One of the most commonly repeated truisms about China's Hui community is that they are a group distinguished from the majority Han almost solely on the basis of their religious faith. Islam, first and foremost, is what distinguishes Han from Hui. This is not only the official party line, but it is also how the Hui community is discussed in many academic works as well. As I've mentioned here before (seemingly innumerable times... so much so that I fear the point may be getting a bit tiresome), however, diversity in the Hui community is staggering. Hui enclaves exist in nearly every major city in the country, and when you start to really talk to people who identify as Hui, you find a vast range of spoken dialects, reigonal customs, and, of course, religiousity.
Faith and faithlessness are things I confront on a fairly frequent basis in my interviews. Unsurprisingly, the importance attached to Islam as a foundation for Hui identity varies wildly depending upon who you're talking to. For many of the people I talk to, claiming Hui identity is something that requires a devotion to Islam. As I discussed previously, in my last post, migrant workers who have arrived in Jinan from points west, where the Islamic community is both larger and more devout, frequently cite the relatively secular nature of Jinan's Hui as real point of difference with their hometowns. Some repsondents expressed a belief that Chinese Muslims were perhaps more stringent than others. "You know that Hui are more strict about halal diet than even Arab Muslims?" one interviewee told me. He explained, "They won't even use pots, pans or dishes that pork has previously been cooked in or eaten off of. Even after they've been washed and cleaned out! I don't know Muslims from any other country who are that stringent." Others note that finding people who practice strict observance of Islamic lifestyle habits is rare. One interviewee, a life-long Jinan resident in his early 30s told me, "You know, eating a halal diet deals with a lot of different aspects. It means not eating pork, but also not using certain types of oils, and not eating dishes made with animal blood." He continued to say, "It also means that we Muslims aren't supposed to drink alcohol, even though many people do anyway," adding with a sense of resignation, "but these days there's really nothing that can be done about that."
Even some of those people I speak with who do not regularly attend prayer services indicate that they still feel faith is an essential component of Hui identity. A woman who serves as one of the many imams at the Jinan women's mosque remarked that she always found faith to be a pillar of her identity as Hui, even though she didn't know much about what it meant to be Muslim. "I read in a Hui magazine published in Gansu or Ningxia, that part of a woman's role as a Muslim was to teach her children about Islam, and I thought, 'I'm also a Muslim woman, but what do I know about Islam?' And so I decided to start learning." Another lifelong Jinan resident, a worker in a factory, found himself called to learn more about Islam after he reached adulthood, and began to read widely about the faith and learn Arabic. "I've even started to write some articles about the history of Sufis in Jinan," he told me when we met. He, too, expressed his belief that many locals didn't really understand what it was to be Hui, and rarely gave any consideration to religion.
Conversations I've had with other locals suggests that his assesment of locals as ambivalent about their religious beliefs isn't entirely wrong. One college student I spoke to remarked that, even though her state-issued identification states that she's Hui, she really has almost no practical experience with Islam. "Truthfully, I'm not a very good Muslim," she said, before admitting that she'd never even so much as visited a mosque. Others mention that, as they get older, they find religion plays a less pivotal role in their lives than it did in their youth. Another student who had come to Jinan from another nearby city in western Shandong remarked, "When I was smaller, I thought that going regularly to pray would be something that I would do, but now I don't go often." He continued to explain that religion was something that currently took a backseat to his studies, and his trying to plan for the future. For many of these people, maintaining a halal diet is as much a cultural habit as it is a religious dictate. Knowledge of Islam beyond its dietary and lifestyle demands is limited. "I just know that being Hui means that I don't eat pork, and that you get to add points on your college entrance exam score," the first college student told me.
In many cases, the people I talk to discuss the lack of knowledge about faith as a symptom of being "assimilated" or "Han-ified". But even in these cases, relativity matters. The student who had never been to a mosque argued that, in her eyes, her Hui identity was "watered-down" (淡化). These were the same words used by her classmate from Shanxi (a province to the west) to describe her own understanding of her faith. A look at their respective circumstances, however, reveal that their situations could not be more different. The student from Shanxi remarked that in her small village attendance at Friday prayers were "a must" for everyone in the community. "My parents don't attend mosque much," she said. "Only a few times a week when they can. But they always go on Friday." She remarked that when she'd lived at home, she'd routinely joined her mother in Ramadan fasting, and as a young girl, she'd studied the Qur'an in summer school sessions at the mosque. By her standards, this still amounted to being a lapsed Muslim, but her religious understanding far exceeded that of her classmate. It serves as yet another illustration of how incredibily complex ethncity in general (and Hui ethnicity in particular) can be. Where matters of faith and faithlessness are concerned, there are truly no easy answers.