Preaching and Teaching. Performative and Interpretive genres among Bosnian Muslim Women

The project aims at analysing textual repertoires and performative traditions used by Muslim women during ritual events in Bosnia today. The environment of investigation is more specifically Sarajevo, the capital of the country and a historical centre for Muslim culture in the region. The city provides plenty of opportunities for women to organize and attend prayer and recitation gatherings, especially in Ramadan and during other holidays.

The study considers organizers, performers and audiences, and the interplay between them; it also provides a historical background to the rituals and to the institutional structure of Islamic activities in Bosnia. The purpose is not to claim that the women engaged in these gatherings are representative of anything more (or less) than their own commitment or that they constitute any official group formation. Rather, it is a flexible network that for some of the older women goes well back to activities in the 1960s and 1970s and has taken many shapes during shifting political conditions over the decades. Younger women either have experience of prayer meetings for women in family circles or, as is most cases, have discovered these traditions themselves by attending various kinds of gatherings in the city. Educational aspects therefore dominate the contextualization, learning as well as teaching. The shifting regulations for access to formal education and the role of informal instruction of women as performers of prayers, songs and their possibilities to take up leading roles during ritual events is a recurring theme in the chapters of the book.