Remaking Muslim Lives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henig
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Waiting Room ◽  
Bosnian War ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Nationalism And Identity ◽  
Muslim Communities

Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina examines what it means to live a Muslim life amid the political ruptures, economic deprivation, and transformation of religious institutions in postsocialist, postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. Popular representations of Muslim communities in Southeastern Europe have long featured simplistic images of Muslims’ lost faith, and of Islam as serving the interests of nationalism and identity politics. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research, this book challenges these stereotypes. Through an exploration of the everyday experiences of several generations of Muslim men and women and against the backdrop of the turbulent postsocialist and postwar transformations, David Henig shows how living a Muslim life in rural Bosnia and Herzegovina is ordered and inscribed by deep relations of obligation and care with the living, the dead, and the divine that spans generations. His evocative study traces the manifestations of these relations from the intimate spheres of houses and village neighborhoods to the waiting room of an Islamic dream healer, from village mosques and outdoor prayers for rain to the “little Hajj” pilgrimage and commemorative sites for the Ottoman martyrs and those of the recent Bosnian war. This study makes a powerful contribution to our understanding of how religion and historical consciousness, interlocked through the rubric of exchange, is actively engaged to make sense of past tumultuous experiences and future-oriented expectations in the present.

Civil Action and the Microdynamics of Violence during the Bosnian War

2019 ◽  
pp. 178-202
Author(s):  
Marie E. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Civil Action ◽  
Bosnian War ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Local Levels ◽  
The Way

The war Bosnia and Herzegovina, between 1992 and 1995, was characterized by vastly different levels of violence across the country. The chapter examines the way in which civil action shaped the course, severity, and effects of the violence in three Bosnian cities: Tuzla, Sarajevo, and Prijedor. These cities roughly experienced low, moderate, and high levels of violence respectively, proportionate to their population size. It argues that civilians, local political elites, and religious institutions played critical roles in carving out civil spaces in the midst of violence, dampening local levels of violence and, in some cases, contributing to the resolution of the broader conflict. The varied levels of violence across the three cases help to illustrate the conditions under which such civil action is possible, underscoring both the potential and the limitations of civil action to counter armed conflict.

Child and Adolescent Suicides in Bosnia and Herzegovina Before and After the War (1992–1995)

Crisis ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 160-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Almir Fajkic ◽  
Orhan Lepara ◽  
Martin Voracek ◽  
Nestor D. Kapusta ◽  
Thomas Niederkrotenthaler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Suicide Risk ◽  
Child And Adolescent ◽  
Youth Suicide ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Suicide Rates ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Sex And Age Differences

Background: Evidence on youth suicides from Southeastern Europe is scarce. We are not aware of previous reports from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which experienced war from 1992 to 1995. Durkheim’s theory of suicide predicts decreased suicide rates in wartime and increased rates afterward. Aims: To compare child and adolescent suicides in Bosnia and Herzegovina before and after the war. Methods: Data on youth suicide for prewar (1986–90) and postwar (2002–06) periods were analyzed with respect to prevalence, sex and age differences, and suicide methods. Suicide data from 1991 through 2001 were not available. Results: Overall youth suicide rates were one-third lower in the postwar than in the prewar period. This effect was most pronounced for girls, whose postwar suicide rates almost halved, and for 15–19-year-old boys, whose rates decreased by about a one-fourth. Suicides increased among boys aged 14 or younger. Firearm suicides almost doubled proportionally and were the predominant postwar method, while the most common prewar method had been hanging. Conclusions: The findings from this study indicate the need for public education in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the role of firearm accessibility in youth suicide and for instructions on safe storage in households. Moreover, raising societal awareness about suicide risk factors and suicide prevention is needed.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold D. Morales
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Struggle For Recognition

The conclusion provides a summary of key developments in the history of Latino Muslim communities and also critically explores future possibilities. While weaving a trail among the history of Islamic Spain, the Alianza Islamica, and subsequent Latino Muslim organizations, the struggle for recognition through solidarity groups emerges as a prominent theme throughout the book. However, this approach to liberation raises complex issues regarding the efficacy and logics of identity politics. Drawing on various sources, I argue that practical knowledge of how to know and how to be in relation with one another may circumvent identity politics premised on static propositional knowledge of groups like Latino Muslims.

scholarly journals What Stymies Action on Climate Change? Religious Institutions, Marginalization, and Efficacy in Kenya

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lauren Honig ◽  
Amy Erica Smith ◽  
Jaimie Bleck
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Vulnerability To Climate Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Critical Link

Addressing climate change requires coordinated policy responses that incorporate the needs of the most impacted populations. Yet even communities that are greatly concerned about climate change may remain on the sidelines. We examine what stymies some citizens’ mobilization in Kenya, a country with a long history of environmental activism and high vulnerability to climate change. We foreground efficacy—a belief that one’s actions can create change—as a critical link transforming concern into action. However, that link is often missing for marginalized ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious groups. Analyzing interviews, focus groups, and survey data, we find that Muslims express much lower efficacy to address climate change than other religious groups; the gap cannot be explained by differences in science beliefs, issue concern, ethnicity, or demographics. Instead, we attribute it to understandings of marginalization vis-à-vis the Kenyan state—understandings socialized within the local institutions of Muslim communities affected by state repression.

Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian: Inherent Translanguaging in the Linguistic Landscape of Sarajevo

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Tankosić ◽  
Jason Litzenberg
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Common Core ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Linguistic Identity ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Balkan Region ◽  
Town Center

Abstract Language in the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe has a complex and turbulent history, acutely embodied in the tripartite and trilingual state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in which Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs all make claim to their own mutually-intelligible varieties of local “languages”. This study utilizes a linguistic landscape methodology to consider language use in Sarajevo, the capital of BiH, approximately 20 years after a brutal war that led to the establishment of the country. Data originate from three municipalities within the Sarajevo Canton – namely, Old Town, Center, and Ilidža – because of their representation of the region’s diversity and history. Signs were classified according to the three primary language varieties, i.e., Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian; BCS, representing a common core among the three varieties, as well as English, other languages, and mixed languages. The application of BCS uniquely positions the present research in comparison to other studies of language use in the region and allows for a more nuanced, less politically and ethnolinguistically fraught analysis of the communicative tendencies of users. More specifically, data indicate that actors in the linguistic landscape transcend the boundaries of their national, ethnic, and religious identities by tending towards the more neutral BCS, suggesting an orientation towards more translingual dispositions than previous variety-bound approaches have indicated. Thus, instead of the divisiveness of linguistic identity politics, the linguistic landscape of Sarajevo indicates a tendency toward inclusion and linguistic egalitarianism.

scholarly journals Divorce, kinship, and errant wives: Islamic feminism in India, and the everyday life of divorce and maintenance

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682199990
Author(s):  
Sagnik Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
Escape Route ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Movement Building ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Feminist Movements

This article is an ethnographic exploration of a women’s sharia court in Mumbai, a part of a network of such courts run by women qazi (Islamic judges) established across India by members of an Islamic feminist movement called the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (Indian Muslim Women’s Movement). Building upon observations of adjudication, counselling, and mediation offered in cases of divorce and maintenance by the woman qazi (judge), and the claims made by women litigants on the court, this article explores the imaginaries of the heterosexual family and gendered kinship roles that constitute the everyday social life of Islamic feminism. I show how the heterosexual family is conceptualised as a fragile and violent institution, and divorce is considered an escape route from the same. I also trace how gendered kinship roles in the heterosexual conjugal family are overturned as men fail in their conventional roles as providers and women become breadwinners in the family. In tracing the range of negotiations around the gendered family, I argue that the social life of Islamic feminism eludes the discourses and categories of statist legal reform. I contribute to existing scholarship on Islamic feminism by exploring the tension between the institutionalist and everyday aspects of Islamic feminist movements, and by exploring the range of kinship negotiations around the gendered family that take place in the shadow of the rhetoric of ‘law reform’ for Muslim communities in India.

scholarly journals Memory and Conflict: Interviews with Youth of the Bosnian War

2018 ◽  
pp. 33-42
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Shaughnessy
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Future Outlook ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bosnian War ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Multi Media ◽  
The University ◽  
Media Project

This paper was part of a multi-media project presented at the University of Gdańsk in September 2015. It examines the preliminary findings of interviews conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and over Skype in July and August of 2015. Eight participants—ranging in age, gender, religion, ethnicity, place of origin, and other profiling components—answered questions regarding past memories of childhood interrupted by the 1992-1995 war, how those memories affect personal identity and current views on the social, political, and economic conditions of BiH, and future outlook with particular attention focused on reconciliation. All names have been changed. For reference purposes, the list of abbreviations and bibliography is included at the end.

Class, nationalism and identity politics

Peace Review ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-202
Author(s):  
Carl Pletsch
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Nationalism And Identity

Interlude

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
Bosnian War ◽  
International Authority ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement ◽  
Working Out

This interlude outlines the contours of international authority created in the response to the Bosnian war of the 1990s. The remaking of international institutions in response to Bosnia's war and its postwar peace heralded the coming-into-being of the “international community” as the dominant protagonist of a post-Cold War order structured around the values of peace, democracy, the rule of law, humanitarian solidarity, and the inviolability of human rights. This order was presented as more or less universally valid. The universal validity of this post-Cold War model bestowed two main roles and sets of hierarchical relations on the agents of intervention: that of mediator above and between conflicting parties, and that of civilizing missionary or educator of not fully modern people(s). Successfully occupying either role required a constant demonstration of neutrality. However, working out what it meant to be “neutral” in the everyday encounters of international intervention across relations of difference was often a vexing and unpredictable endeavor. The interlude then looks at postwar Bosnia's political settlement and explains why refugee return became such an important site of intervention encounters. It also considers the Dayton Peace Agreement.

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