David Henig
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780252043291
- eISBN:
- 9780252052170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043291.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores the dynamics unfolding around the politics of Muslim holy sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. It focuses on the outdoor spaces of veneration and prayer (dovište), from small ...
More
This chapter explores the dynamics unfolding around the politics of Muslim holy sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. It focuses on the outdoor spaces of veneration and prayer (dovište), from small village spaces to larger regional pilgrimage sites. These sites offer a window onto the historical, political, and religious transformations and continuities that have taken place around them over the last hundred years. It shows how the Muslim holy sites became a nexus for local Muslims, national politicians, and numerous international faith-based organizations from Turkey and the Gulf countries to articulate their agendas and interests. Through ethnography of several Muslim holy sites, it illustrates wider ambiguities and areas of contestation over Islamic religious authority, authenticity, and control of historical narratives in postsocialist, postwar Bosnian Muslim politics at large.Less
This chapter explores the dynamics unfolding around the politics of Muslim holy sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. It focuses on the outdoor spaces of veneration and prayer (dovište), from small village spaces to larger regional pilgrimage sites. These sites offer a window onto the historical, political, and religious transformations and continuities that have taken place around them over the last hundred years. It shows how the Muslim holy sites became a nexus for local Muslims, national politicians, and numerous international faith-based organizations from Turkey and the Gulf countries to articulate their agendas and interests. Through ethnography of several Muslim holy sites, it illustrates wider ambiguities and areas of contestation over Islamic religious authority, authenticity, and control of historical narratives in postsocialist, postwar Bosnian Muslim politics at large.
David Henig
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780252043291
- eISBN:
- 9780252052170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043291.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This afterword discusses some of the recent events described in this book that have continued to unfold in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most important one is the increasing interference of Turkey’s ...
More
This afterword discusses some of the recent events described in this book that have continued to unfold in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most important one is the increasing interference of Turkey’s neo-Ottoman politico-religious agenda, which clashes with localized forms of Islamic practice. The afterword takes these events as a magnifying glass for the historical and political ramifications of the book. It argues that the large-scale homogenizing projects--imperial Ottoman and national post-Ottoman, secular socialist and ethnonational postsocialist--are all embedded in the village landscape, and in the local historical imagination and consciousness. They have left behind uncanny historical traces that continue to be contested and negotiated in villagers’ aspirations, articulations, and self-conceptions of what it means to be Muslim and to live a Muslim life. The afterword thus argues that a historical-ethnographic labor documenting and tracking the persistent features and durabilities of these homogenizing political projects needs to be understood in terms of their entwinements with grassroots counter-historicities embodied in villagers’ actions, rituals, and ethical repertoires.Less
This afterword discusses some of the recent events described in this book that have continued to unfold in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most important one is the increasing interference of Turkey’s neo-Ottoman politico-religious agenda, which clashes with localized forms of Islamic practice. The afterword takes these events as a magnifying glass for the historical and political ramifications of the book. It argues that the large-scale homogenizing projects--imperial Ottoman and national post-Ottoman, secular socialist and ethnonational postsocialist--are all embedded in the village landscape, and in the local historical imagination and consciousness. They have left behind uncanny historical traces that continue to be contested and negotiated in villagers’ aspirations, articulations, and self-conceptions of what it means to be Muslim and to live a Muslim life. The afterword thus argues that a historical-ethnographic labor documenting and tracking the persistent features and durabilities of these homogenizing political projects needs to be understood in terms of their entwinements with grassroots counter-historicities embodied in villagers’ actions, rituals, and ethical repertoires.
