Ramadan in the UK brought with it the daily routine of fasting, worship, work, tarawih and other forms of worship. As the Mu’azzin sounds the call to prayer in the evenings, white skullcaps glint in the fading brightness of the setting sun as the faithful make their way into the masjid. The shush of whispered "Assalam alaikums" fills the hall. Outside, the masjid, minarets stretch up into the sky to a single crescent moon decorating the top of the dome.

This is a typical scene in the UK but were it not for the fact that this scenario is in a masjid tucked away in the landlocked interior of officially atheist and traditionally Buddhist China.

When the imam gives his Khutbas (sermons) on Fridays, he also speaks in Mandarin. Under the skullcaps and behind the veils of the men and women gathered, there are Chinese faces concentrated in prayer. Accurate data is difficult to obtain because of the Chinese regime, but China's estimated 20 million to 30 million Muslims may in fact be the second-largest religious community in China, after the 100 million or so Buddhists.

Islam in China is moreover in the process of a strong revival, spurred on by increasing trade links with the Middle East that have ended the centuries-long isolation of Chinese Muslims from the wider Islamic world.

Orthodoxy among Chinese Muslims is on the rise as ever larger numbers go on the annual hajj pilgrimage and youngsters return from their studies abroad in Muslim countries. Nonetheless, Chinese Islam retains characteristics that set it apart.

The communist revolution with its emphasis on gender equality has left its mark here. Mao Zedong famously said that "women hold up half the sky", a lesson China's Muslims seem to have adopted well. Female imams such as Nu Ahong and exclusively female masjids such as Nu Si play a unique role in the Middle Kingdom.

Certain restrictions continue to apply on Islam, as on all religions, in China. For example, inviting others to Islam is strictly forbidden and children below the age of 18 are not permitted to receive religious instruction at all. Moreover, all imams must be licensed by a governmentapproved body and accept the superiority of the state over any religious authority.

In recent years, Ningxia has benefited from donations worth millions of US dollars from the Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank, which has enabled a facelift for The Islamic College in the regional capital Yinchuan, as well as the establishment of several Arabiclanguage schools.

Interest in Arabic is booming so much so that even the Ningxia Economic Institute has begun to offer three-to-four year-long Arabic courses. Ningxia University also opened an Arabic language department last year.

"Earlier we were too busy just making a living. Now that we are richer, we have more time to focus on the spiritual, and by learning Arabic I can read the Quran in the original. As a Muslim this is my duty," said Song Xiulan, a 40-year-old housewife.

A hundred miles east of Yinchuan in the small town of Ling Wu, 50 other women, their heads covered with scarves, sit in a room reciting the Quran. They are being taught by Yang Yuhong, one of two female imams at the Tai Zi Mosque. Yang is one of about 200 certified female imams in the autonomous region. Yang says she does not see anything unIslamic about the concept of female imams:

"There are many things that are easier for women to talk about with other women. And everyone, man or woman, has a duty to study and understand the religion."

But this new tradition of female imams in China is less revolutionary than it first appears. While the women are granted the title of imam, they are still not allowed to lead men in prayers. Their role is more that of a teacher, and their students are exclusively female.

"The women imams are respected people whom the community looks up to, but of course they do not have the same religious powers as men. Men and women are equal but their roles are different,"

But while the Hui Muslims' Arabiclanguage skills and cultural affinity with the oil-rich Middle East are now being seen by the authorities as a valuable economic resource, the stronger sense of group identity among the Hui fostered by these renewed linkages with the Islamic world is leading to new challenges.

In the past the Hui were among the least orthodox Muslims in the world. Many smoked and drank, few grew beards, and Hui women rarely wore veils. Increased contact with the Middle East, however, has brought changes. Thousands of Hui students have returned from Arab countries and they have brought with them stricter ideas of Islam.

Mosques in Ningxia have now begun to receive worshippers five times a day, more Hui women have taken to wearing headscarves, and skullcaps are in wide evidence. There is a strong identification among the Hui community today with the wider problems of the Islamic world.

"We are a peaceloving religion, but look what they [the Americans] have turned us into. Look what lies they spread about us," said Yang.

For many non-Muslim Chinese, this identification of the Hui with communities outside of China is problematic. "Earlier the Hui were just like us except they didn't eat pork. Now they think they are very special. They think of themselves as foreigners," a Foreign Office official in Ningxia complained.

The Hui are exempt from China's one-child policy, and affirmativeaction schemes reserve special seats for them at universities and government departments. In interior regions such as Ningxia that have been left out of the economic boom of China's coastal region, competition for jobs is intense and resentment against the Hui's "special" privileges is increasing.

For the Hui, greater freedoms and contact with the wider world mean they must undertake the difficult task of negotiating among their increasingly complex identities being Muslim, Hui and Chinese.

For the Han, the challenge is to foster Hui culture without alienating the community from the rest of Chinese society. The manner in which both sides address these challenges will be key to the maintenance of social stability in China in the coming years.

Islam in China has a long tradition stretching back more than 1,200 years. The largest community among the Chinese Muslim groups is the Hui.

Numbering about 10 million, the Hui are descendents of Middle Eastern traders and their converts who first travelled to China along the silk route during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906).

Centuries of isolation meant that they blended in with the largely Confucian and Buddhist Han Chinese who make up more than 90% of the modern nation's population.

The Hui speak Mandarin and look like Han but they are also not to be confused with the other large Muslim minority group in China, the Uighurs, who are of Turkic ethnicity and live mostly in the western autonomous region of Xinjiang.