Category Books

The History of Women's Mosques in Chinese Islam »

Authors: Maria Jaschok
ISBN-13: 9780700713028, ISBN-10: 0700713026
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
Date Published: July 2000
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Maria Jaschok

Book Synopsis

This is a study of Chinese Hui Muslim women's historic and unrelenting spiritual, educational, political and gendered drive for an institutional presence in Islamic worship and leadership: 'a mosque of one's own' as a unique feature of Chinese Muslim culture. The authors place the historical origin of women's segregated religious institutions in the Chinese Islamic diaspora's fight for survival, and in their crucial contribution to the cause of ethnic/religious minority identity and solidarity. Against the presentation of complex historical developments of women's own site of worship and learning, the authors open out to contemporary problems of sexual politics within the wider society of socialist China and beyond to the history of Islam in all its cultural diversity.

	Acknowledgements
	Division of Labour
	List of Maps and Tables
	Illustrations
	Abbreviations
	Collective Preface
Pt. I	Introduction	1
I	A Mosque Of Their Own: Muslim Women, Chinese Islam and Sexual Equality	3
Pt. II	From the Margins of Memory	33
II	Scholarly Debates: Islamic Faith, Innovation (bid'a) and Constructs of Femininity	35
III	The Beginnings and History of a Female Religious Culture	68
IV	Growth and Expansion of Women's Mosques and Schools	101
Pt. III	Women's Mosques, Nu Ahong and their Religious Culture	119
V	'Look Not at the Evil and Hear It Not' - From Ancient Persian Canons to Contemporary Female Sexuality	121
VI	'The Road to Allah's Commandments' - Conflicts of Loyalty under Chinese State Law	138
VII	From Dependence to Independence: Women's Mosques, Islamic Patriarchy and the State	154
Pt. IV	Claiming Heaven	177
VIII	Between Allah and Modernity: Re/Engendering the Past	179
IX	Xiuti; 'From Head to Toe' - Shaming and Concealing the Body	211
X	The Feminisation of Purgatory: Mediating Spiritual Faith and Equality	237
Pt. V	Chinese Muslim Women: Communitas, Choices, and Conversion	259
XI	Aisha, A Chronicle of Conversion and Collective Survival	261
XII	Lives and Testimonies: Living in God's Shadow	276
	Yang Huizhen Ahong, Social Activist in Zhejiang	276
	Ba Ahong, Henan, Preserving Female Religious Tradition	283
	Yang Yinlian Ahong, Harbin, Heilongjiang: My Work Report	287
	Daughters-in-Law in an Ahong's Family, Recalled by Shui Zhiying	292
	Epilogue	304
App. I	Profiles of Two Leading Women's Mosques and their Religious Leadership	307
App. II	Nusi in the Republican Era (1912-1949)	312
App. III	Questioning Hui and Han Women and Men on Quality of Life (Survey)	315
App. IV	Unpublished Documentation on Central China's Muslim Culture and Women's Lives (lodged with Henan Provincial Library, Zhengzhou, Henan Province)	320
	Glossary	324
	Bibliography	337
	Index	355