ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the construction of gender within Hui communities, in terms of embodying faith in everyday life. Nowhere is the gender ideology clearer in the lifestyle of rural Hui people, than in how labour is strictly divided. Man's work is outside the home, earning money. According to the traditional view, the woman's work is in the family, which is considered her natural responsibility and obligation. In Chinese Muslim communities, women are taught that they must demonstrate piety, respect the elderly and obey their husbands. The new headscarf fashion can helps to understand the characteristics of new times of religious life. When the Sahwa movement was rising in Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s, headscarf fashions spread also in China, through people who had gone to work or study in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Soon some college women in China were wearing the headscarf, which they never had donned before.
