Shining Humanity: Life Stories of Women Peace Builders in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a collection of biographies of eleven local peace leaders from varying ethnic, religious, and non-religious ...backgrounds. As these stories begin to illuminate the womens deep faith in humanity, they can help to teach us how to become fully human beings in difficult wartime and post-war situations. The women selected for inclusion in this book showed genuine humanity (ljudskost) in the darkness of war and suffe.
Andrea Feldman wrote a review of the book Bosanski labirint: Kultura, rod i liderstvo (The Bosnian labyrinth: Culture, gender, and leadership), which I edited and coauthored with my colleagues, Suada ...Penava and Jasna Kovačević. She decided to cherry-pick without proper references or citations to confirm her vague and biased assumptions.
Knowledge Production in the Balkans Spahić Šiljak, Zilka; Anić, Jadranka Rebeka
The Ecumenical review,
12/2023, Letnik:
75, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Abstract
Until the 1990s, secular feminism prevailed in the socialist Balkan countries, while religious feminism appeared only as an exception in the works of certain Catholic theologians. After ...democratic changes, gender equality was reaffirmed, but there was no dialogue in feminist knowledge production between secular and religious feminists. This paper presents initiatives by religious scholars and activists aimed at overcoming the secular‐religious divide in achieving gender equality. It looks at two key regional initiatives: Believers and Citizens, and the Feminism and Religion online school. These initiatives established collaborations between feminist scholars from various academic disciplines, religions, and worldviews and connected activists from civil society organizations and religious communities. The interreligious and interdisciplinary nature of these initiatives is unique not only in the Balkan region but also in the world.
Secular–religious dichotomy has been criticised in discourse on secularisation theory as well as in discussions of the relationship between secular and religious feminism. Feminist theorists have ...criticised the secular–religious divide of feminism for overlooking facts such as the inherent gendering of this dichotomy, the participation of women believers in the gender equality movement since its inception, and the contributions of feminist theologians and gender studies scholars who use their respective religious traditions as a basis for gender egalitarianism. This article will criticise secular–religious dichotomy for overlooking the fact that secular, rather than religious, principles underlie gender stereotypes. Namely, Christian and Islamic theological anthropology has accepted philosophical postulates regarding the nature of women and used them to build models of subordination and complementarity of gender relations, thereby neglecting the egalitarian anthropology that can be developed based on the holy scriptures of both traditions. One of the challenges in exploring the secular-religious dichotomy can be found in the anti-gender movement in which believers join secular organizations and use secular discourse to advocate and preserve gender stereotypes.
In the period of post-war transition, knowledge production on gender and feminism remained the focus of individual scholars and activists who had a difficult time attempting to integrate it into the ...educational system, with the exception of a few gender and women studies programs that were largely supported by international donors. Believing that knowledge should inform activism and that in return, activism can provide feedback on knowledge impact and relevance, the entire course of my scholarly and activist work was about bridging the gap between academia and civil society organizations, but also about bridging the secular– religious divide in the Balkans region. I argue that feminist knowledge production in the Balkans semi-periphery is artificially divided between secular and religious feminist circles. Just as feminists from the center marginalize feminists in the Balkans with neocolonial approaches and cultural hegemony, secular feminists in the semi-periphery ignore religious feminism with similar fashion. Multiple exclusion made religious feminist knowledge production invisible and unrecognized in academia and women’s activism. Only in rare cases did secular feminists ally themselves with religious feminists and showed sensibility and the need to involve them equally with their own arguments in feminist knowledge production, because many believed religion to be one of the main causes of gender discrimination and irreconcilable with feminist agendas. Many religious feminists, however, were standing shoulder to shoulder with secular feminists in their struggle for gender equality.
Feminist theology is a new phenomenon in the Balkans, and only a few women, more precisely, only a few female Catholic theologians and writers, discussed this topic in the former Yugoslavia. It was ...important work in the post-Vatican Council period as it shed light on the role of women in family, church, and society, though no larger, systemic scholarly work or initiatives in faith communities and churches by feminist theologians existed. Even today, the majority of women and men in the Balkans, including theologians, do not know what feminist theology is and if it is indeed possible to combine feminism with theology. Here, Spahic-Siljak discusses the feminist theology and peace building in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Representing diverse cultural viewpoints, Muslim Women in War and Crisis collects an array of original essays that highlight the experiences and perspectives of Muslim womentheir dreams and ...nightmares and their daily strugglesin times of tremendous social upheaval. Analyzing both how Muslim women have been represented and how they represent themselves, the authors draw on primary sources ranging from poetry and diaries to news reports and visual media. Topics include: Peacebrokers in Indonesia Exploitation in the Islamic Republic of Iran Chechen women rebels Fundamentalism in Afghanistan, from refugee camps to Kabul Memoirs of Bengali Muslim women The 7/7 London bombings, British Muslim women, and the media Also exploring such images in the United States, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq, this collection offers a chorus of multidimensional voices that counter Islamophobia and destructive clichs. Encompassing the symbolic national and religious identities of Muslim women, this study goes beyond those facets to examine the realities of day-to-day existence in societies that seek scapegoats and do little to defend the victims of hate crimes. Enhancing their scholarly perspectives, many of the contributors (including the editor) have lived through the strife they analyze. This project taps into their firsthand experiences of war and deadly political oppression.
Knowledge Production in the Balkans Spahić Šiljak, Zilka; Anić, Jadranka Rebeka
The Ecumenical review,
December 2023, Letnik:
75, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Until the 1990s, secular feminism prevailed in the socialist Balkan countries, while religious feminism appeared only as an exception in the works of certain Catholic theologians. After democratic ...changes, gender equality was reaffirmed, but there was no dialogue in feminist knowledge production between secular and religious feminists. This paper presents initiatives by religious scholars and activists aimed at overcoming the secular‐religious divide in achieving gender equality. It looks at two key regional initiatives: Believers and Citizens, and the Feminism and Religion online school. These initiatives established collaborations between feminist scholars from various academic disciplines, religions, and worldviews and connected activists from civil society organizations and religious communities. The interreligious and interdisciplinary nature of these initiatives is unique not only in the Balkan region but also in the world.
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