Wai Yip HO

According to the report of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in January 2017, the growth of users of the mobile network has sharply covered half of the China’s population (731 million internet users, 53.2% of population). While dominant works in the field faces the tension between government tightening up censorship and netizens in search of greater civil liberty, there is a lack of systematic researches on religion and new media and particularly on the Chinese digital Islam. This research project focuses on the largely unnoticed emergence and challenges of cyber-Islamic environments in the Chinese context and on how it influences the youth learning about the Muslim world. This study aims first at understanding the state of the field and the historical development of the Chinese cyber-Islamic environment. It will also identify the enduring and most representative Chinese-speaking Muslim portals. It will then categorize the existing Chinese Muslim portals and analyse how they convey Islamic knowledge and report the global issues of the Muslim world. It will finally inquire the implications of Chinese youth in learning about the Muslim world so as to offer educators and parents tools to discern and prevent youths from religious radicalization.

Wai-Yip Ho is Associate Professor of the Department of Social Sciences of the Education University of Hong Kong, Senior Fellow at Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), Marie Curie Fellow of the European Union, Intercontinental Academia Fellow, co-hosted by Institute of Advanced Studies of Nanyang Technological University and the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Birmingham. He has been the Sir Edward Youde Fellow, and was the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies of the University of Exeter; Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies at Oxford; Visiting Research Fellow in Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) at Berlin; Endeavour Research Fellow at Australian National University. He is the author of Islam and China’s Hong Kong: Ethnic Identity, Muslim Networks and the new Silk Road (Routledge: London, 2015). His research interests include Islamic Studies, China’s Christian-Muslim relations, New Media and China’s Islam, Gulf-China relations and contemporary Muslim youths in Chinese context.

HO, Wai Yip. Islam and China’s Hong Kong: Ethnic Identity, Muslim Networks and the new Silk Road, London, Routledge, 2015.

HO, Wai Yip. “Digital Islam across the Greater China: Connecting Virtual Ummah to the Chinese-Speaking Muslim Netizens”, in Religion and the Media in China (TRAVAGNIN, Stefania), London, Routledge, 2016, pp. 187-202.

HO, Wai Yip. “Hong Kong, Islam in”, in Oxford Islamic Studies Online (ESPOSITO, John L.), New York, Oxford University Press, 2015.

HO, Wai Yip. “Emerging Islamic-Confucian Axis in the Virtual Ummah: Connectivity and Constraints in the Contemporary China”, in Comparative Islamic Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1-2, 2011, pp. 137-155.

HO, Wai Yip. “Islam, China and the Internet: Negotiating Residual Cyberspace between Hegemonic Patriotism & Connectivity to the Ummah”, in Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 30, No.1, 2010, pp. 63-79.