Internal Feelings of Hijab: The Lived Experiences of Chinese Young Muslim Women in Guangzhou

Islam was established in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE) following the visits and settlement of Persian and Arab traders [1]. Through subsequent intermarriage with Chinese women in port cities such as Guangzhou, these foreigners were the first generation of Chinese Muslims. Following the first official delegation by Sa'ad ibn Waqqas, one of the Prophet Mohammed’s (P.B.U.H.), maternal uncles, the first major settlements of early Muslim traders made successive delegations to Guangzhou and were well received [2]. From that time, Muslim traders made Guangzhou known to the whole world as the center of the “Silk Road”. They were one of the first Muslim settlements in China. These early Muslims settled down, intermarried with the Han Chinese and Mongols, and converted them to Islam and at the same time assimilated into Chinese culture, and their descendants gradually constructed a new group of people, the Hui [3]. For centuries, this group, or later categorized as Hui people, believe in Islam and live different spiritual and material lives from that of the majority Han people.

At present, The Hui is the third largest ethnic group of the 55 Chinese ethnic minorities. They use Mandarin as the official language and share many Chinese customs, which creates the impression that the Hui are more integrated into Chinese society, as they are found all over China, particularly in cities. Although widely spread over China, the Hui mainly come from Ningxia, Gansu, Henan, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Guizhou, and Yunnan provinces [4].

Compared to their male counterparts, the female Muslim Hui are more struggling to practice their belief, faith, and tradition. In 2017 for example, President Xi Jinping issued an order saying all religions in China should be Chinese in orientation, there have been further crackdowns. Campaigners say China is trying to eradicate Uyghur culture.

On the issue of why Muslim women wear the hijab, most studies affirm first and foremost that it comes from the rulings of the Qur'an. However, scholars in China differ in their opinions and understandings when it comes to explaining the reasons. Some argue that Islam requires women of faith to wear hijab mainly for the purpose of protection, both to protect women's private property from infringement and to protect them from men. Some argue that the actual purpose of this requirement is to ensure the purity of patrilineal lineage through the segregation of women, which is one of the important measures of gender segregation in Islam; at the same time, the purpose of requiring women to wear the hijab is not only to protect women but also to protect men from the temptation of beauty.

Some scholars, on the other hand, emphasize that Shariah requires Muslims to have their own individual characteristics, to behave and look distinct from non-believers, and not to wear clothes similar to those of non-believers. In conclusion, scholars generally agree that the wearing of the hijab by Muslim women is an important sign of faith in Islam and has become an integral part of the traditional dress culture of the Muslim nation.

In addition to the material functions of the hijab itself, such as keeping warm and cold, and the symbolic function of expressing religious beliefs, scholars have also noted its other functions. Some scholars believe that the deeper cultural meanings of the head covering include the followings: regulating behavior and passing on culture; the taboo cut of incest among relatives; and reflecting the simple view of female chastity. In particular, the head covering worn by Hui women is becoming increasingly common today, and the head covering is becoming more and more exquisite, which also serves the function of beautifying life and decorating the self.

Zhao Keren has published successive articles elucidating the cultural value of the Muslim women's veil, pointing out that the veil connotes the tendency of Muslim political values and is a political weapon for Muslim women to go against Western cultural expansion and hegemony; that the veil contains the Muslim beauty of the city and can bring psychological pleasure and relaxation to women; and that it also embodies the Islamic concept of equality for all.

So, it is interesting to know, how these Chinese Muslim women negotiate their identity in a non-Muslim country. There is an urgent need to tell the public who they are, what they need, why they are there, and how they live their lives differently from mainstream society. Apart, there must be an initiate to reveal the ethnic identity development of young Minority Chinese Muslim women, which is scarce and needs to be introduced to the general public.

Table 1. Participants demographic

Lin: A new converted Muslim who was 27 at the time of the interview. Lin speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, English, and a little Arabic. She is Han by ethnicity. She came to Guangzhou for college and found a job after she graduated. She studied Logistics during college and works in the same field. Due to the nature of that job, she has a lot of customers from the Middle East, and some Muslim girls work in her company, so she slowly developed a love through the kindness of her Muslim friends and learned about Islam.

Lin joined the night classes for the new converts and systematically learns about religion and finally converted to Islam in the class. She used to be an active Marxist and also deeply rooted in Confucius’s teachings. As she grew up, she started thinking about her future and the nature of things. She found peace by learning Islam and being with the sisters at her weekend classes. Through studying religious practices, she found some commonalities between Islam and Confucius, which are virtues. There are still some barriers for her to being a Muslim, for example in traditional customs and being with her parents, as they are non-Muslims.

Yang: Yang was one of the Quran teachers at the highest level. Yang was 35 years old by the time of the interview. She was married with three children. She is from Ningxia and grew up in a traditional Muslim family. She went to study Islam in Thailand and returned to China with a bachelor’s certificate. She was married during her study period to her college mate who is also from her hometown. They both came to Guangzhou to settle down after their studies. Yang said at the beginning they spent a few years in tremendous difficulties. They were graduates from religious colleges, and therefore, they could not get a formal job in government offices or companies. They had to work as Arabic translators for some trading companies. She insists on wearing a hijab and that is also the reason she could not work in government offices.

Huang: A single woman aged 45 during the time of the interview. She is a Han and has converted to Islam for almost ten years. Huang is one of the oldest among all the students but still remains unmarried. Coming from Henan, Huang never heard about Islam or Muslims when she was in her hometown. She only got to know about Islam when she started doing business in Guangzhou with some Arab people. she was influenced by the Muslims and converted to Islam. Huang has a very supportive family who does not set any obstacles for her even when she became a Muslim.

Weiling: Coming from Xinjiang, Weiling was 26 at the time of the interview. She was born into a traditional Hui family and grew up in Xinjiang. Her parents did not teach her much about religion, but kept strict Muslim dietary habits, so she knows what is lawful and what is unlawful to eat. She did not have a clear understanding of her identity as a Hui until she left home to study in a secondary school in another province. Her life before that was more mixed with Han people and Hui identity was not discovered. And when so many young people of different ethnicities sharing the same faith met in a strange place gave new meanings to them. That is, they were all Muslims and they felt like one family. However, the education they received during that time did not contain anything about faith or religion, and the policy is to blend all ethnicity into one Chinese core, a process of cultural assimilation, which is to set no boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims.

She joined the university and started contact with some leading Muslim students, and gradually felt her sense of belonging as a Muslim. The community organized religious classes that affected her to return to her Muslim religion, and also it caused her some confusion on the hijab issue. She insisted that in China, a non-Muslim country, wearing a hijab is not necessary, and it attracted people’s attention. So, she preferred to dress like a normal Chinese woman.

As a newcomer to Guangzhou, she says she is still at the periphery of the Muslim community, and she wants to learn more about the religion and be a good Muslim like them.

Chinese Muslims (the Hui) has become one of the most successful minorities in the world by choosing assimilation [6]. And in response to this assertion, the researcher’s findings of current research indicate that Chinese Muslims, in particular women, have achieved their sense of ethnic identities as Muslims and Chinese through their unique educational experiences of adapting, acculturating, and integrating Islamic beliefs into the mainstream communist Chinese society. In order to maintain their status as Chinese citizens, they keep exploring their ethnic identities through community religious education for religious and familial fulfillment.

The participants in the current study shared societal and cultural challenges they experienced as the floating population in Guangzhou. Even after years of living in this big city, many of them still experience ignorance, misunderstandings, and negative stereotyping from society. The current study shows that a successful ethnic identity of a Muslim woman is achieved through exploring the process of acculturation and integration, involving in community activities and religious classes, redirecting to ethnic and religious practices, and internalizing religious beliefs into real-life experiences.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 show a comparison of the original and revised version of the conceptual frameworks.

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Figure 1. Original conceptual frameworks

The researcher’s journey of the whole process of analyzing the findings of this researcher has revealed some new findings from the study. The findings reveal that firstly, ethnic identity is a dynamic process. Second, social and cultural contexts have great effects on an individual’s ethnic identity development. And thirdly, ethnic identity is multidimensional: family, friends, gender, and religion play vital roles in the process of achieving a positive ethnic identity. The fourth point shows that people’s perceptions; of hijab issues are major barriers for Muslim women living in mainstream society. And single Muslim women face difficulties looking for a partner in big cities like Guangzhou. Finally, Ethnic identity is understood and internalized through community religious education.

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Figure 2. Revised conceptual frameworks

5.1 Perceptions of hijab issues

Identity formation and development can be challenging for ethnic minority groups in particular. Ethnic identity as part of an individual’s self-concept and also the value or emotional significance attached to that member of the ethnic group [7]. The young Muslim women in this study came to Guangzhou as individuals with all kinds of educational and familial backgrounds. And they have struggled in different stages of life to locate themselves in mainstream society. To answer research question 4 about barriers these women encountered in life, the participants addressed social and cultural barriers in the process of searching for positive ethnic identities.

No doubt that all participants faced different levels and types of barriers in life, hence not all of them voiced out their problems. Instead, they commented on many good aspects of living in Guangzhou and some disappointments of their own hometowns. All the problems and topics they articulated were closely related to their ethnic identity Hui and their religion, Islam. To successfully live their Muslim identity in the Han majority society, the core of the solution is to achieve a successful ethnic identity through the right teachings of the faith that is Islam and at the same time, actively involved in all aspects of their life to maintain their Chinese identity. However, Muslim women are still encountering obstacles from misunderstandings and negative stereotypes by mainstream society, and they also face difficulties in putting their hijab on in public. Single Muslim young women, in particular, find it not easy to look for a future partner who shares the same values and beliefs.

Ethnic identity has been defined as “one’s sense of belonging to an ethnic group” [8], which is also constructed through the process of communicating with others [9] and is dependent on ways and degrees of how others accept them [10]. It expresses both our separateness from others and our ways of connecting to others [11]. The onset of active exploration is triggered when individuals experience discrimination or are increasingly exposed to people from backgrounds different from their own. These experiences or crises initiate an interest in learning and comprehending the history, traditions, and cultural values of the in-group [12, 13].

For women, identity development focuses on the need to assert the self while maintaining a connection to others. Failing to achieve one’s identity is synonymous with failing to separate or maintain a healthy balance between individuality and being part of the group. While women may begin at different starting points, they all focus on the kind of person they want to become. In opposition to male development, interpersonal relationships play a major role in women’s identity development [14]. Rooted in self-awareness, women possess a greater capacity for intimacy and establish their identity by relating to others. Always evolving, women negotiate identity by considering the world they live in, the relationships they have, and how they gain a sense of pride in themselves without needing the approval of others.

Hui Muslims’ sense of identity is closely attached to their group membership. Looking into Hui’s history, Hui groups gradually learned to negotiate their cultural identity through interaction with the Han culture and manipulation of mainstream ideology by tolerating collisions raised from both internal and external criteria, as well as keeping an upward desire to achieve personal social value. The young generations of Chinese Muslims today, still face challenges when living in big cities like Guangzhou. With few changes, the majority of Han still keeps negative perceptions of the Hui people.

As social context has a great effect on one’s identity formation, almost all the participants stated their feelings on how others perceive them as minority Muslims. Regardless of where they came from and how long they have resided in Guangzhou, these young women have faced or are still facing ignorance, misunderstandings, and negative stereotypes by mainstream society. Phinney and Rotheram stated that with respect to ethnic group membership, where the dominant group holds traits or characteristics of the group in low esteem, the members of the low-status ethnic group might be faced with negative identity and low self-regard [14]. In congruence with Phinney’s assertion, Chinese minority Muslim women have been ignored and stereotyped for centuries by mainstream society [15].

As more and more Muslim women with hijabs appear in big modern cities such as Guangzhou, this phenomenon is seen as normal for both majority and minority groups. This study explored how Muslim Chinese young women negotiated their identity within and outside of their families. Both men and women, Muslim females’ religious behaviors are more visible, such as the head covering, and may bring on the greater unwanted attention [16]. And Islam receives heightened attention from the media and mainstream culture, female Muslims experience the identity process differently than males [16]. After expressing themselves as being “different” from the rest of the society, almost all of them shared their opinions and experiences hijab issue. Regardless of wearing the hijab, they do care about this piece of cloth and hold their own meanings toward it.

The participants reported that some years ago, there were a few women wearing hijab in big cities like Guangzhou, and people used to give strange looks to them and asked them why they dressed that way. In recent years, following the economic development and social changes of Guangzhou, an influx of Muslims has arrived and settled in this city. More and more Muslim women with hijab are visible and participating in all walks of life. In this study, four out of nine participants chose to wear hijab, and the rest dressed as normal Chinese young women. Interestingly all the nine women have their own unique views on the hijab issue.

In general, those who choose to wear hijab are comparatively more religious background, such as Yang, Saleena, and Zainab. And they are all married with children. Yang and Zainab grew up in religious families where their parents strictly followed Islam rules and rituals. Yang in particular went abroad to study religion in an Islamic college and returned to China as a Quran teacher, and she lived as a Muslim role model to her students. The three of them have learned from the religious class about things like prayer, and reading Quran, and they all felt obligatory upon wearing the hijab, although Saleena was still a new hijab wearer during interviews. Based on their interviews, the researcher found that the hijab did not cause them inconvenience or discomfort in their daily lives due to their profession as housewives which led them to have less communication with the public or the mainstream society. Huang, on the other hand, is a Muslim convert who also wore a hijab. She felt “comfortable” appearing in public as a Muslim, even though she does a small business and deals a lot with all kinds of people, and she chooses to wear a hijab. Huang and Yang are confident and satisfied with their Muslim identities and are willing to disclose their identity to other people. They both have ambitions to promote the Islamic faith to people around them in order to contribute to their religion.

However, more than half of the participants do not wear hijab. And they hold different opinions from the ones who choose to wear. And this group of young Muslim women shares one thing in common, which is they all have jobs except Ma, who is still a university student at the time of the interview. Being highly educated, this group of women has their own income and lives separately from their families. Almost all of them had little religious education from their childhood, and the only religious custom they abide by is the dietary practice, as they reported. For this group, their everyday life deals tremendously with the mainstream society, sometimes government officials, and they choose not to wear hijab in order to avoid unnecessary attention and misunderstandings as Weiling and Aisha stated. Although some of them think the hijab is not so suitable to be worn in China as the meaning it changes in China and in Muslim countries, where it may cause more attention from the public than wearing it in other Muslim countries. Furthermore, Aisha as a successful Muslim career woman also feels uncertain to wear a hijab when dealing with mainstream society due to China’s political environment. She said that Muslim women needed to work harder to change people’s negative stereotypes of them. And what is more important, according to Aisha, is to internalize Islamic faith and practices into proper behaviors and actions of each Muslim individual.