Such is the bifurcated state of religious freedom in China, where Muslim women either enjoy unprecedented space for religious expression or face more restrictions on their faith than they would almost anywhere else in the world \u2014 all depending on who, and where, they are. And behind both extremes lies the powerful hand of the Chinese state.<\/p>\n
Zhang Pingyun is in her 50s. A sturdy woman with a hearty laugh, she is the Jinan Women\u2019s Mosque\u2019s principal imam, or as Islamic religious leaders are called in China, <\/span>ahong<\/em> <\/span>\u2014 from the Farsi word <\/span>akhund<\/em>, harking back to the Persian traders who helped introduce Islam to China a thousand years ago. She has served as an ahong at this mosque in China\u2019s eastern Shandong province for more than 25 years.<\/p>\n China is the only country in the world with a long historical tradition of independent women\u2019s mosques<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n China is the only country in the world with a long historical tradition of independent women\u2019s mosques, which developed throughout central and eastern China among ethnic Hui Muslims like Zhang, a Chinese-speaking ethnic group of 10 million often physically indistinguishable from the majority Han Chinese. It\u2019s a <\/span>controversial<\/a> <\/span>phenomenon still rare in the world today \u2014 by comparison, the <\/span>first women\u2019s mosque<\/a> <\/span>in the United States didn\u2019t open until January 2015. That\u2019s because the idea of an official religious space dedicated exclusively to women, as well as the official recognition of female imams, are considered innovations that change or add to orthodox Islamic practice, and many <\/span>view<\/a> <\/span>such innovations as <\/span>haram<\/em>, or forbidden. <\/strong><\/p>\n Lack of Islamic precedent doesn\u2019t seem to faze Zhang, whom worshipers call Zhang Ahong. \u201cSociety is different now,\u201d she commented. \u201cWomen work outside the home.\u201d<\/p>\n On the second day of my visit to the Jinan Women\u2019s Mosque, pictured below, I watched Zhang ascend the podium and deliver the noon sermon to a roomful of around 150 women gathered for Friday prayers, the Islamic equivalent of Sunday morning church services. She offered spiritual guidance to the women, exhorting them to approach the month of fasting with a sense of gratitude. \u201cRamadan isn\u2019t just not eating and not drinking water for a day,\u201d Zhang declared from the podium. \u201cIt\u2019s a chance to get rid of your bad habits. It\u2019s a gift from God.\u201d<\/p>\n One need not be a woman forced into a burqa under the Taliban in Afghanistan, or forbidden from driving a car in Saudi Arabia, to appreciate how empowering such a scene is. Born in a small city in Texas, I grew up in a church where women weren\u2019t permitted onstage during services. I attended a private Christian college where, as a female student, I was barred from taking preaching courses and from leading the daily school-wide mandatory chapel services. But there stood Zhang, preaching boldly in that religious space like it was her right.<\/p>\n And under Chinese law, it is her right. Unlike the U.S. constitution \u2014 Congress never ratified the <\/span>Equal Rights Amendment<\/a> <\/span>\u2014 the Chinese constitution affirms the principle of equality between men and women. The Chinese constitution may often be honored in the breach, but gender equality is a concept that many Hui Muslim women have apparently internalized. Maria Jaschok, a research fellow at the University of Oxford and coauthor of the book <\/span>The History of Women\u2019s Mosques in Chinese Islam<\/em>, told me in a phone interview that Chinese Hui women view themselves \u201cnot just as Muslims, but also as Chinese citizens, and as such have the right to exercise\u201d their gender equality, including in the realm of religion. Hui women, said Jaschok, know that they live in a country that does not tolerate what government authorities call \u201cbackwards or feudal\u201d customs, and many believe deeply in the notion that \u201cwhat men have, women should also have.\u201d<\/p>\n A kind of \u201cold-fashioned feminism\u201d is how Dru Gladney, professor of anthropology at Pomona College in California and an expert on Chinese Islam, described it in a phone interview. Gladney related how in the 2000s, one women\u2019s mosque in the historic city of Xi\u2019an had spearheaded an effort to save the local Hui Muslim quarter from government demolition. The women helped transform it into a popular restaurant district that successfully remained, even in China\u2019s drinking culture, alcohol-free. \u201cChina is just an oasis of Islamic revitalization in some areas,\u201d said Gladney.<\/p>\n Government policies have done more than encourage a sense of self-confidence among Hui Muslim women. In the 1990s, Chinese authorities began to require that all religious sites, pagodas, chapels, and mosques register with the government and comply with certain guidelines. Many experienced the new regulations as unwelcome state interference that restricted their activities. But for female-only mosques, whose existence had been tenuous for much of their history, mandatory registration was a welcome gift, not a restriction.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a milestone for the women,\u201d said Jaschok. It was an \u201cextraordinary opportunity to have legal recognition of their status,\u201d making them \u201cequal with men.\u201d<\/p>\n That uncompromising Soviet-style push for equality has made itself felt across religious boundaries in China. It\u2019s no coincidence that the first time I ever saw a woman stand in front of a congregation and give a sermon was at an official Chinese Christian church in the southern coastal city of Xiamen in 2010, when I was 24. For me, it was a revelation. I was accompanied that day by a young American Christian man. After the service was over, he told me he was troubled by the woman preacher, whose existence he took to be evidence of the state-approved church\u2019s weak theology. Sometimes the difference between liberation and persecution divides neatly along gender lines.<\/p>\n Despite the long history that female-only mosques have enjoyed in China, their equality with men\u2019s places of worship has not been guaranteed. These unique women\u2019s spaces have faced pressure throughout their history, and conservative movements within the Muslim community, both inside and outside of China, have not always been friendly to their existence. Even today, Jaschok told me, especially with China\u2019s growing engagement with more conservative Arab countries, there are those who \u201cwould be extremely pleased to see these women\u2019s mosques and ahongs disappear.\u201d Foreign organizations from Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia have <\/span>funded<\/a> <\/span>the construction of mosques and schools in China; these foreign-funded institutions enforce more traditional gender roles and view women\u2019s mosques as heretical. But overall, the Chinese government places tight <\/span>limits<\/a> <\/span>on foreign religious influence, viewing it as a threat to ruling Communist Party control; and in Jaschok\u2019s opinion, women\u2019s mosques in China have \u201csurvived because of the protection of the Communist Party state.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, the party, which took the helm in 1949 and established the People\u2019s Republic of China, doesn\u2019t merit credit for the original existence of women\u2019s mosques. They had developed gradually over several centuries, evolving out of the need of a tiny minority religion to stem the inexorable tide of Chinese Confucian culture by ensuring Muslim mothers knew their own religion well enough to pass it to their children. And during the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of chaos and factional violence during the 1960s and 1970s, the party closed all religious institutions, including women\u2019s mosques, and heavily persecuted believers of every stripe.<\/p>\n But after religious activity was once again legalized in the 1980s, women\u2019s mosques in central and eastern China have largely flourished. \u201cWhen you look across the globe,\u201d said Gladney, for women in Islam, \u201cChina is one of the bright spots.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet in Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region in China\u2019s far west, women face some of the most draconian restrictions against Islam in the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Yet in Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region in China\u2019s far west, women face some of the most draconian restrictions against Islam in the world. No revelations of religious empowerment awaited me there; it proved very difficult even to broach the topic of religion with many Uighurs, the largely Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic group who call Xinjiang home. That\u2019s because in the highly militarized and resource-rich region, once more than <\/span>80 percent<\/a> <\/span>Uighur but now dominated by the country\u2019s majority Han Chinese, it can be risky for a Uighur to be seen speaking with a Western journalist.<\/p>\n Barna is a Uighur Muslim in her late 20s who likes ice cream, fast-fashion clothing retailer H&M, and the music of Sami Yusuf, a British Muslim whom <\/span>Time<\/em> <\/span>magazine has <\/span>hailed<\/a> <\/span>as \u201cIslam\u2019s biggest rock star.\u201d She and her husband, both from southern Xinjiang, arrived in the United States from China a few months ago and have now settled in a city on the East Coast. Barna, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her identity, told me that she and her husband came to the United States in search of greater freedom.<\/p>\n Whereas Muslims in central and eastern China enjoy relatively broad freedom to practice their faith, Uighurs in Xinjiang live with tight strictures on their religious expression. Uighur men in some counties must register each time they enter the mosque, and only government-approved mosques are permitted to operate. In addition to <\/span>prohibitions<\/a> <\/span>on certain religious dress and Islamic symbols, local authorities have even imposed anannual ban<\/a> <\/span>on fasting during Ramadan, one of the five pillars of Islam that forms an essential part of a Muslim\u2019s spiritual practice. It\u2019s been reported that to enforce the ban, schools and work units are required to monitor the behavior of Muslim students and employees to ensure they are eating.<\/p>\n Chinese authorities claim that such strictures are needed to combat radical Islam, which they <\/span>allege<\/a> <\/span>has caused the periodic <\/span>violence<\/a> <\/span>now plaguing the region. Unlike the scattered Chinese-speaking Hui who have no true homeland or ethnic connections abroad, Uighurs identify as a Turkic people with a history of autonomy in a homeland where many Uighurs now feel marginalized by discriminatory policies. Such sentiment has fueled a nascent separatist movement and boiled over into ethnic tensions, visible in such disturbances as the deadly 2009 Urumqi riots. But critics <\/span>assert<\/a> <\/span>that the religious restrictions only serve to feed what has become a vicious cycle of repression and violence there.<\/p>\n Life is difficult for many Uighurs in Xinjiang. But the weight of religious restrictions has fallen disproportionately on Uighur women, whose space for expression of their faith \u2014 already circumscribed within the confines of a conservative culture \u2014 has been crushed. Unlike central China, Xinjiang has no historical tradition of women\u2019s mosques, and according to Uighur custom, women do not pray in men\u2019s mosques. As a result, Uighur women developed a strong tradition of gathering informally at each other\u2019s homes to share religious knowledge, provide social support, and sometimes even pool their resources to fund small-scale entrepreneurial endeavors. But as authorities have issued ever tighter regulations on spiritual practice across the region and cracked down on what they <\/span>term<\/a> <\/span>\u201cillegal\u201d religious activities, it has become difficult and even dangerous for Uighur Muslim women to attend any kind of Islamic gathering at all.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter 2009, everything changed,\u201d Barna told me. \u201cNow the rule is, if I go to your house, read some Quran, pray together, and the government finds out, you go to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cAfter 2009, everything changed,\u201d Barna told me. \u201cNow the rule is, if I go to your house, read some Quran, pray together, and the government finds out, you go to jail.\u201d The local Xinjiang authorities, which have demonstrated their ability to impose jarring regulations on Islamic practices in the region, could pass laws requiring the mosques to open their doors to women or laws establishing spaces to allow Muslim women to meet. But they have made no such attempts \u2014 perhaps, Barna agrees, because authorities see no benefit in encouraging more people to attend the mosques. \u201cThey want to cut off our religious faith,\u201d Barna said. \u201cReligion [is what] makes us strong. They\u2019re afraid of us.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to stifling their ability to raise capital for small businesses, the ongoing crackdown has also severely limited Muslim women\u2019s career choices. Xinjiang authorities discourage or even <\/span>forbid<\/a> <\/span>government employees \u2014 not only civil servants but also teachers, police, military, and employees of the massive state-owned enterprises that dominate the region \u2014 from wearing headscarves. This can force observant Uighur women to choose between their job and a fundamental element of their religious expression.<\/p>\n In Barna\u2019s case, she chose her religion. The young woman had graduated from college with the hope of becoming an English teacher. She sat for the requisite government examination, passed, and was offered a job. \u201cIt was a very good opportunity,\u201d Barna said as we sat in the living room of her one-bedroom apartment, eating a sour pomegranate she had purchased at a local Chinese market. But she wears a headscarf, and on top of all the other control that the work unit tried to levy on her \u2014 no fasting during Ramadan, restrictions on praying on government property \u2014 the headscarf ban was too much. She quit the teaching job and took a position as a translator at a small private company. Now that she lives in the United States, Barna hopes to start a family, attend graduate school, and return to the career path she was forced to abandon in China.<\/p>\n In that way, Barna is one of the lucky ones. Authorities often <\/span>refuse<\/a> <\/span>to issue passports to Uighurs, especially in southern Xinjiang, or <\/span>require<\/a> <\/span>a huge bribe before processing Uighur applications for the travel document. In the past several years, hundreds of Uighur families have attempted to flee China on forged travel documents, only to be <\/span>detained<\/a> <\/span>in countries such as Thailand and <\/span>Cambodia<\/a>. In July, Thailand <\/span>repatriated<\/a>more than 100 Uighurs under pressure from Beijing, despite <\/span>objections<\/a> <\/span>from human rights groups and the U.S. government, who say they fear those sent back may face retribution or even capital punishment upon their return.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want freedom, but they didn\u2019t [get it],\u201d Barna said, who had finally been able to obtain both a passport and a U.S. visa after trying for years. \u201cI did. It\u2019s like a miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n Hui Muslims, of course, don\u2019t always fall outside the orbit of state suspicion. Shortly before Friday prayers on June 12, when I visited the iconic Niujie Mosque in Beijing\u2019s historic Hui district, I counted a total of 29 police officers stationed around the front and side entrances. Half the police were lined up on both sides of the front entrance, so that worshipers had to first walk through a virtual gauntlet of uniforms before entering the mosque compound. Zhang reminded me repeatedly while at the Jinan mosque that \u201csome questions can be answered, but some can\u2019t\u201d \u2014 particularly those regarding government policies. Proselytizing is carefully monitored. And the Islamic Association of China, the religion\u2019s highest authority in China responsible for regulating and managing Islamic institutions throughout the country, is government-affiliated; its <\/span>stated aims<\/a> <\/span>include protecting \u201csocial stability\u201d and \u201cthe unity of the motherland.\u201d<\/p>\n A firmer separation between government and religion, as exists in the United States, largely commits authorities not to intervene in internal faith-based practices, even if those practices otherwise contravene widely accepted principles. That includes religious exemptions to laws outlawing discrimination against women, a type of religious freedom which can create isolated enclaves of pre-1950s gender roles. If state power could protect against religiously justified patriarchy, that\u2019s a bargain that some on the receiving end might take.<\/p>\n But ordinary Chinese citizens don\u2019t have a say in the matter, and depending on the government\u2019s estimation of how much of a political threat they pose, they are presented with very different trade-offs. For Zhang, that means that she can practice Islam with the same freedoms \u2014 and the same moderate proscriptions \u2014 that belong to Chinese Muslim men. \u201cThe country has stipulated that we cannot force people to learn about Islam; we cannot grab their arm and drag them into the mosque,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are only allowed to speak [and] to provide guidance.\u201d<\/p>\n But for millions of Uighur women, it means being forced to choose between faith and career, freedom, even ethnic identity. That\u2019s because regulations on religious practice there stem from top-down directives that can be tone-deaf, even paranoid. Muslim women in China get the best or the worst of state-mandated religion \u2014 and it all depends on where they live, and who they are. The restrictive policies are \u201cruthless and out of control,\u201d said Barna. \u201cAnd they\u2019re just for Uighur people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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