ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role played by women ahong in vernacularizing Islamic practices and conduct as they interpret a global belief system for application to local women's everyday life. It asks how the dual influences of Islamic and neo-Confucian gender normative systems impact and complicate the task of vernacularization by women ahong as they balance guidance on faithful submission to principal Islamic precepts with local conditions under which women must reconcile domestic prerogatives with religious discipline. It describes and illustrates the unprecedented move by female religious leaders and ordinary women to conduct their own exegesis of scriptural texts often presented as evidence by critics of women's audible public voices as a subversive feminization of Islam. Women ahong have made the performance of jingge and zansheng an important devotional and missionizing part of their calling. This development represents both a formal reconnection with their history and a recalling of past eras of women's mosque culture. The leading role played by women ahong (imams) – particularly focusing on two key leaders’ experiences – in steering religious and social changes toward greater self-determination is highlighted.
