Losing centrality and socialization of Islam in Suzhou Memories, identities and positionality around the city mosques

Cultural and political alterity in China is levelled by disrupting local communities and networks, both necessary to keep memories and sense of identity alive through sharing and socialising. By taking Suzhou’s mosques as focal lens, the author assesses an experiential void which is politically and socially created, and shows the consequences of rewriting history. The broken nexus between buildings, communities and memories impacts the historical centrality and socialization of Islam in Suzhou, where communities are dispersed and shared memories are lost. Mosques’ positionality in the urban fabric is assessed through interviews and interaction with local Muslims, and the identification of past surrounding communities and networks. The assessment of the heterotopic dimension and contested memories of Suzhou’s mosques in a contemporary context — performed by collecting historical, intellectual, topographical and architectural fragments — allows us to grasp the highly symbolic dimensions of a past diversity in identity spaces. The role of communities in relation with the city’s rich intellectual past — including its tradition of literati translating Islamic classics from Persian to Chinese — is understood as central, together with a spiritual geography made of connections and relations among places.