Thread by @Rrrrnessa

I want to briefly talk about the misinformation that Yugoslav authorities banned the hijab in Bosnia and that Bosnian-Muslim women were forced out of their hijabs. The reality is that there was an unveiling campaign, led by women, and it had to do with the niqab, not the hijab.

In 1947 it was actually the Islamic Community in Bosnia and across Yugoslavia that declared the niqab was not a mandatory veil in Islam and that veiling the face wasn't required in Islam.

However, this wasn't entirely successful as despite the efforts of the Anti-Fascist Women's Front and the Islamic Community themselves, most women, even those who unveiled publicly, would end up veiling again upon return to their villages due to their husbands.

"Officially, by 1951, it was documented that out of the 546,037 veiled Muslim women in Yugoslavia, 519,088 had removed the veil in public ceremonies, yet these decisions were often not lasting, and most resumed wearing it upon return to their village (Pantelić 2011)."

Some women specifically told the Anti-Fascist Women's Front as well as the Islamic Community that unless it was declared as law, their husbands would not accept them unveiling and taking off their niqab.

"In practice, fewer than 50% of women in Bosnian towns had removed the zar (i.e niqab) by 1950 (Hoare 2013: 374), and it was officially encoded into law in 1951 as the Law on the Banning of the Zar and Feredža"

The push for the unveiling of the Bosnian-Muslim women came actually from Bosnian-Muslim women themselves as well as from the Anti-Fascist Women's Front and as well as from the Islamic Community. It's not a nuance-less conversation.

Anyway, the unveiling campaign wasn't just about unveiling Bosnian-Muslim women but was far more to do with increasing literacy, increasing their involvement in the public, political, and social spheres. The hijab stayed and many Muslim women continued to wear it.

There's also a lot more here, about why the veiling started and how there was large amounts of Bosnian-Muslim women being "hidden away" as a response to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and suddenly not having all the rights they did under the Ottoman Empire.

You can read more about it here: brill.com/downloadpdf/jo…. It touches on the various colonisational impact on Bosnian-Muslim women, orientalism faced, as well as the push for women's equality. It's a fantastic article that references a lot of other scholars too.

But to add that Muslim women in Yugoslavia were an invaluable resource to the resistance against Nazism and the Ustashe. They often utilised their burqas to hide weapons and carry it to underground Partisan groups. They also utilised it to shield Jewish & Serb women from attacks.

The reality is though despite all of the efforts of Bosnian-Muslim women prior to Socialist Yugoslavia, as the majority of the country was very rural, many women did not have rights. In both Orthodox & Muslim communities there were many instances of rape & domestic violence.

After WWII, despite the efforts and results of the Muslim women's contributions to the resistance they still had to struggle with patriarchal oppression. Many were illiterate, many were subjected to abuse. Socialist Yugoslavia encoded women as equal citizens with full rights.

Many rural women did struggle without the face veil, often feeling naked without it, so despite the implementation of the law, many continued to veil nonetheless but the vast majority of women, esp those in bigger cities, welcomed the ban and unveiled w/ excitement.

All this to say, the conversation on the niqab ban in Yugoslavia as well as Muslim women's rights at large, is extremely complex. There was a lot going on at the time in women's rights across the world. But ultimately there was no hijab ban and women did wear it, in fact.

Anyway to add a personal anecdote here: my great-grandmother was a huge feminist and a very religious too. Her husband was killed in WWII by the Chetniks in Visegrad. She joined the Partisan resistance. Until the day she died in 1994, she wore her hijab.

She wore the niqab until about the 1970s, deciding one day to just take it off. In those times it wasn't unheard of for citizens to report each other for wearing the niqab but I suppose since my grandma didn't have a husband, they assumed it was her choice & nobody reported her.

Here is my great-grandmother in her hijab in Visegrad in the late 60s (I believe). Surrounded by all 5 of her sons. May Allah grant them eternal jannah.

One thing I wanted to add to this before I forget is that I have seen a misappropriation of Albanians within Albania and how their government dealt w/ religion towards Yugoslavia. The two countries/ governments were widely different & really there's no need to conflate the two.