Islamic religious revitalization has been observed in all countries that are home to significant Muslim populations, both in majority Muslim countries with secular
governments, as well as former communist countries (Abramson 2004; Bowen 2007; Bowen 2010; Dwyer 1999; Kuehnast 2004). Therefore, it is important to examine some of the venues in which this revitalization has taken place, i.e., faith-based organizations. As
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Ghodsee observes in Bulgaria, “Islamic organization focused on social justice and promoted Islam as a way to restore community, morality, and prosperity to their otherwise chaotic societies” (Ghodsee 2010a: 537). These organizations are seen as having helped restore those aspects of society that were destroyed by the rise of a capitalist market-economy. Scholarship suggests that many revivalist movements were based on challenging the Western (and Soviet) political dominance (Abramson 2004; Kuehnast 2004) and often,
based itself on a residual defensive sentiment against the supremacy of the West, aiming at the restoration of a golden and 'purely Islamic' past which accommodated, however, the requirements of the contemporary world. [Saktanber 2002: 32]
Exploring the failure of conversion and religious movements during the communist period, research suggests that there was little direct opposition to the state, and those that occurred (namely among the Croats) were subdued. With the political, social, and
economic changes that occurred with the introduction of capitalist production and
distribution, people were presented with different challenges. These resulted from a global trend in which:
contemporary societies with high rates of conversion tend to be those in which grand projects of modernization have run into disarray or have been overtaken by the destabilizing effects of global capitalism. [Pelkmans 2009: 5]
While many of Bosnia’s present problems have internal causes, since the end of the war, social, political, and economic instability has been further perpetuated by the undermining forces of market capitalism resulting in growing class differences, exploitation, deep seated corruption, and continued unemployment. Bosnia’s economic and political situation has been in flux since the early 1990s. The CIA “World Factbook” indicates that Bosnia’s 43.1
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percent unemployment rate in 2010 has remained the same since the end of the war (1995). In addition, foreign investment has dropped sharply since 2007 and government spending (around 50 percent of GDP) remains high in comparison to other countries in the region. With only $6,600 GDP per capita, Bosnia also has 18.6 percent of its population living below the poverty line. Needless to say, the unstable political and grave economic situation has made Bosnia a fertile ground for religious revitalization. In a 2004 report to United Nations and CEDAW,9 Bosnia’s NGOs reported that:
The problem of economic inequality of women in BiH [Bosnia and Herzegovina] is deeply rooted in the country’s patriarchal heritage, its socialist and Communist past, and in the disastrous consequences of the war on all sectors of the economy. At the same time, the inequality of women in the political arena, and the near total control by men over all positions of political power, is also directly linked to gender-based discrimination in the economic arena. [Justice 2004: 13]
There are no state or local level initiatives or attempts at measuring gender parity in the economic and political sectors. However, independent reports indicate that women in the 16-64 year old age group made up just 35 percent of the labor force in 2010. With a 3.1 percent inflation rate and little investment in building Bosnia’s economic capacity, women will continue to face greater economic problems than men. Moreover, some poverty assessments indicate that women are more frequently living in poverty than men. The same report finds that “women head 25 percent of all households in BiH, with 16 percent of the entire population living in women-headed households” (Justice, 2004: 6). Therefore, gendered poverty and women’s lack of economic opportunity are inextricably linked and indicative of women’s overall position in Bosnia’s society. The aforementioned studies
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underscore the importance of socio-economic and political changes and their influence on the rise of Islamic fervor in these regions, and, more importantly, among women.
In addition, research in post-socialist countries suggests that one of the primary motivations towards religious conversion is a search for social justice and morality, and an orienting force in an often unrestrained and biased capitalist system (Abramson 2004; Ghodsee 2010; Heyat 2008; Pelkmans 2009). What this suggests, and what has been observed throughout the post-socialist region, is that although the communist system was undoubtedly flawed it nevertheless provided citizens with greater resources and
protections. Thus, in the new economic and political system the citizenry is left to fend for itself with little protection or care by the state. As a result, religion and religious institutions have replaced the socialist state as the caretaker of the citizenry. In her study of the
Bulgarian Muslims, Kristen Ghodsee notes that,
After 1989, they gained unbridled religious freedoms but saw their communities economically devastated by the corrupt privatization and bankruptcy of the lead-zinc mining enterprise that was the core of their livelihood. To these Pomaks, “orthodox” Islam promises to be an ideological third way, combining the benefits of both systems: spiritual freedom and honest economic prosperity. [Ghodsee 2010a: 523]
David Abramson observed a similar trend in Uzbekistan, finding that Islam had become a shelter and protection after people were abandoned by the state in the new system. With deep corruption on all levels of the state and in almost every institution (both state and independent), the people of Uzbekistan have found solace in faith. Critiquing the problems left behind by the Soviet practices, Abramson observed that:
The revival has drawn much of its strength from the perceptions that there is little of substantive value to what either socialism or nationalism has had to offer. There are myriad reasons for this, not least of which is the widely
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shared sense that not only did socialism fail but so also did the Soviet nationality policies that were crucial to promoting socialism in a multiethnic society. [Abramson 2004: 67]
Moreover, religious revitalization is attributed to the subjugating nature of the socialist experiences in which people’s core values were rejected for the moral unity of the communist doctrine. Keng-Fong Pang observes that:
It was not until 1981, fifteen years later, when religious instruction and religious practice were once again officially sanctioned, that the Utsat began to reaffirm communally their Islamic faith and revitalize their Quranic
learning. Having lacked any systematic means of teaching the Islamic faith in the community for about fifteen years, the Utsat accelerated the revivalism of Islamic knowledge by inviting two elderly religious teachers from Gansu Province in Northwest China to reside in their two villages for over a year in order to instruct or re-educated the Utsat about Islam and Quranic learning. The fact that the very core of their cultural identity as Muslims was
threatened and questioned for a decade was not just a motivation for a revival of religious practice and understanding, but also a psychological reaffirmation of their self-hood as a people quite distinct from the Han Chinese or the formerly "aboriginal/tribal" communities of Li and Miao. [Pang 1997: 44]
Thus, religious revitalization is a direct result of the past and current failures of the political systems under which some Muslim populations live. This is true for those Muslims living in formerly communist as well as democratic and secular countries with significant Muslim populations. No matter their location, women see restrictions placed upon them by Islam as “a small price to pay in exchange for the security, stability and respect that, through the actualization of Islamic ideologies, they were promised” (Saktanber 2002: 37).