefining Heresy and Tolerance

In Redefining Heresy and Tolerance, Hung Tak Wai examines how the Qing empire governed Muslims and Christians under its rule with a non-interventionist policy. Manchu emperors adopted a tolerant attitude towards Islam and Christianity as long as political stability and loyalty remained unthreatened. However, Hung argues that such tolerance had its limitations. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Qing court intentionally minimised the importance of the Islamic identity. Restrictions were imposed on the Muslims’ external connections with Western Asia. The Christian minority was kept distant from politics and the Han majority. At the same time, Confucian scholars began to acquire a new understanding of religion, but they were not encouraged to get in touch with the Muslims and Christians. This book demonstrates how, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, the Qing government prevented Confucian scholar-bureaucrats from interfering in the religious life of Christians and Muslims, and how the Confucians’ understanding of ‘religion’ was reshaped during the implementation of such policy in the period. This book reveals that a different kind of ‘religious tolerance’ had already emerged among Sinophone intellectuals before their contact with the West.

Hung Tak Wai is a Hong Kong historian who specialises on globalisation, religion, politics, and minority in East Asia. He served at universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia. He is an assistant professor at Waseda University. 

Author's homepage: https://www.hungtakwai.com/

‘This book goes beyond the assumption of a homogeneous Han society and pays attention to the religious groups that emerged after the seventeenth century, which differed from, or even contradicted, Confucianism and other Chinese religions, and it is concerned with how such alien communities influenced the development of Confucianism itself.’

—Wang Fan-sen, Academia Sinica 

‘This book significantly enriches our comprehension of how early modern Confucians, as adherents of a state/public religion, engaged with Abrahamic religions. By delving into the dynamics of interreligious interaction, Redefining Heresy and Tolerance sheds new light on the encounters between Confucianism and the Abrahamic faiths, offering fresh insights into the complex religious landscape of Asian culture.’

—Huang Chin-shing, Academia Sinica