The Korean Peninsula is often neglected in investigations on Islam in East Asia. The region already occupies the conceptual peripheries of studies on Muslim societies. During the two decades after the Korean War (1950–1953), however, Seoul hosted a small yet active community of Korean Muslim converts and visitors from places such as Malaysia/Singapore, Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. The early Korean Muslim leaders, some of whom first encountered Islam in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, attempted to plug themselves into transnational Islamic networks and politics in the transformed context of the Cold War. Internally, Korean Muslim leaders advocated for the utility of Islam as a diplomatic resource for the South Korean government in the struggle against communism, thereby reformulating pre-war articulations of Islam policy that had circulated across China and Japan, as well as narratives on unified Islamic civilization with an inherent cultural essence. Externally, they forged educational and philanthropic networks by connecting with Muslim diasporic figures in the East and Southeast Asian sphere, such as Ibrahim Omar al-Saqqāf, the Hadrami Arab consul of the Saudi consulate in Singapore and an agent of the World Muslim League in Mecca. By situating the emergent Korean Muslim community in Seoul within a regional and trans-regional religio-political nexus, this article repositions it as having formed through encounters with modern state(s) and power, and through interactions with Muslim diasporic agents who (re-)directed post-war mobility channels.

According to Islamic geographical texts, the route that passed along the southern bank of the Gamasiab River on the current Bisotun–Sahneh plain, connecting Kermanshah (Qarmisin) and Bisotun (Behistun) to Madharan, Kangavar (Qasr al-Lusus), and Nahavand, was very significant during the early Islamic centuries. However, based on archaeological evidence, it seems that a major part of this importance was attributed to the construction projects of the Sassanids, especially the later kings of the Sassanian Dynasty, such as Khosrow II, who focused on developing the current Kermanshah province, especially the Kermanshah–Bisotun region, and built extensive constructions including communication roads, bridges, palaces, and magnificent mansions along the southern bank of the Gamasiab River. The present research specifically and comprehensively investigates, for the first time, the southern route of the Gamasiab River in the southern part of the Bisotun–Sahneh plain and localises seven historical toponyms along this route. This research is mainly based on the analysis of Islamic geographical texts, especially those from the ninth and tenth centuries. Additionally, archaeological evidence such as the remains of old bridges, buildings, and sites, as well as the topographical and geographical features of the region, have been taken into consideration.

East Asia is rarely identified as a distinctly Muslim space. This article sheds light on the hitherto neglected history of modern East Asia as a site of Muslim activity and encounters. Mobile Muslims, who travelled and migrated to the East Asian space in the course of imperial globalization, often suffered discrimination as colonized subjects, but in other instances benefitted from imperial privileges and protection. The Tatars of Harbin, who came to Manchuria as Russian subjects, are emblematic, but understudied, actors in this regard. The city of Harbin, administered by the Russian-controlled Chinese Eastern Railway, emerged in the late nineteenth century as a rapidly growing transport hub and colonial settlement in Manchuria. Similar to colonial port cities, Harbin simultaneously exhibited characteristics of both the metropolis and the multi-ethnic and multi-religious composition of the empire. This situation created many opportunities for Tatars to seek their fortunes, especially in trade. Zooming in on the Harbin Tatars, this article discusses, first, the place of Tatar Muslims and their institutions in Harbin’s colonial society; second, the intertwining of notions of (economic) competition in the colonial space with ideas of progress and decline; and third, the potential for Muslim encounters across colonial boundaries. Taking into account the Muslim side of modern East Asian history is not only an essential part of understanding the development of global connections, it also helps us to rethink the dichotomy between colonizer and colonized, and focus our attention on the ambitions of Muslim actors in shaping their futures across the colonial space.

This article explores the global imagining of China as a site of Islamization at the turn of the twentieth century. While previous scholarship examined this fantasy-making among European Orientalists and Christian missionaries, we put the writings of the latter in dialogue with other (Arabic and Ottoman Turkish) discursive nodes and networks in the Middle East, as well as those of Chinese Muslims, highlighting the production and co-constitution of this narrative on a global scale. We argue that by the late nineteenth century the birth and spread of this narrative was tied to the growing acceptance of a particular conception of religion as a classificatory framework wherein ‘world religions’, as bywords for separate civilizations, were locked in intense Darwinian competition with one another. Entangled with narrational processes like the invention of global religions and the construction of the Muslim world, the vision of an Islamized China became a fertile (and long-lived) battleground for a wide range of imperial anxieties, anti-colonial aspirations, and minority counterclaims, many of which we explore in this article.

Our Forum envisions East Asia as part of Islamic Asia, treating it as a space where Muslim communities have forged cross-border networks across time, episodically, and where discourses about Islam have circulated and been appropriated in interconnection with Muslim-majority regions of the continent (that is, ‘Islamic’ Asia). We hold that Islam, as a constellation of religious, political, cultural, and social formations, questions the spatial and conceptual boundaries of East Asia, while East Asia expands the known geographies of Islamic Asia. The articles in this Forum show that Islam was a shared paradigm of meaning-making across inter-Asian geographies, and offered alternative modes and axes of spatial production and political idioms that both Muslims and non-Muslims latched onto across Asia, including its easternmost reaches.

Drawing on archival sources from Albania, China, the former Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, this article places the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s (DRV) response to the Prague Spring in 1968 within an international framework. The available documentation suggests that DRV policymakers repeatedly expressed deep concern about Alexander Dubček’s radical reform programme and, prior to the Warsaw Pact invasion, signalled their support for external intervention. The article moreover contends that Hanoi’s stance reflected broader anxieties about its own national reunification struggle, fears of ideological destabilization, and continued reliance on fraternal assistance.

This article explores the evolving relationship between li (rites) and fa (law) in early China amidst social transformations. It demonstrates that although li and law initially existed in tension following the publication of penal law in the late Spring and Autumn period, they gradually moved towards the process of reconciliation through Shang Yang’s legal reforms in Qin and Xunzi’s theoretical synthesis during the Warring States period. Ultimately, the integration of li into Qin’s legal framework marked the culmination of this process, with li and law collectively structuring the state’s social and familial hierarchies. The article demonstrates that the convergence of li and law was based on their shared nature as impersonal and authoritative rules regulating socio-political life beyond specific circumstances, while their differing scopes and methods of enforcement were gradually harmonised.

Drawing upon archival records from the Republic of China and first-hand memoirs of direct witnesses, this article examines the June 15 and August 10 incidents of 1948 in Thailand,1 highlighting the intricate interplay between anti-communist and anti-Chinese politics. While existing scholarship has largely located these events within Phibun Songkhram’s anti-Chinese educational policies, this article moves beyond conventional narratives by uncovering their deeper political implications. The June 15 Incident primarily targeted overseas Chinese communists, the Qiaodang, substantially undermining its mobilizational and organizational capacities, whereas the August 10 Incident predominantly affected prominent Chinese merchants and Kuomintang-affiliated groups, reflecting broader anti-Chinese objectives. The article argues that anti-communist and anti-Chinese agendas were mutually constitutive, strategically intertwined by the Phibun regime to garner international support from Western powers and consolidate domestic control. By employing flexible diplomacy and deliberate ambiguity, the Thai government adeptly navigated Cold War tensions and internal political pressures, minimizing geopolitical risks while strengthening regime stability. Ultimately, these incidents reveal the profound consequences of instrumentalizing ethnic and ideological tensions, which significantly reshaped diasporic Chinese communities and the trajectory of Thailand’s early communist movement.