At first glance, the buliding isn't much to look at. Like many mosques built in the last 25 years in China, the white tile and green domed structure looks unremarkable. It's yet another building made to look like those famous mosques from sister communities in the Middle East. Perhaps more puzzling, a smokestack rises out from behind the building, suggesting that the structure occupies a space long intended as a place for something else. Only after the embossed golden characters emblazoned aboved the entrace of the mosque become visible, does the uniqueness and significance of the building become apparent. The words read, in the right-to-left fashion consistent with ancient Chinese: 清真女寺
(qingzhen nǚsi). Women's Mosque.
Why the surprise? Women's mosques are rare in China. In most instances men and women have separate prayer rooms within the same complex. This is the case at Niu Jie, where men and women pray in separate rooms at the same building. In other cases, men's and women's spaces are separated by a curtain or a divider within the same hall. These arrangements are common. Mosques have both men's and women's washrooms, and separate places for both male and female members of the community to pray. A separate mosque set aside specifically for women is something that one rarely sees. In fact, in my experience, the women's mosque in Jinan is almost singular. Throughout the time I've spent working on this project, I've been fortunate to visit a large number of Islamic communities throughout China. In total, I've visited (by my count) about 63 mosques in Hui communities in 17 different cities. Jinan's is, thus far, the only women's mosque I have ever encountered. I'm not the only one, either. On a recent weekend, a visiting friend (and fellow Fulbrighter) remarked that the women's mosque was a first for him as well, and he'd lived in the Middle East.
And yet the women's mosque has long been a fixture of the Jinan Hui community. In a conversation with the lead imam at the mosque, and the woman who serves as the building's manager, both claimed that the current mosque facility (built relatively recently in the mid 1990s) actually replaced an earlier building on the same site which served as the women's mosque. Further, they told me, the decision to build the current women's mosque (which they claimed was significantly larger in size than the previous building) came after another separate women's mosque located outside the neighborhood was demolished during the construction of a new high-rise tower. According to the two women, the tradition of having an independent space for women's worship in Jinan is longstanding. Though all Islamic worship came to a grinding halt during the Cultral Revolution, when the school for training Imams reopened at the Southern Mosque in 1984, women were admitted in the first class alongside their male counterparts. Thus, the Hui community in Jinan has always included a role for female leadership.
Perhaps more rare than the existence of the mosque, itself, is the fact that the mosque is also presided over by a woman. Globally, it's rare to find women serving as imams (or 阿訇, ahong, as they are referred to in China). In Jinan, however, nearly 10 women serve in this capacity at the women's mosque. The mosque performs all the same functions as the two other men's mosques in the neighborhood. The ahongs perform services, lead the congregation in the weekly jumu'ah prayers on Friday afternoons, and delivers a khutba (a sermon that proceeds prayers). She mentioned that the women's mosque even holds its own services for Eid al-Adha, and Eid al-Fitr, where female imams perform the same ritual sacrifices of sheep and cows, and the distribution of the meat to the city's poor, as their male counterparts do. Thus, the women's mosque has a vital role in the spiritual life of the community.
Further, the women's mosque serves an important social role in Jinan's Hui quarter. Besides offering services for women to attend, the imam told me, the mosque provides important community outreach programs. As an example, she pointed to a weekly class/discussion section held at the mosque on Wednesdays. These classes not only served the purpose of commenting on the Qur'an, but also provided lessons on the basics of Arabic language, and learning about government policies on religion and ethnic minorities. But perhaps most importantly, the classes offered by the women's mosque provide important help to women who are recently arrived in the community. Jinan's Hui Quarter is currently home to lots of people who have only very recently arrived in the city. Some come from close by: villages and small towns within the administrative region of the city of Jinan, or from close-by cities in Shandong like Zibo, Dongying, Weifang or Dezhou. Others, however, come from greater distances: western regions like Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang. For these women, the imam says, the mosque's classes are a place where they can learn a little bit about the history of the community, and get the help they need to integrate into the Jinan community. Helping these women to cope is something she cites as an important reason for having these classes.
Jinan's is not the only women's mosque in China. The imam is quick to point this out when I mention that it's the only one I've ever seen. Hui communities all over China, and particularly in what Dru C. Gladney calls China's "Qur'an Belt" (the northwestern provinces of Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang), continue to build separate mosques for women, she says. When I ask why the sudden increase in the number of these buildings, she repsonds that it corresponds to a general upward trend of interest in Islam in Hui communities. Now, she says, many middle aged Hui, who largely abandoned the faith during the anti-religious fervor of the Cultural Revolution, search anew for their identity as Muslims. Moreoever, she says, the number of young Hui interested in learning about their ethnic and religious traditions continues to grow. The community is being reinvigorated. The growth in women's mosques should not, however, downplay just how special Jinan's is. That a place like this could exist (and indeed flourish) in such a small community, in a region where the Hui (and Muslims in general) are a decided minority, is pretty remarkable.
When I was in Beijing a few months ago, I interviewed an Imam at one of mosques outside the second ring road. During the midst of our conversation he made a point of saying that Islam is global religion. There are Muslims everywhere in the world, and Islam adapts wherever it goes, he reasoned. While the basics of the faith are the same, he added, each country that Islam comes to melds with the tenets of the faith to create unique local Islamic cultures. China, he observed, was no exception. The Jinan women's mosque seems to provide evidence for this claim. Though women's mosques are certainly uncommon the world over, the women's mosque in Jinan seems to present a very uniquely Chinese take on Islam. It's just another indication that even in the midst of the predominantly Han Chinese heartland of Shandong province, little islands of diversity (like Jinan's Hui Quarter) make cities like Jinan worth exploring.