Muslim Women’s Religious and Feminist Identities: A Study of Muslim Feminism in the Bosnian Context

This research paper explores Muslim Feminism in Bosnia Herzegovina as a phenomenon that has been developing in the past ten years or so among Muslim women. The introduction to this paper defines the concept of Muslim feminism and examines how women’s identities as Muslim believers and their identities as women fighting for gender equality (i.e.: feminists) shape and determine one another. I then move on to examine my ethnographic research methodology and my self reflections from the field. Later, I give an account of the history of feminism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I pay particular attention upon the noticeable absence of literature on this topic and on the recent appearance of this phenomenon in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. The remaining part of the paper examines my research findings from my interviews with 11 Bosnian Muslim women. I first focus on the development of feminist conscience among my consultants, first from their standpoints as different professionals from different areas of expertise (i.e.: doctors, philosophers, historians, etc.) and afterwards from their position as women living in the context of patriarchal society. I then focus on the trouble with the concept of feminism and with the term “feminist” in Bosnia and Herzegovina to move on to a discussion on how negative perceptions of feminism influence women’s decision to declare themselves as feminists or not