Inside the Expressive Culture of Chinese Women's Mosques This Turmoil of the Soul

• Main Author: Jaschok, Maria
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Routledge 2025; Taylor & Francis
• Edition: 1
• Series: Routledge Contemporary China.
• Subjects: Anthropology; China; East Asian religions; female voices; Gender studies, gender groups; gendered practices; History; Interdisciplinary studies; Islam; Islamic precepts; JBSF1 Gender studies: women and girls; mosque; Muslim women; Nonfiction; orthodox Islam; Other religions and spiritual beliefs; Philosophy and Religion; piety; Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary subjects; Regional / International studies; Religion; Religion & Spirituality; Religion and beliefs; Religion: general; Rituals & Practice; Social and cultural anthropology; Social groups, communities and identities; Social Science; Society and culture: general; Society and Social Sciences; Sociology; Sociology and anthropology; Women's Studies; female voices; orthodox Islam; mosque; China; Islamic precepts; piety; gendered practices; Muslim women
• ISBN: 9781032618517; 9781032618531; 1032618515; 1032618531; 1032618604; 9781040146040; 104014604X; 1040146023; 9781040146026; 9781032618609
• DOI: 10.4324/9781032618609

This book presents a multi-voice narrative of the history and significance of current contestations over the increasing prominence of expressive piety in Hui Muslim women’s mosques in central China. By drawing on a ‘Song Book’ of chants, collected from the tradition of women’s mosques, as context it reveals just how the increasing prominence of female voices has given rise to considerable misgivings among senior religious leaders over the potential destabilization of orthodox Islamic gendered practices. Providing a historical introduction to the place and function of Islamic chants,jingge and zansheng, the book gives a conceptual framing of female silence, sound, and agency in local translations of Confucian and Islamic precepts, and women’s personal accounts of the role played by traditional and modern soundscapes in transmitting and celebrating Islamic knowledge and faith. As a study of women's soundscapes and the significance of legitimacy, ambiguities, and implications of female sound, this book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of Chinese society and culture, gender studies, cultural anthropology, and Islam.