Alienation And Reunion:the Research On Transitions Of Religious Life In Kunming Shuncheng Hui Muslims’ Jamaat During The Process Of Urbanization

With the acceleration of China’s urbanization process in 1990’s,the Urban traditional Hui people’s community has been impacted more than ever before.The Niujie Hui Muslims’ community in Beijing and Qijiawan Hui Muslims’ community in Nanjing were both typical examples,Kunming Shuncheng Hui Muslims’ community could not avoid such trend as well,As a community inhabited by the urban ethnic groups,once it has been brought into the developing program of urbanization process.Consequently,everybody has to face the destiny of moving out and moving back to the original community.According to the statistics,we can easily see that the number of people moving back is much fewer than those moving out of the original community.As a result,the original community has been broken;the traditional living style of Hui Muslims as Jamaat has been broken too.Hui Muslims used to live in "mixed with other ethnic groups in vast areas and inhabited in certain regions" style.Nowadays,because of the urbanization process in China,such living style has been broken.Mosque is the center and symbol of the Hui Muslims’ Jamaat,It is the spirit and soul of Jamaat.The neighborhood of Jamaat is the whole space to form the Jamaat,it is a geographical community which is composed by many Hui Muslims’ families.The urbanization process has broken the geographical boundary of the urban Jamaat.It shows the geographical expansion,cultural Introverted Character and mental sense of belonging.Even though they lived in non-Muslim community and mixed with other ethnic groups,they still belonged to certain Muslim’s Jamaat culturally and mentally.They usually went to the Mosque to attend the Islamic activities and have accesses to know the Jamaat.They formed the social relationships of the Jamaat.The changes of geographical space and social relationships of Hui Muslims’community have influenced the religious identity of traditional Islamic culture of Hui Muslims.No matter such changes are positive or negative,the changes have impacted their religious life and secular life.The changes also influenced the metal and physical world of the Hui Muslims’ holy space and secular space.Urbanization process in China changed the cities’ features.According to Shuncheng Hui Muslims,community,the former business models of traditional Islamic catering industry,cattle and sheep slaughtering and sales industry and fur industry were changed into the modern urban industries;the original Hui Muslim inhabitants who were the traditional Islamic culture holders had to become the new immigrants in the city.The original Hui Muslims had to move +out of their original inhabited area and live mixed in many new communities with people from other ethnic groups.Thus,the traditional Jamaat has been dispersed.The mutual religious life of Kunming Shuncheng Hui Muslims gave them a strong ethnic cultural identity of themselves and maintained the existence of the Jamaat.But under the impact of urbanization process and urban cultural acculturation,the Islamic belief and religious activities of Hui inhabitants who lived in Shuncheng Hui Muslims’ community has been changed too.The elder Hui Muslims,most of whom are more than 60 years old,and have moved out of the Jamaat came back to Jamaat on important Islamic festival celebrations,such as maulid al-nabi,maulid al-nabi and Eid al-Adha.They also will attend on Friday prayers-Djumah of each week in Shuncheng Mosque.The mosque and Jamaat are both significant parts of their mental religious life.Although the urbanization process has broken the original Jamaat,the mosque has its function of religious cohesive force to tighten up the Muslims surrounded the Jamaat and became the spiritual homeland for city Muslims.Today,Shuncheng Mosque has become a holy place for those Muslims who are not just from domestic,but also from all over the world,they communicated with each other and interacted with each other at here,the original social relationships existed as well and emerged the new trend of reuniting.The new reunited Jamaat has been formed now,most of the original Hui Muslims’ inhabitants have moved out of the former Jamaat and some of them have moved back to Jamaat,combined with the Hui Muslims who are the new comers to settle down in Jamaat.We analyzed the changes of Hui Muslims’ religious activities and their Islamic beliefs to talk about the new reunited mode of Jamaat is really helpful and meaningful for us to study the impacts on the Shuncheng Hui Muslims’ community under the of urbanization in China.