Debating Islam and Muslim Identity

Qian Zhang

In Bosnia, generally there are three political, cultural entities:

(nacije)

Muslim - Bosnia

Croat – CatholicSerb - Orthodox

Religion - Islam: a cultural heritage, historical legacy, a set of

practices and moral values. It binds together the Muslim peoples.

- Muslim (Bosnia): not Serbian, not Croatian, . . . also not Catholic or Orthodox.

- However religious meaning and identity changes with context and time. The identity of a Bosnia Muslim was at the time established in Bosnia by the Islamic Association (Islamska Zajednica): a small urban-oriented economic and religious elite.

- “To define Islam, then, is to simultaneously define a Muslim and what it means to be a Muslim.”

- What is Islam and what is not is usually defined along the lines of labels attached to certain elements within the practices. Labels such as local, folk, illiterate and rural are associated to have been influenced by non-Islamic or pre-Islamic factors, these practices are often thought of as marginal and female. However, their opposites, the global, orthodox, literate, and urban are essentialist forms of Islam and these are often associated with men.

- The Islamic Association was a state-approved body responsible for all matters concerning the Muslim community in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

- There are festivals that in some regions are practiced in conjunction with catholic or orthodox festivals (bleeding of religious practices together in communities where there are both Muslim and other religious groups)

Politics

-Council of elders (Starjesinstvo)

-Leader of the Council of elders (Reisululema)

-Secular administrative unit, or a municipality (opstina)

-One mosque region, one town (dzemat)

-One leader of the mosque (hodza)

-Council of elders (Starjesinstvo)

-The Council of elders was supervised by the 'Government committee for religious affairs' to prevent the starjesinstvo from becoming too political in nature.

The state was not fond of antistate and pan-Islamic ideas

- However one could not hold a communist party membership if he or she was the practicing member of any one faith. You could not go anywhere in society if you where not a member of the communist party.

The village and the Mosque - Like other communities the Bosnian village is defined by it’s proximity to the

mosque.

- The mosque, has two separate entrances, one for men leading to the main seating area, the other one for women leads up to a large room at the back of the mosque overlooking where the men sit.

-         There are clearly defined areas where men and women are supposed to be.

       There is no such thing as equality between the sexes since men are the masters.-  The women are careful not to trespass into the men’s areas.-Women enter last and leave first to make sure that at not time are they ever in close proximity with men either entering or leaving the mosque. They neither look at nor talk to the men. -Some ceremonies are conducted without the women being present; it is not that they are not allowed to come to Friday noon prayers but rather it is not in their obligations to come.

- Children, male and female, both should attend a religious school everyday.

- They learn to read and recite the Qur’an by heart in Arabic.

- They also learn the technicalities of praying, how, when and what.

- They had to learn Arabic first then Cyrillic then Latin

- However there is the struggle between the Muslim religious schools and the state schools, in that the hodza did not think that the students took the Qur’anic school seriously enough and the state school that complained the Muslim students were tired and did not have enough time for their school work because of the Muslim school.

- In addition, to the state teacher a Muslim is a subcategory of the Yugoslav that is non-religious and communist. Furthermore being a Muslim and a having a faith is a private matter and should not interfere with the role of being a Yugoslav and performing services for the state. However, to the hodza the Muslim identity is mainly defined by the Islam religion.

Islamic instructors - Hodzas and Bulas

- The Hodzas and Bulas are supposed to lead the people in prayers and other religious events.

- Hodzas and Bulas are educated at the state run secondary religious school.

- Hodza’s wages comes from the secular state and from donations by the

community.- Traditionally for services preformed by the Hodza/Bula there was money given to them, however as more and more people are becoming literate there is a growing trend to professionalize the knowledge of the Qur’an. Moreover, there is a pressure for people to give donations that are ‘up-to-standard’, thus many poorer people cannot pay for the services of the hodza, and thus class distinctions are reinforced. The number and status of the hadzas and bulas invited to certain events at a particular function yet again reinforce these class distinctions.

- There are two kinds of bulas. The older generations of bulas come from the village, know the people of the village and were taught by a hodza to which they were related. The younger generations are educated at the state school and are generally seen as not as knowledgeable as the older generation of bulas. The bulas of the older generation tended to preach less and speak from experience, where as the new generation of bulas tended to speak from learned knowledge of the state school.

- Faith healers and Diviners

- The Islamic Association does not accept faith healers and diviners since some of them are associated with mysticism.

- Faith healers are supposed to heal physical or psychological disharmonies (chronic illness, marital difficulties, infertility, prolonged bachelorhood, anxiety and depression) but they recognize that doctors are the authority on such manners and will advise person to seek the help of a doctor first.

- Diviners usually specialize themselves to one or two kinds of spells and people in turn choose the diviners specially. They combine prayers and recitals from the Qur’an with their knowledge of traditional folk medicines.

- Some other practices carried out by faith healer and diviners are: the prayers of istihara to predict the future. The salijevati stravu is designed to give insight into a person’s problems through lead melting. The writing of amulets, to protect a person from supernatural forces by writing specific lines from the Qur’an on a piece of paper and then carried as a charm.

- These faith healers and diviners are usually people with long experience as an Islamic instructor and with good insight into the psychology of local life.

- Sufi Hodzas and Dervishes

- Sufi Hodzas, four hodzas all related to one another, seen as divine by many of the Muslim faith, founder of the dervishes.

- Dervishes (as preformed by the Naqshibendi order) consisted of a large public gathering and several ceremonial events: chanting the names of God accompanied by violent rhythmic movements and the beating of a drum. This increases in intensity until a climax I reached when somebody falls into a trance (sometimes included the piercing of sabers and skewers.

- Everybody practices the dervish with their own hodza but not to the same intensity as the one carried out by the Naqushibendi order.

- The dervishes for males are an open public event, however for women they are a private event (most male Muslims would insist that females do not carry out the ritual dervish)