ABOUT BOOK

This social, cultural, and political history of Slavic Muslim women of the Yugoslav region in the first decades of the post-Ottoman era is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the issues confronting these women. It is based on a study of voluntary associations (philanthropic, cultural, Islamic-traditionalist, and feminist) of the period. It is broadly held that Muslim women were silent and relegated to a purely private space until 1945, when the communist state “unveiled” and “liberated” them from the top down. ~After systematic archival research in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Austria, Fabio Giomi challenges this view by showing: ~ ~ How different sectors of the Yugoslav elite through association publications, imagined the role of Muslim women in post-Ottoman times, and how Muslim women took part in the construction or the contestation of these narratives. ~ How associa­tions employed different means in order to forge a generation of “New Muslim Women” able to cope with the post-Ottoman political and social circumstances. ~ And how Muslim women used the tools provided by the associations in order to pursue their own projects, aims and agendas. ~ ~The insights are relevant for today’s challenges facing Muslim women in Europe. The text is illustrated with exceptional photographs.