The History of Womens Mosques in Chinese Islam

This is a study of Chinese Hui Muslim womens historic and unrelenting spiritual, educational, political and gendered drive for an institutional presence in Islamic worship and leadership: a mosque of ones own as a unique feature of Chinese Muslim culture. The authors place the historical origin of womens segregated religious institutions in the Chinese Islamic diasporas 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 womens 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.