Islamic Enclaves in Taipei and Transnational Entanglements during the Cold War

Abstract

This chapter unravels the interconnections between Taipei and Mecca during the Cold War through a focus on the mobilities of Chinese and Uyghur Muslim religious and political representatives, as well as diaspora communities who had been clustered within the two nation-states of the Republic of China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Such actors mobilized the rhetoric of anticommunist Islam as a source of self-empowerment, and as a tool of religious and cultural diplomacy. Diverse and sometimes competing Islamic enclaves and communities in Taipei are positioned as hubs of inter-Asian connections that were restructured in a transformed post-WWII world order.