Spreading the Muslim word is a labor of love

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-6-24  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

AT a tiny courtyard mosque in China's most populous Muslim region, Jin Meihua leads other women in prayer and chants.

Every day, the 44-year-old dons a black robe and violet scarf and preaches to dozens of women at the Little White Mosque in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where most of the country's Islam-faith Hui ethnic minority live.

Jin has a routine life. "Except attending funerals, I always stay in the mosque, teaching the female Muslims Islamic scriptures."

She is a female imam or "ahong," pronounced ah-hung, from the Persian word "akhund" for "the learned." In China, a female imam is an innovation, despite being rare in Arabic countries.

Jin has 15 students, mostly middle-aged and elderly people. They learn slowly and need two years to grasp the Holy Quran.

"Many female Muslims do not have the benefit of a school education," she said. "Although they are Muslims, they know nothing about the Quran. I want to teach them the holy scriptures.

"Women ahongs are the best qualified to do this because they can communicate with the female faithful in ways the male ahongs can't."

As early as the late Ming Dynasty (around the 17th century), the faithful had set up female Muslim schools around the country. These turned into female mosques operated by women imams in late Qing Dynasty (around the 19th century).

The practice of female imams then spread to all the Chinese Muslim societies, said Shui Jingjun, a Henan Provincial Academy of Social Sciences researcher.

In the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976), religion was banned. It was revived in the 1980s, increasing the numbers of Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims and Christians, among others.