MARRIAGE AND FAMILY ISSUES AS PER ANALYSIS OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS COLUMNS PUBLISHED IN BOSNIAN LANGUAGE IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS

Abstract

UDK 28-4

The last twenty years in Bosnia and Herzegovina so called “fatawa market” has evolved in periodicals and on web portals where answers are given to questions pertaining to fiqh; sometimes these questions are answered in accordance with fiqh of madhabs other than the Hanefi madhab, which is traditionally the madhab of Bosnian Muslims. The aim of this article is to present and analyse some issues in a domain of marital and family relations that have been a subject of a discourse in Bosnian language in periodicals and on web portals in “questions and answers” columns in the last twenty years. This article, as a contribution to the research on matrimony and family issues, raises some symptomatic problems. The author estimates that an insight into these issues and knowing the manner in which these issues are tackled in this particular genre of our religious texts could be helpful in initiating eventual projects that could contribute in improvement of functioning of recently formed Marital and Family Department of the Riyasat of the Islamic Community B&H. The article places the main focus upon three points of discussion: the role of women in marriage and in family, marital disagreements and the support for married couples, and the responsibility of the Islamic Community to offer protection to families and to preserve family values. The author uses the following projects, undertaken at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, as reference: “Compilation of fatawas issued in Bosnian language” (2003); “Trends in Sharia interpretation in Bosnia and Herzegovina question-answer form in the period 2000-2005.” (2007) and the third project of this kind is an ongoing project relating to questions and answers in the period 2010 to 2015.