Creation of chaste Muslim widows in late imperial Confucian-Islamic cultural encounters

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines Chinese-Islamic cultural encounters in the aspect of gender, investigating the issue of widows using Muslims in late imperial China as a case study. Mainly drawing upon historical sources produced by Chinese Muslims themselves, including inscriptions on steles in mosques, genealogies of Chinese Muslim lineages, as well as books written by Chinese Muslims in the late imperial period, this research probes into how Chinese Muslim men and women navigated between disparate Confucian and Islamic gender discourses in both their scholarly discussion and everyday practice. This research notes that from the mid-17th century to the late-19th century, Chinese Muslims displayed transforming attitudes of disapproval, silence, appropriation, and incorporation of Confucian notions of widows’ chastity, despite the Qur’anic discouragement of celibacy. This process did not indicate a decline of Islam amongst these Muslims. On the one hand, they were able to Islamize Confucian concepts and create a unique “Chinese Islamic” gender discourse. On the other hand, the cult of chastity was empowering to Chinese Muslim women, allowing them to expand their social space and be engaged in various communal and public activities of Islam. Women thus began to play a more public role in transmitting Chinese Islamic values and knowledge.