Suchergebnisse

The contemporary Islamic landscape in Bosnia-Herzegovina is often depicted as marked by fault lines between different Muslim groups, many of which are described as products of foreign intervention. This paper argues that this image does not reflect the multiplicity of Islamic discourses and practices, and the many ways that Bosnian Muslims engage with, promote, and resist them on the ground. It explores how pious Muslim women can move between different approaches to Islam over time, engage with a range of Islamic actors simultaneously, and draw on their teachings selectively or situationally without necessarily claiming group membership. By engaging with a range of actors making competing claims to authority, women contribute to both the pluralization of Islamic authority and the continued relevance of authoritative actors. The paper argues that paying attention to pious women's practices allows us to challenge crude characterizations of the transformations of Islam in Bosnia and question the narrative of distinct Muslim groups at odds with each other.

The paper explores forms of sociability and partner relationships among pious young Muslims in Sarajevo with a focus on the emic concepts of Islamic cafés (hospitality establishments perceived to operate according to Islamic moral principles) and Sharia dating (premarital relationships perceived to be sanctioned by Sharia). It draws on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in different spaces of Islamic worship, learning, and sociability. This paper places the renewed interest in Islam within the context of a post-Dayton Bosnia characterized by complex and impractical government structures, lingering post-war grievances, and a brutal transition to a neoliberal capitalist economy. Although it acknowledges the continuing relevance of Islam as a resource for Bosniak nation building, it suggests treating the Muslim faith community as overlapping but distinct from the Bosniak community. By focusing on gendered interaction and partner-seeking strategies, this paper explores how young members of this faith community contextually negotiate their Islamic beliefs with mainstream local expectations of conventional behavior. The paper argues that believers' varying responses to this predicament can be observed as an example of the localization of Islam, but they do not constitute a return to local, traditional gender roles and marriage practices, nor are they an introduction of foreign cultural patterns.

This essay observes contemporary Islamic dress practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a catalyst throwing into relief various tensions within Bosnian society – not only between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, but among Bosniaks themselves. Based on fieldwork carried out in Sarajevo, it looks at how people employ notions of culture and tradition when justifying what types of Islamic dress, if any, are compatible with Bosnian modernity. The essay analyses how people selectively draw on fragments from the historical and ethnographic record when they argue for or against veiling, and shows how, even though many denounce veiling and particularly face veiling as foreign to Bosnia, women who veil themselves equally draw on notions of culture and tradition when justifying their dress choices to others. The essay highlights how competing visions of Islam play a role in the transformation of religious, ethnic and gender identities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and argues that dress as a gendered bodily practice does not merely mark assumed essential differences between an imagined Bosnian and foreign Islam but serves as a crucial means of their construction.