Pigs, Purity, and Protection:
Food Taboo in Hui Chinese and African American Muslim Minority Communities
This paper examines the role of food in Hui Chinese and African American Muslim
minority communities. Testing Katherine Ulrich’s elaboration of Mary Douglas’ theory
that physical boundaries of the body are analogous to social boundaries with evidence
from the Chinese and African American Muslim minority communities reveals that
physical food taboos do indeed demarcate social boundaries. In the two communities
examined, the Islamic proscription against pork emerges as the strongest example of how
food taboo serves as a vital tool in maintaining distinct identity and group solidarity.
Drawing primarily from research by Barbara Pillsbury and Maris Boyd Gillette, the Hui
Chinese case study argues that the pork taboo serves community needs to distinguish
pure from impure and to erect a barrier against the non-Muslim Han. In the African
American case study, Edward Curtis’ argument for the black body as a symbol for black
fate is combined with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad’s dietary teachings to
exemplify how African Americans use the pork taboo to purify and reclaim control of
their bodies. For both the Chinese and African American communities, food taboos are
central in preserving community integrity through providing a way for individuals to
physically and socially create boundaries separating pure, taboo observing Muslims from
impure, non-taboo observing outsiders.
Jessica Chen
Spring 2007
Introduction
During the summer of 2007, I was in Xi’an, China completing a fellowship on
Chinese Muslims. As a scholar of religion, I originally intended to examine mosques,
observe prayers, and visit holy sites, but what struck me was the centrality of food in
Chinese Muslim identity. Even when strictness about dress, prayer, and mosque
attendance had become relaxed with growing modernization and assimilation, the
Muslim community never compromised their strict adherence to eating halal, or properly
slaughtered meat. In that sense, what one would eat or wouldn’t eat became the truest
indicator of religious identity. This made me wonder, “Why is food so important to
Muslim identity, and to religion in general?” And more specifically, “What is the role of
food in modern Muslim communities facing assimilation?”
The topic of food in Islamic communities is vastly understudied. Anthropologists
have long debated the function of food in society, but few have actually examined eating
behavior in Muslim communities; scholars of Islam might refer to particular foods when
discussing ritual purity and law, but they rarely discuss the significance of Muslim eating
practices. This study aims to explore the role of food in contemporary Muslim minority
communities. Minority communities offer the most interesting and extreme cases of how
eating habits are central to social constructions of identity. After examining current
theories on food set forth by anthropologists E.N. Anderson and Katherine Ulrich and
scholar of religion A. Kevin Reinhart, I plan to test these hypotheses against two
contemporary case studies: the Hui Chinese and African American Muslims. Hui Chinese
and African Americans both occupy spaces as Muslim minorities in large, industrial, nonMuslim nations. Central to both Muslim communities is a strong aversion to pork. Pork
2
becomes conflated with the impurity of the dominant non-Muslim society, and observing
this food taboo is a way for religious minorities to erect social barriers separating the
Muslim community from the larger non-Muslim society; in dialogues about purity,
contamination, and power, Hui and African American Muslim communities articulate
how food plays a vital and dynamic role in the relationship between the physical body
and the social body.
Food as a Social Marker:
Theories on the Anthropological and Religious Significance of Food
What do you think of when you think of food? Your stomach? Your community?
Your values? Eating is a central part of being human. Everyone Eats, anthropologist E.N.
Anderson’s aptly titled book on food culture, discusses the significance of human eating
behavior. Anderson suggests that eating goes beyond satisfying simple nutritional and
survival needs. Studying food and food behavior offers insight into communities,
cultures, and religions. Anderson asserts that “Food is used in every society on earth to
communicate messages. Prominent among these are messages of group solidarity; food
sharing is literally sacred in almost all religions…”1 Here Anderson illuminates the
primary function of food: its role in social settings to reinforce a social group, often a
religious community. Citing Emile Durkheim’s theory that the real basis of religion is
society, Anderson argues that for a society to accomplish its goals of ritual, ceremony,
and celebration, “such intense and all-involving action involves food. Food is a basic and
1
E.N. Anderson, Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture (New York:
NYU Press, 2005), 6.
3
universal human concern. It is central to religion –as symbol, as subject of prayers, as
marker of sharing and unsharing, and as communion.”2
Furthermore, people consciously use food as a tool to bring together certain
groups of people while excluding others. In the case of nationalism, Anderson argues that
ethnic groups feel that they must assert their identity by adopting a distinct cuisine:
“Status and ethnicity are combined here; to mark its rise in the political system, a group
revalorizes its cuisine… groups that feel discriminated against may self-consciously
develop their local cooking into an ethnic cuisine.”3 Thus, dialogue about the significance
of food must include its powerful ability to indicate ethnicity and distinctiveness. Groups
who wish to create a separate identity for themselves can easily use food as a method to
assert that identity. Food is central both to bringing people together and keeping them
apart. Food plays a vital role in social settings: it communicates messages about group
solidarity; it is central to social rituals, and it helps create feelings of distinctiveness.
Another way to approach food’s social function is to view food as a heavily
charged symbol; this symbol is closely tied to the relationship between the physical body
and the social body. Anderson cites Mary Douglas’ study, Purity and Danger, to note
that “foods are the richest source of symbols. Because they are literally taken into the
body, and have all the associations of life, home, family, health, and embodied being,
they are the ultimate ‘natural symbols.’”4 Katherine Ulrich’s article, “Food Fights:
Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain Dietary Polemics in South India,” further develops and
elucidates Douglas’ ideas. Ulrich argues that “ever since the publication of Mary
2
Ibid., 154.
Ibid., 201.
4
Ibid., 160.
3
4
Douglas’ enormously influential Purity and Danger, it has become axiomatic that living
bodies serve as handy analogies for social bodies.”5 And even more specifically within
this axiom, personal bodily boundaries become analogous to social boundaries. By
keeping bodily boundaries, especially by shutting out foreign substances from the mouth,
communities can construct their own social identity.6 While other bodily practices allow
for individuals and communities to assert their distinctiveness, Ulrich argues that food
“accomplishes this task with particular ease and elegance, for it moves from one person’s
hand to another’s plate and then into the body.”7 In other words, food passes through very
clearly demarcated boundaries, making its movements easy to follow. Controlling food
boundaries serves as a symbolic way to control social boundaries.
Food scholars, however, are cautious to assign any definite symbolism for food in
society because what food represents is constantly shifting. Gillian Feeley-Harnik’s study
on “Religion and Food: An Anthropological Perspective” cites Jane Fajan, who asserts
that food “does not merely symbolize or represent in the static sense but rather moves,
penetrates, and transforms.”8 Fajan reminds us that food symbolism, so heavily linked to
concepts of social boundaries, is constantly changing.
The concept of physical and social boundaries is of great importance to Muslims.
Within the Islamic tradition, what goes in and out of the body is of major concern in legal
debates over ritual purity. Rather than having the positive effect of facilitating group
Katherine E. Ulrich, “Food Fights: Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain Dietary Polemics
in South India,” History of Religions 46 (2007): 228.
6
Ibid., 228-229.
7
Ibid., 229.
8
Jane Fajan, “The Transformative Value of Food: A Review Essay,” Food and
Foodways 3: 165.
5
5
communion, food, and especially pork, becomes connected to discussions of impurity. In
his examination of Islamic ritual purity, A. Kevin Reinhart classifies things that defile
into two categories: things coming from within bodies and things that are “historical” or
“ethnic-origin” taboo substances.9 In the first category are “things from the interior of the
body that have crossed the boundaries of the body, ought not to be outside the body;
when they leave their place, they become impure.”10 This can include blood, semen, and
urine. In the second category are impure things from outside the body: pigs, dogs, wine,
carrion, corpses, water used by unclean animals, etc. The second category contains foods,
and according to Reinhart, can only be explained sociohistorically rather than logically.
Reinhart’s sociohistorical explanation attributes the impurity of these objects to the
“culturally extant notions of what foods were ‘religiously’ offensive, a set corresponding
closely to those listed in Deuteronomy 14, and thus held in common with Judaism, but
reflecting Arabian and Iranian cultural prejudices as well.”11 Even more importantly,
Reinhart notes that “there are things unclean (dogs, e.g.) that serve as shibboleths to
distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims. No single logical principle can adequately
account for all these defiling objects, but these lists of ‘defiling’ and ‘not defiling,’ while
logically incoherent, do delimit the world into Islamically acceptable and non-Islamic.”12
Reinhart’s conclusions clearly support Anderson and Ulrich’s arguments for food as a
social marker.
A. Kevin Reinhart, “Impurity / No Danger,” History of Religions 30 (1990): 7.
Ibid.
11
Ibid., 8.
12
Ibid., 8-9.
9
10
6
Reinhart’s discussion of objects that defile raises the issue of food taboos. Food
taboos fall within the second category of things that defile, for they come from outside
the body. Reinhart acknowledges that while there is a logical explanation for the impurity
of things that come from within the body, there is no such logical explanation for why
some objects and not others from outside the body are labeled as unclean. He offers a
preliminary explanation by suggesting that these unclean objects are somehow
“religiously” offensive. However, he fails to explain why they are “religiously” offensive
beyond offering the hypothesis that they have always been part of prevailing cultural
prejudices. At the end of his discussion, Reinhart alludes to the possibility that food
taboos might function as ways to mark Islamic realms of the world from non-Islamic
realms.
In the following two case studies on Muslim minority communities, I aim to
explore this topic of food taboos and social boundaries. Minority communities, constantly
faced with fear of being engulfed by the majority culture, offer a particularly effective
case study of the role of food in demarcating social boundaries. I have chosen to examine
two Muslim communities living in primarily non-Muslim countries: the Hui Muslims in
China and the African American Muslims in the United States. In both communities,
pork emerges as the clearest demarcation of “them” versus “us.” As I will reveal later in
this discussion, Anderson, Ulrich, and Reinhart’s hypotheses about the social role of food
are clearly substantiated in the Hui and African American Muslim communities.
7
“The Black Worm:” Hui Chinese Obsession with Purity and Pork
Of the 56 officially recognized “nationalities” or minzu in China, the Hui stand
out as a peculiar Chinese ethnic group. Unlike other “nationalities,” the Hui do not
possess a common language, are not concentrated in a specific area, and are often hard to
distinguish in appearance from the Han. Most scholars agree that the Hui’s nationality
status “rests entirely on a historical perception of difference stemming from their Muslim
heritage and Islamic observance.”13 What is particularly interesting about the Hui Muslim
heritage is the centrality of a prevailing obsession with abstinence from pork.14 This
particular meat taboo has become the most familiar marker of the difference between Hui
and Han peoples in China.15 Li Binling, a young Hui woman whom I interviewed during
my travels in Xi’an, said that her Han friends never knew she was Hui until she declined
to eat food with them. In a September 2004 interview following several ethnic killings
between Han and Hui in Henan province, a Han portrait artist from Zhengzhou expressed
his frustration with the Hui as nationality, stating that “they don’t have their own
language, they don’t have their own customs, all they do is refuse to eat pork. Our
government gives them too much favorable treatment.”16
Maris Boyd Gillette, “Children’s Food and Islamic Dietary Restrictions in
Xi’an,” in The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating, eds. James L. Watson and Melissa L
Caldwell (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 108.
14
Other Chinese Muslim minorities such as the Uyghurs also observe the pork
taboo. However, since Uyghurs constitute the majority population in Xinjiang
Autonomous Province, the pork taboo is not central to their identity.
15
Gillette, 108.
16
Damien McElroy, “Muslim conflict now hits China as 148 die in ethnic
violence,” Telegraph.co.uk, (November 2004),
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/14/wchin14.xml
(accessed January 20, 2007).
13
8
It is fascinating that the Hui are labeled as a nationality solely because of their
religious heritage, and that this religious heritage has become reduced to an obsession
with avoiding pork. In her dissertation on Hui Muslims, Barbara Pillsbury notes how in
comparison with the way Islam is practiced in the Middle East, Chinese Islam deviates
most radically in that observing the pork taboo has become the central, and often the only
strong indicator of the faith.17 Pillsbury cites Hajji Abdulla, a colonel from Honan
province, who says, “We Hui-hui have turned Islam upside down. ‘Don’t eat pork’ is not
even one of the five pillars of Islam but to us it is more important than the duty of
prayer!”18 One of the explanations that Pillsbury gives for the peculiar Hui focus on pork
is that it has become the most convenient and practical sign of the faith. Typical
observances such as praying five times a day, fasting during the month of Ramadan, or
performing the hajj are difficult or impossible to carry out within Chinese society. Thus,
as a religious minority in a predominantly non-Muslim country, the Hui have latched
onto the pork prohibition as the best way to assert their religious identity. Pillsbury notes
that “failure to pray, to fast or to make the pilgrimage does not necessarily compromise
an individual’s Hui-ness or result in one being cut off from the Hui and crossing over into
Han-ism. Eating pork does.”19
The incredible power and authority granted to pork as a signifier of Hui religious
identity poses several questions. Most pressing of these is why the avoidance of pork has
become so representative of Hui religious identity. The analysis Pillsbury offers above
Pillsbury, Barbara, “Cohesion and Cleavage in a Chinese Muslim Minority,”
PhD diss., Columbia University, 1980, 112.
18
Ibid., 112-113.
19
Ibid., 129.
17
9
might explain why traditional pillars of Islam such as prayer and observance of Ramadan
are unpopular and difficult for the Hui community to uphold, but it does not fully explain
why the proscription against pork has become so central. In fact, in line with Pillsbury’s
reasoning, avoiding pork is also very difficult in a predominantly Chinese society where
pork is the staple meat. In the following section, I will argue that the religious
significance of the Hui pork taboo lies in two closely related needs: the need for a
religious community to feel pure and to distinguish good from bad, clean from unclean;
and the need to erect a barrier against the dominant non-Muslim Han.
Far more than an insignificant or irrational aversion towards pigs, the Hui pork
taboo conceals a preoccupation with religious purity. The Hui identify their own religion
as qing zhen jiao, which literally means “The Pure and True Religion.” The adjective
qingzhen (pure and true) becomes crucial in the language surrounding how Hui talk about
themselves and their community. In addition to using qingzhen to describe Islam, the Hui
also refer to their mosques as qing zhen shi (place that is holy and pure). By far the most
frequent and common usage of qingzhen within the Hui community refers to food. Food
that is qingzhen meets Islamic standards for dietary purity.20 In Maris Gillette’s
interviews with Hui Muslims in Xi’an, Gillette noted that the Hui themselves identified
qingzhen food as “particularly clean” or sometimes “clean and sanitary.”21 Purity was
both sanitary and religious. One woman informed Gillette that to make qingzhen food,
one must have xi guo da jin (washed a major ablution), that is to have washed oneself
properly according to a particular Islamic procedure. Thus, eating qingzhen food meant
20
21
Gillette, 106.
Ibid., 109.
10
eating food that had been prepared by a member of the religious community who had
purified themselves before touching the food. Patronizing a restaurant that hung the word
qingzhen over the establishment did not simply mean that one was eating clean food, but
one was also eating food prepared by a fellow Muslim.
Another woman in Gillette’s study named Yan worked in her family’s Hui
restaurant and explained the special care the Hui took with qingzhen food preparation.
Yan described how the Hui washed vegetables, dishes, and hands in separate basins to
keep different types of food segregated.22 This separation of vegetables, dishes, and
hands goes beyond Islamic legal requirements and is representative of the Hui’s unusual
obsession with purity. Contaminated food is symbolic of a contaminated religious
community.
Pork is especially dirty, the polar opposite of qingzhen. Residents in the Muslim
district of Xi’an whom Gillette interviewed emphasized how they believed the pig was a
“disease-carrying animal with filthy habits, living in dirt and eating trash.”23 One Hui
gatekeeper named Jiqing elaborated by explaining how, “if a person took a piece of pork
and a piece of lamb and left them out for a week, when she or he returned to examine the
two meats the pork would be maggoty and disgusting, but the lamb would still be ‘good,’
that is, dry and edible.”24 Hui aversion to pork is so drastic that they even avoid referring
to the word zhu (pig) in conversation. Pillsbury lists some of the many ways that the Hui
have found substitutions for the word zhu when forced to refer to the animal. One of the
22
Ibid., 110.
Ibid., 109.
24
Ibid.
23
11
most common is hei chong zi (“black worm” or “black insect”).25 Dru Gladney’s book,
Chinese Muslims, highlights how some Hui have gone to even greater extremes: many
Hui with the original Chinese surname Zhu, homophonous with the word for pig in
Chinese, have changed their surnames to Hei.26 Hui born under the year of the pig in the
Chinese zodiac will often explain that they were born under the hei (black) year.27 The
substitution of hei for words referring to pigs highlights the negativity, darkness, and
general avoidance of the subject.
Extreme steps are taken to avoid potential contamination of food by this filthy
“black worm.” Any cooking or eating utensils that could have been in contact with pork
are rejected. In fact, many Hui who visit Han homes will refuse any food that is offered
for fear that the food is contaminated.28 In Taiwan, where the Hui population is much
smaller, many Hui have adopted a more flexible attitude when visiting Han homes.
According to Pillsbury’s study, Hui in Taiwan “still refuse offers to share a meal in a Han
home but will accept a glass of tea, fruit and snacks such as sunflower seeds which have
not been contaminated by contact with the knife and ‘wok’ used for preparation of pork
dishes.”29
This leads to second point: the pork taboo is consciously, or subconsciously,
emphasized by the Hui to create a clear barrier separating those who are of qing zhen jiao
(the pure and true religion) from those who are not –namely the Han. The Hui could not
25
Pillsbury, 122.
Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 185.
27
Ibid.
28
Pillsbury, 117.
29
Ibid., 118.
26
12
have picked any other food more central and representative of Han society than the pig.
Pillsbury cites Hui sentiments that “no people in the world love pork more than the
Chinese Han.” The Hui are well aware of this, and often refer to pork as “Han meat,”
“Han religion meat,” or “their meat.” They even go as far as to avoid the word rou (meat)
because it can be understood by most Chinese as “pig meat,” and instead specify the meat
as either niu rou (beef) or yang rou (lamb).30 When I have lived or traveled in China, I
have always observed that pork is the most readily available meat from Chinese butchers,
and sometimes the only choice. According to an article published in the China News
Analysis, “The importance of pigs in China…cannot be exaggerated. Pork is the standard
meat… The pig is a national treasure.”31 In addition, eating is fundamental to Chinese
social life. Friends must eat together, and the issuing of invitations back and forth for
meals is often indispensable for establishing friendly relationships.32 The complete
refusal of Hui to share meals with the Han does not facilitate friendly relationships
between the two communities.
In fact, the Hui’s pork taboo and subsequent refusal to share food with Han
Chinese has produced many negative effects on the Han population’s opinion of the Hui
community. First, the pork taboo negatively affects Han food businesses since Hui
customers will never frequent their restaurants. The Hui might be considered selfish and
clannish because they only patronize their own establishments. Secondly, on a personal
level, a Han who invites a Hui over to their home might be offended and find the refusal
30
Ibid., 123.
Ibid., 115.
32
Ibid., 114.
31
13
to share food a striking violation of hospitality.33 In fact, the Han have found the religious
prohibition against pork very curious indeed, and it has become the basis of many
offensive explanations about the Hui religion and insults directed at the Hui people.
The centrality of the pork taboo to Hui religious identity is so well known and
noticeable to the Han that many Han Chinese assert, to the great distress and anger of the
Hui, that the Hui actually worship pigs. According to Pillsbury, there are many variations
of this Han belief. One version describes how the Hui come from a female pig ancestor.
Another version draws heavily from Xi You Ji (“Pilgrimage to the West”), in which the
monk Xuang Zang is accompanied on his journey to India by a pig named Zhu Bajie. On
their way to India, Zhu Bajie marries a non-Han girl in the village of Kao Lau Chuang.
This girl gives birth to a son named “Hui-hui” who becomes the ancestor of the Hui
people.34 In 1970 the Taipei newspaper Min zhu wan bao published an article titled
“Food Taboo Customs and Superstitions,” which drew comparisons between pigs in
China and cows in India, claiming that the pork taboo of the Muslims derived from their
belief that the pig was a sacred animal.35 However, it is hard to say whether the Han
actually believe their own stories about the Hui; in fact, it is quite possible that the Han
do not actually believe these stories, but tell them just to infuriate their Hui neighbors.
There is ample evidence that the Han are well aware of just how abominable the
pig is to the Hui community and consciously use pig imagery to attack the community.
Examples of Han insults directed at the Hui include ping zui (“vase mouth”), i.e., in the
shape of a pig snout, xiao yi ba (“little tail”), i.e., pig’s tail, zhu wa (“baby pig”), xiao zhu
33
Gillette, 109.
Pillsbury, 119.
35
Ibid., 125.
34
14
dan (“little pig’s egg”), and referring to the cap worn by some Hui as “pig’s head hat.”36
During the Cultural Revolution, the “Smash-4-Olds” campaign strove to target religion as
one of the four “olds” that needed to be destroyed. Hui Muslim religious centers became
a prime target, and in November of 1968, during the “Shadian Incident” in Yunnan
province, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army forced Hui residents to denounce
themselves, eat pork, and even imitate pigs by crawling and rolling. Pork bones and
carcasses were thrown into water wells located in the mosque courtyard, thus polluting
the main source of qingzhen water for the villagers.37 It is interesting to note that
“smashing” Islam did not involve burning the Qur’an or violating any other sacred
objects, but rather involved contaminating the community with pork flesh and
commanding the Hui to imitate pigs. From the Han perspective, the pig was the antithesis
of Islam in these communities. Therefore, by introducing pig flesh and pig behavior to
the Hui religious community, the Liberation Army could accomplish its goal of
“smashing” religion. Religious identity in the Hui case is clearly held together by
preservation of purity through avoidance of pork. Once this sense of purity and separation
from the pig is removed, the community loses its sense of sacredness.
It is necessary to note at this point that though the prohibition against pork has
made the Hui community especially vulnerable to violation of purity and has created an
easy basis for Han aggressors to attack the religion, the pork taboo has also served as an
important political rallying point for the religious community. In 1932, the publication of
an article entitled Hui jiao ren wei she me bu chi zhu rou (“Why Muslims Do Not Eat
36
37
Ibid., 123.
Gladney, 138.
15
Pork”) in a Shanghai magazine provided false and offensive information about the Hui
taboo against pork. The Hui community responded and succeeded in forcing the
magazine to cease publication and be discontinued.38 From June to November of 1993,
some ten thousand Muslims (some Hui and some of the Uyghur nationality) marched in
Lanzhou to protest a Sichuan comic that allegedly had depicted Muslims worshipping a
pig. This demonstration caused the suspension of passenger and mail services west of
Xi’an for fear of the unrest reaching Beijing.39 Muslims from different sects and
ethnicities throughout the 21st century have joined together to defy the Chinese
government on the issue of Islam and the pig.
However, though the pork taboo is a strong unifying force in creating a sense of
Hui community, one would be generalizing to say that all Hui observe the prohibition
against pork with great strictness. Dru Gladney highlights how the strictness of observing
the prohibition varies by geographic region and Hui population density: “In the southern
cities where Hui are few, there is generally less concern over qing zhen violations. Hui
identity depends on lineage and ancestry, not on cultural maintenance… This is not the
case in northern cities with larger Hui communities.”40 For example, Gladney provides
the example of Shanghai, where the Hui are widely dispersed and the pork taboo is harder
to observe. One man identified under the pseudonym Yang Guifu, who lived in a 3-story
complex built around a narrow courtyard, complained that there was no way to avoid
pork: “The Han have nowhere to wash and cook their meat but in the courtyard or on the
38
Pillsbury, 125.
Raphael Israeli, Islam in China: Religion, Ethnicity, Culture, and Politics (New
York: Lexington Books, 2002), 262.
40
Gladney, 186.
39
16
balconies. We put up with it, but we really wish we could move to where there are more
Hui.”41 Hui like Yang Guifu, who live in areas with little to no Muslim community, find
it difficult to uphold the pork taboo.
Another critique of the pork taboo is that Chinese Muslims only follow it in the
presence of other Muslims, and that perhaps the motivating force behind the observance
stems not from internal beliefs about purity but from fear of being excommunicated by
the Hui community. One common joke told by Hans about the Hui reveals this perception
that the Hui are hypocritical and only take their religion seriously when surrounded by
other Muslims. The gibe goes as follows: one Muslim traveling will grow fat, while two
on a journey will become thin. The references to fat and thin imply that one Muslim
traveling alone will eat pork while two dare not.42 In addition, Pillsbury explains that
some Hui may violate the taboo on pork because there are direct economic gains for
those Hui who join the Han in eating pork.43 The barrier that pork creates between the
Hui and Han communities may not always be advantageous to individuals. Ma
Wenxiang, an unemployed Hui father in Xi’an, explained to me that it was difficult for
him to succeed in business because he could not participate in the eating and drinking so
vital to Chinese business transactions. One can imagine how aspiring Hui businessmen
like Ma Wenxiang might succumb to eating with the Han in hopes of partnership and
economic gain. However, Pillsbury is quick to note that those Hui who violate the
prohibition against pork are no longer considered part of the community and are excluded
from the cooperative activities of the members. The justifications for this expulsion
41
Ibid.
Israeli, 13.
43
Pillsbury, 127.
42
17
include viewing the violator’s Hui blood as contaminated (for it contains pig fat) or
believing that the violator has lost the basis of Islamic faith.44 Violations of the pork
taboo do exist within the Hui community. The motivations for these violations may be
economic or purely situational. However, the religious ideology of the Hui community
still rejects these members as “contaminated” and no longer faithful.
As the pork issue continues to divide and infuriate members of the Hui and Han
community, Gillette’s recent article, “Children’s Food and Islamic Dietary Restrictions in
Xi’an,” offers a positive outlook on the future of ethnic tension as Hui qingzhen food
becomes complicated by the infiltration of mass-produced Western foods. Hui are now
forced to evaluate Western foods in terms of purity and acceptability. Gillette writes that
“Hui attitudes toward mass-produced foods suggest that qingzhen was still defined in
opposition to Han, but not in opposition to the West or what the West represented,
namely, science and modernization.”45 Gillette cites Pierre Bourdieu’s theory that
difference is asserted against what is closest and represents the greatest threat to one’s
social identity. Western food is associated with “the good life” Hui see in media
representations of the West and in the material lifestyles of foreign tourists. Even if
Western food was not prepared according to qingzhen standards, it was more acceptable
because “the Hui, like everyone else in China, wanted to modernize.”46 Therefore, the
Hui wanted to take in the West, symbolically through food, but also through Western
ideas, culture, and economy. Hui children are growing up eating more and more Western
food, something they can share with the Han children. This may pose a problem for the
44
Ibid., 127-128.
Gillette, 119.
46
Ibid.
45
18
distinction between Hui and Han. Gillette concludes her article by asking, “If food was
the most important factor that kept Hui separate from Han, then the consumption of
Western, mass-produced foods diminished the differences between Hui and Han,
particularly for children. One wonders where and how the boundary between Hui and
Han will be drawn when the children of the 1990’s have grown up.”47 Gillette leaves the
question open. As a barrier against the Han, the pork taboo has been successful up to this
point because food could be put in two categories: qingzhen (pure, clean, and holy) or
polluted (touched by the Han and their pork). Now that Western food introduces a third
category, the Hui will perhaps have to reevaluate their prohibition against pork as a
religious marker for the community.
Pork, Black Bodies, and the Quest for Purification:
African American Muslim Perspectives on Eating
Like the Hui Chinese, African American Muslims struggle with their identity as a
religious minority in a predominantly non-Muslim society. African American Muslim
dialogues about food are heavily entangled with issues of race, hatred, fear, and
segregation. Within the African American Muslim community, former Nation of Islam
leader Elijah Muhammad remains arguably the most influential and well known advocate
for a specific black Muslim diet. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Muhammad
published two significant books dedicated to the subject of how black Muslims should
eat: How to Eat to Live and How to Eat to Live, Book 2 offer valuable insight into the
ideology of Nation of Islam’s campaign to clean up the black Muslim through a strict
47
Ibid.,120.
19
diet. Muhammad believed that Allah had enlightened him concerning a method of eating
that would enable the vitality, purity, and holiness of the black Muslim community. In
How to Eat to Live, Muhammad instructs his Nation of Islam followers: “Hereafter. I
shall enforce restriction on my followers to eat as Allah bids us. As I have said to my
followers on many occasions, life cannot be prolonged unless we are careful of what we
eat and when we eat.”48 The most crucial aspect of Muhammad’s revolutionary black
Muslim eating regime is the avoidance of pork and all that pigs symbolize. In his
writings, pigs are personified as stupid, lazy gluttons; their meat is characterized as
especially filthy. In the following section, I will argue that Muhammad used
demonization of the pig and everything associated with this animal to advocate for a pure
and separate black Muslim community.
Muhammad stresses in How to Eat to Live that pigs are especially impure: “Pigs
are the filthiest and foulest animal that human beings could have resorted to for food.”49
Pork is different from other meat in characteristics: “The flesh of the swine, while
cooking, has a very different smell from that of other animal’s flesh while cooking. And
even when it is not being cooked, it has a bad smell.” In addition, Muhammad suggests
that pork contains a parasitic worm called trichina (commonly known as pork worm). He
writes, “Worms and insects take to its flesh while in the farmer’s curing stage faster than
to any other animal’s flesh. And in a few days, it is full of worms.”50
Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live, (Chicago: Muhammad’s Mosque of
Islam No.2, 1967), http://www.seventhfam.com (accessed January 25, 2007).
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
48
20
Beyond the negative physical characteristics of pork, Muhammad suggests that it
also symbolizes gluttony and stupidity. According to Muhammad, pigs cannot control
how much they eat. The pig is the greediest animal: “He never knows or cares to stop
eating, as long as he sees something to eat. He is the dumbest animal. He keeps his nose
smelling and eyes looking for something in the earth. You could feed him all day long,
and he will never look up to see his feeder.”51 The pig is a blind glutton, eating
everything without differentiating what he is eating or controlling the amount. Thus, the
pig represents the polar opposite of what Muhammad teaches, which is to limit intake of
food so that black Muslims only eat one meal a day.52 Here we are faced with the
symbolic aspect of eating. In this passage, Muhammad implies that since pigs lead a
lifestyle of gluttony and stupidity, eating pork is an indirect way to introduce these
negative traits into the black community. Rejection of pork is rejection of the gluttonous
lifestyle it symbolizes.
Pork is also heavily linked to slavery. Muhammad states his belief that “pork or
pig, all its parts and by-products, has been a chief food for the so-called American Negro
since the days of his physical bondage.”53 Muhammad’s aversion to pork is part of a
larger campaign against slave food. Other foods linked to slavery such as peas, collard
greens, turnip greens, and sweet potatoes are also banned. According to Muhammad,
“Southern slave masters used them to feed the slaves, and still advise the consumption of
51
Ibid.
Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live, Book 2 (Chicago: Muhammad’s
Mosque of Islam No.2, 1972), http://www.seventhfam.com (accessed January 25, 2007).
53
Ibid.
52
21
them. Most white people of the middle and upper class do not eat this lot of cheap food,
which is unfit for human consumption.”54
Muhammad concludes by returning to the question of pork and saying, “You are
what you eat, so why not eat the best and be the best. Do not allow this rotten, diseased
meat to be sold in your neighborhoods or brought into your homes.”55 This statement can
be analyzed in two sections. First, “you are what you eat,” so therefore, don’t eat a filthy
animal that represents gluttony, stupidity, and slavery. Secondly, Muhammad commands
his followers to sever all contact with pork; Nation of Islam followers need to erect a
barrier so that this symbol of impurity never enters their neighborhoods, their homes, or
their bodies again.
Edward E. Curtis’ theory on the black body offers valuable insight into why
Elijah Muhammad was so preoccupied with regulating what his followers ate. Curtis
explains that slavery established a long period in American history when blacks were
“denied the most basic right to protect themselves and their families from bodily harm
and humiliation.”56 This endangering of the black body continued even in the postslavery era, when lynchings and sexual assaults against black Americans made bodily
safety a key concern. Today, fears about black bodily safety continue on in fears about
bodily reproductive safety. Patricia Turner’s examination of rumor in African American
communities, cited in Curtis’ article, reveals continuing anxieties about black male
sterility caused by the evil intentions of white food producers. One example is the fear
54
Muhammad, How to Eat to Live.
Muhammad, How to Eat to Live, Book 2.
56
Edward E. Curtis, “Islamizing the Black Body: Ritual and Power in Elijah
Muhammad’s Nation of Islam,” Religion and American Culture 12 (2002): 169.
55
22
that “Church’s [fast food chicken franchise] is owned by the Ku Klux Klan [KKK], and
they put something in it to make black men sterile.” Another fear is that “Tropical
Fantasy [a fruit-flavored soft drink] is made by the KKK. There is a special ingredient in
it that makes black men sterile.”57 Turner’s study shows that food is seen by the African
American community as a way that white, racist society continues to dominate and
threaten black bodily safety. Regardless of the truth of the fears cited by Turner, they
reveal the threat and power of food on the black body. Thus, control of consumption is
identified as control of black bodies and black fate. This leads Curtis to conclude that as a
result of the historical and present situation, “the black body has been and continues to be
an important symbol of the struggle for black liberation more generally.”58 In other
words, if blacks can gain control of their bodies, then they can symbolically gain control
of their liberty and their purity.
Curtis’ characterization of the struggle over the profaned black body is evident in
Muhammad’s writing. Muhammad describes the current situation: “America continues to
give the so-called Negroes the same bad food and drink that her [America’s] fathers did
in the days of servitude slavery.”59 Here Muhammad asserts that not only were blacks out
of control of their bodies during slave times, but they continue to be out of control
because they are passively eating the “bad” food that the enslaving American nation
continues to feed them. Long without control of his or her own body, the African
American is in a state of filth. As Muhammad puts it, “The so-called American Negro is a
57
Patricia Turner, I Heard It through the Grapevine: Rumor in African American
Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 2-3.
58
Curtis, 169.
59
Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live, Book 2.
23
product of evil and filth, produced by the white man of slavery.”60 Blacks, in
Muhammad’s view, are especially “filthy” because of their negative past as slaves. Thus,
Muhammad’s revolutionary eating regime and emphasis on avoiding pork can be
interpreted as a campaign to liberate the black body by purging it of impurities still
consumed through “bad” food. Curtis’ assertion that the black body is essential to black
liberation is clearly substantiated by Muhammad’s own teachings on food regulation.
Anthropologist Carolyn Rouse agrees with Curtis’ conception of the black body.
According to Rouse, “Limiting ingestion of particular foods, of course, represented one
of the most important methods against disease of the physical and social body.”61 Food
was one arena in which blacks could control what was being taken into their bodies.
Thus, if they could control the kinds of foods taken into their own bodies, blacks could
strive for purity and control of their physical, and thus spiritual, selves. This became an
essential doctrine of the Nation of Islam. In Rouse’s analysis, “Conversion for Nation
followers meant cleansing the body through food restrictions, namely the avoidance of
‘slave’ foods that, Elijah Muhammad argued, poisoned the minds of black folk, making
them participants in their own degradation.”62
Rouse further argues that Elijah Muhammad’s demonization of pigs and pork
serves to create boundaries separating black Muslims from the greater American nation.
Muhammad preaches that mainstream America is polluted with this foul meat:
“Christians are among the largest consumers of pork in America. So fond of swine flesh
60
Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live.
Carolyn Rouse, Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 109-110.
62
Rouse, 110.
61
24
they sacrifice it at the church, barbeque and cook it at feasts in their churches.” They “eat
this slow poisonous animal which God has forbidden as though they had an option with
God.”63 Christianity is saturated with pork. Christians continue to eat this impurity, even
bringing it into their churches. Furthermore, Muhammad points out that America’s
markets are loaded with swine, even when there are “thousands, tens of thousands, and
hundreds of thousands” of cattle and fowl. Americans clearly have a choice to eat other
meat, yet continue to eat “the divinely prohibited flesh –the swine, and represent
themselves as being the true Christian followers of Jesus.”64 Muhammad uses
consumption of the demonized pig to cast the Christian nation as an impure place to live.
He emphasizes that, “The flesh alone –not to say eating it –is Divinely prohibited to
touch. This, the white man knows, but what does he care? He eats anything.”65 The
personification of pigs as gluttons shifts here to the personification of the American
nation, prime consumers of pork, as gluttons. By painting mainstream America as
saturated with pork, Muhammad can easily take the next step and argue that pure, nonpork-eating blacks need a separate nation. As Rouse puts it, “Within a separate nation,
blacks could live free from the polluting foods (and ideas) of whites and therefore in a
state of purity as ordained by God.”66 Rouse highlights Muhammad’s method of
recategorizing foods as healthy, dangerous, sacred, tainted, or polluted according to the
physiological and spiritual needs of “Asiatic,” or black people.67 By arguing that different
races have different food requirements, and by linking consumption to social order, Elijah
63
Muhammad, How to Eat to Live.
Muhammad, How to Eat to Live, Book 2.
65
Muhammad, How to Eat to Live.
66
Rouse, 116.
67
Ibid., 109.
64
25
Muhammad draws the corollary that if blacks and whites naturally need different foods,
then they must also naturally need different social orders, and thus must become separate
nations.68
Since Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975, many Nation of Islam members have
accepted the leadership of Louis Farrakhan and continue to abide by Muhammad’s
original eating regime. Others, following W.D. Muhammad’s reforms, have begun to
identify with orthodox Sunnis and abandon many of the original ideas in How to Eat to
Live. Rouse’s study on black Sunni Muslims in California examines a group of black
Sunni women, many of whom are ex-Nation of Islam followers, and explores how these
women have adopted new conceptions of the black Muslim diet. The material presented
by Rouse is evidence that food taboos are both challenged by and adapt to social changes
within religious communities.
Rouse argues that food taboos within the African American Muslim community
have changed over time with shifts in the consciousness of the community: “In essence,
the developing food taboos within the Muslim community relate in complex ways to
social history and more specifically to personal feelings of agency over oppressive
political and economic structures.”69 As African American relationships with oppressive
political and social structures change, so too do their food taboos.
One example Rouse provides is the new acceptability of soul food within the
Sunni Muslim community. Rouse defines the origin of the term “soul” to mean
68
69
Ibid., 116.
Ibid., 110.
26
something that “contained some indescribable essence of ‘authentic’ black culture.”70
Soul food such as collard greens, peas, turnip greens, sweet potatoes, and white potatoes
were originally rejected by Elijah Muhammad and classified along with pork as “slave
food.” However, even though pork is still taboo, Muhammad’s directions against other
slave foods are no longer followed today by the black Sunni Muslims in California. From
evidence gathered through her fieldwork, Rouse argues that “for the Muslims in
particular, the recasting of the African American in history from one of object to one of
creative subject meant that southern ‘slave’ food was once again purified and
reappropriated as a powerful symbol of political and social resistance.”71 Southern slave
food became acceptable and pure only once the African American community began to
embrace their slave roots and to accept their past. For Rouse, “That means their identity
as Americans is a point of pride and not shame, and their reappropriation of southern
cooking represents that shift in identity.”72
Rouse comes to the conclusion that while Elijah Muhammad may have used food
in a militant campaign to shut out white society and to reject the slave past of African
Americans, food currently serves a more positive role in black Sunni communities.
Eating is no longer about exerting bodily control by avoiding a long list of slave foods,
but rather has become a celebration of religious and social heritage: “For the African
American Muslim community, eating was always an expression of social, personal, and
religious communion. As such, food was not prepared simply to fill one’s stomach; to
70
Ibid., 106.
Ibid., 125.
72
Ibid.
71
27
cook was an expression of religious duty, love of community, and love of Allah.”73 Food
and eating of food has become a positive force that helps facilitate and define community
relationships. Rouse writes that with respect to the black Sunni community she examined,
“the practice of food production, distribution, and consumption clarified each member’s
relationship to the group and to the intellectual and spiritual project of selfpurification.”74 Rouse recognizes that the shift in African American society from the
view of blacks as objects suffering oppression to blacks as subjects has likewise altered
the soul food taboo. As African Americans become more comfortable with their past,
they express this sentiment through eating foods that represent and celebrate their slave
roots. Self-purification through food continues, but the choices of which foods are
tabooed and which are celebrated change alongside community perceptions of their past
and future.
Synthesis: Converging Roles of Food in Hui Chinese
and African American Muslim Communities
As different as the African American Muslims and Hui Chinese may appear on
the outside, studying the function of food in these two religious communities reveals
striking similarities. First is the identical attitude of viewing pork as especially dirty,
bordering on evil. The Hui call it “the black worm,” while Elijah Muhammad preached
that “worms and insects take to its flesh.” Both communities believe that pork somehow
rots faster than other meats, and is generally disgusting in all respects. However, this
similarity is not particularly striking, since all Islamic communities observe the taboo
73
74
Ibid., 109.
Ibid., 108.
28
against pork. Chinese and African American Muslims living as minorities within porkeating majorities simply go to greater extremes to emphasize the impurity of the meat
consumed by their fellow citizens.
What is significant is that these two communities cling onto the impurity of pork
as a way to demarcate boundaries between the dominant society and their religious
minority. For both Hui and African American Muslims, pork comes to symbolize both
the mainstream society, and everything the community aspires to reject. The Hui view
pork as “Han meat.” And in reality, since Han food is saturated with pork, avoidance of
this meat isolates Hui members from many aspects of the dominant society –especially
preventing them from eating with the Han. Elijah Muhammad encouraged the African
American community to view eating pork as a way of perpetuating the state of filth,
gluttony, and stupidity to which slavery had rendered the African American body. Pork
was identified with what the white Christians, in their ignorance, continued to eat. Pork
became Christian America’s meat, and Muhammad wanted the Nation of Islam to have
no part in America or its filthy meat. In both the Nation of Islam and the Hui Chinese
community, the pork food taboo physically and socially separates the religious minority
from the majority community.
Anderson and Ulrich’s hypothesis that food serves as a social marker is clearly
substantiated in these two cases. It is evident in the Hui case that eating is not so much an
individual act as it is a social act. The joke that “one Muslim traveling alone will grow
fat, but two on a journey will become thin” suggests that reasons behind observing the
pork taboo go beyond impurity to include socially motivated desires to remain within the
Hui community. For the Hui, failure to pray or fast does not compromise Hui-ness, but if
29
an individual eats pork he or she is no longer considered part of the community. In fact,
that person’s blood is often referred to as “contaminated.” This reveals a striking example
in support of Ulrich’s hypothesis that physical boundaries are analogous to social
boundaries. The Hui pork-eater is no longer considered part of the community because
pork has entered his or her body. If the community were to accept this member, then the
community would also be accepting pork, just as this member’s body had already
accepted the impure meat. Ulrich’s hypothesis is further substantiated in the 1968
People’s Liberation Army’s attempt to purge religion from one Hui community by
throwing pig carcasses into the water wells of the village mosque. Pollution of the wells
(the physical pollution of the community) signifies pollution of the social community; in
essence, the Han soldiers were forcefully breaking down the barrier between Han and Hui
by introducing pork flesh into the Hui community.
The African American case also substantiates Ulrich’s hypothesis, but in a
different way. The focus on the black body as a crucial site of community reform clearly
supports the idea that physical bodies are analogous to social bodies. Elijah Muhammad
was able to link consumption to social order in his argument for black separatism. Curtis
too argues that liberation of the black community could only be accomplished with
liberation of the black body. Eating becomes vital to the African American community’s
ongoing dialogue with its slave past, as evidenced through the pork taboo and changing
attitudes to soul food. As Rouse points out, eating soul food becomes acceptable and
embraced once the community itself comes to accept and embrace its slave roots. Rouse’s
study shows how food taboos are not stagnant but constantly moving and reacting to
social values.
30
In the Hui case, the dynamic nature of food is evident through Gillette’s study of
the effects of new Western food on the Hui community. Gillette hypothesizes that food
may not serve as an adequate barrier between the Han and Hui once this next generation
of McDonalds-loving children grow up. When Han and Hui begin sharing Western food
together, food can no longer remain a symbol of the barrier between the two groups.
In conclusion, it is evident that food taboos are central in preserving the integrity
of Muslim minority communities through creating a way for individuals to physically and
socially demarcate a barrier between the pure, taboo observing insiders and the impure,
non-taboo observing outsiders. However, as evidenced in Gillette and Rouse’s studies,
the role of food is constantly changing and far from definite. As values change, and as
new elements are introduced to society, the function of food taboos within religious
communities must change as well. This study shows how examining eating practices can
offer vital insight into the fears, beliefs, and identity of religious communities. Eating is
never just about satisfying individual hunger, but comes to symbolize purity and
membership in a religious community. More research needs to be done, however, on
whether food serves similar functions in Muslim majority communities, where the need
to construct barriers against a dominating force is irrelevant. Also, this study only
examines food taboos within two Muslim minority communities. Scholars need to
examine more Muslim minority communities in order to fully understand the complexity
of eating practices.
31
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33