THE WOMAN IN BOSNIAN ISLAM

At the time of the Ottoman rule in Bosnia, the Muslim woman, surrounded by the boons of the urban Islamic civilization, lived by love, which has a high value in the Islamic-Oriental culture due to the importance of beauty and 'merak' - unlike the conditions in the tribal structure, where there were no prerequisites for attaching a high value to love and sexual relationship (Erlich, 1968). In other words, the arrival of Islamic culture in Bosnia elevated love as an emotion to the rank of the highest value of life. Upon the arrival of Islam in Bosnia, love as an emotion, the value of love and the holy meaning of love became the foundation of marital, emotional, aesthetic, moral and cultural life. Thus, for example, the ethnologic literature describes the great empathy and consideration paid by the family and the entire village to a dejected girl who was left by her boyfriend to marry another girl (Dvorniković, 1939).

Over centuries, the love of the Muslim woman in Bosnia has been characterized by the yearning that appears in sevdalinka, the typical Bosnian urban woman's love song, with an extremely melancholic tone.  It is the love where one yearns and suffers because of shyness, dignity and pride, as well as patriarchal social relations. It is the love that spurred Goethe, Pushkin and others to translate the now world-famous Muslim ballad Hasanaginica. 

In the social-historical perspective, the woman in the Bosnian cultural, social and aesthetic experience of Islam and Europe, and her role in the family and education, and in religious, cultural and economic life, has been determined both by universal Islamic moral values and legal norms, and, on the one hand by medieval social relations, civilizational circumstances and customs as well as, on the other, by the conservative, traditional, and frequently masculinist, though sometimes even open, modern and liberal understanding of Islam. In the warmth of the marriage and family, the woman both raises and educates her children and patiently copes with life's difficulties and social restraints. 

 In the post-Ottoman era, in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century, despite the resistance of the conservative religious circles, the Muslim woman overcame all obstacles and temptations and bravely and persistently fought for her social space, for her religious, cultural and political rights, for her education, her future and Islamic identity in the Bosnian and European context. 

The first forty years of the 20th century were of decisive significance for a modern, Islamic self-awareness of Muslim women in Bosnia, since at that time the Muslim woman, like the whole of Bosnian society, encountered the Western Christian civilization upon the arrival of Austro-Hungary in Bosnia. The Bosniak understanding of Islam thus encountered issues and possibilities of further development of Islamic life and identity in the modern European, non-Islamic legal and political order. This period, which Celia Hawkesrwarth describes as the golden age in the history of the modernization and emancipation of women in the region, witnessed the social awakening of the Muslim woman in Bosnia, her gradual and slow but irreversible inclusion into public education, and into cultural and social life. Thus, for instance, in 1910, Paša-hanuma Čugarević, the wife of a renowned Tuzla landowner, donated 200 krunas as zakat (an obligatory donation in Islam) to the cultural society “Gajret”. The newspaper Gajret    enthusiastically accepted her gesture and named Paša-hanuma as an example of the cultural renaissance of the Muslim millet (community) (“Zekjat Gajretu”, Gajret 10, 1910). In the same vein, in 1911, two sisters from Sarajevo, Zulejha-hanuma and Hašema-hanuma Imširović,  established a waqf (a pious endowment) to support the operation and activities of the cultural society “Gajret”, as well as to support the religious schools in several places in Bosnia (Gajret, 7-9, 1935). The voices of the following Muslim female writers were heard in public life, in various journals and publications: Nafija Sarajlić, Šefika Bjelavac, Hatidža Đikić, Nafija Zildžić, Hasnija Berberović and others. The Islamically articulated emancipation of the Muslim woman in Bosnian society was also advocated by prominent Muslim alims (religious scholars) in their articles, in studies in books and in their religious-educational activity. They include Osman Nuri Hadžić, Mehmed Karamehmedović, Hazim Muftić, Abdurahman Hifzi Bjelavac, Ahmed Ljubunčić, Dževad Sulejmanpašić and Šukrija Alagić, all of whom encountered tough resistance from conservative religious circles. The emancipation of the Muslim woman was also advocated by intellectuals of left orientation, such as Hamza Humo and others.

A particularly significant role in advocating the Islam-based emancipation of the Muslim woman in the first half of the 20th century was played by Raisu Džemaludin-efendija Čaušević. The Gazi Husrev-beg library holds a photograph which reveals the almost full courtyard (harem) of women in the Beg's mosque, who came to the janaaza (funeral) of this great Islamic alim (religious scholar) and educator. It is a photograph that we have been hiding from ourselves for an entire century, though it confirms to what extent Raisu Džemaludin-efendija Čaušević was before our time in advocating the emancipation of Muslim women in Bosnia as well as other issues.

The cultural-historical potential contained in the endeavors to emancipate Muslim women, based on Islam, in the first forty years of the 20th century in Bosnia, was almost completely thwarted after the Second World War, when the communist regime imposed an ideological orientation, according to which everything began with the socialist revolution and the communist authority.

Nevertheless, the second half of the 20th century witnessed significant progress in the education of Muslim women in Bosnia and their widespread inclusion in the social, political and cultural trends and processes, as well as in their secularization (e.g. the prohibition of the veil and feredža in 1950).

During this period particular significance was attached to the role of the Muslim woman in the Islamic upbringing and education of their daughters and sons and in keeping alive the Islamic tradition and Islam as a whole in Bosnia, though this has not yet been sufficiently studied. While their husbands, caught in the hammer and sickle of the industrial economy and communist ideology, often exchanged their religion for atheism, their wives sent their daughters and sons to maktabs (Muslim elementary schools) to receive religious education, or taught them the values of religion and the Bosnian tradition of Islam themselves, either opposing their husbands' will or with their tacit indifference. 

After the fall of communism and the introduction of political pluralism, in the independent Bosnia and Herzegovina Muslim women in Bosnia suffered great tribulation: aggression, ethnic cleansing, crimes of mass rapes, and genocide. At the turn of the 21st century, the Mothers of Srebrenica represent the consciousness of mankind; the contemporary Bosnian and Herzegovinian poet Mile Stojić dedicated a poem to the Srebrenica mother Hatidža. The dignity with which the Mothers of Srebrenica and all the other Muslim women, victims of aggression, persecution, rape and the genocide of their fathers, husbands and sons, bear their fate and cope with their suffering and their pain, is a testament to their power, nobility and moral eminence. 

At the same time, Muslim women accomplish great achievements in the academic, cultural, artistic, sport, economic and political life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the region and world-wide. 

The foundations of Islamic culture and the foundations of Islamic identity in Bosnia contain the love, beauty, power and courage of Muslim women.

Sources:

• Vera St. Erlich, U društvu s čovjekom – tragom njegovih kulturnih i socijalnih tekovina, Naprijed, Zagreb, 1968.

• Vladimir Dvorinković, Karakterologija Jugoslavena, Beograd, 1939.