Education, gender and Islam in China: The place of religious education in challenging and sustaining ‘undisputed traditions’ among Chinese Muslim women

Abstract

The essay investigates the place of religious and secular education in the lives of Chinese Muslim women. Education is treated as a site where state and society are reproduced and/or challenged, where tensions arise over control of minds and bodies, and over interpretations and uses of religion and culture. Specifically, the essay compares contrastive situations of female religious education within a matrix of inter-dependent issues such as the diversity of Muslim contexts in China, state treatment of minorities’ rights to religious practice and to education, organisation and implementation of religious education, and relations between secular education and Islamic education.