ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the individual stories of Hui Muslim women who lived through the political, social, and gender transition from the Republican era to society under the Chinese Communist Party state. The Party's overarching ideological mission was the nation's liberation from familial, social, and cultural dependencies, replaced by a unifying commitment and overriding loyalty to the ideological and political goals of the newly founded state. This chapter reveals rarely heard stories of women from ordinary Muslim families during years of hardship under an ever-more aggressively secularizing political system, and how they found themselves the convenient counterfoil to the enlightened, socialist paradigm of the new Chinese woman. The women's conversations touch upon the impact of a revolutionizing society on Muslim family relations; on prioritizing life and work pressures over Muslim prayer discipline; on the personal conflicts experienced from taking advantage of newly legislated women's rights while remaining loyal to the values of their besieged family and community; and on the role of women ahong and the significance of women's mosques in rebuilding lives of religious piety.
