Forced secularization—including bans on wearing face veils—can be counterproductive. As the testimonies of Muslim women from Yugoslavia revealed, such restrictions can produce deeply negative consequences, including insults and attacks against veiled women. Instead, Muslims’ own questioning of the religious foundations of the face veil can yield progressive interpretations that feel authentic because they’re coming from […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: Riada Akyol Presents the “Tolerant Islam” of Bosnia (Part Two)
Bosniaks also debated Muslim women’s issues, including use of the face veil. One of the most renowned debates on the subject dates to 1928. It began when Mehmed Džemaludin Čaušević, the grand mufti of the Bosnian community and an important religious reformist, argued that the face veil was a product of historical tradition, not of […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: Riada Akyol Presents the “Tolerant Islam” of Bosnia (Part One)
Riada Akyol wants Europeans not to worry about the ongoing invasion of Muslims — there are now 44 million of them in Europe — but to take heart from the experience of Bosnia, where, she claims, a “liberal European Islam” developed that could serve as a model for Muslims all over Europe. What is too […]