The changing Uyghur religious soundscape

Recent studies in the anthropology of Islam have called for a new understanding of the relationship between global forms of Islam and local priorities, new ideologies and everyday religious experience. This article addresses these concerns in the context of Uyghur society in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China where communities are increasingly engaging with transnational currents of Islamic ideology, and increasingly under pressure from the state which conflates religiosity with anti-state activity and extremist terrorism. The article focuses on Islamic media, in particular at the ways in which rural Uyghur women experience and reproduce globalized forms of Islamic media. It aims to understand how the most marginalized sectors of society are engaging with these changing religious ideologies and practices. The theoretical frame draws on notions of the ‘soundscape’, which explore the ways in which sound, practices of listening and perceptions of sound, may be central to making sense of the world around us.