THE ISSUE OF WEARING NIQAB/VEIL IN DE BATES OF BOSNIAK TRADITIONALISTS AND MODERNISTS IN 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

In the early 20th century, with the arrival of Austro-Hungarian authorities to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the issue of education of Muslim girls opened the doors to the y year-long debate of Bosnian Muslim scholars about Islamic dressing. is debate spread to all layers of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s society. The main dilemma facing Bosnian society was: should Muslim girls be allowed to go to school and therefore unveil their face, or should they keep their veil/niqab and stay at home. This debate resulted in a split of opinions of ulema. We had: traditionalists who held religious right more important than right to education by claiming that clothes represent the basic symbol and external display of religion; secular modernists who preferred education because they believed that veils did not fulll the task of preservation of morality and that they represent an obstacle to adaptation to the “modern times”; and we also had religious modernists who tried to find a compromise which would satisfy bot Islamic principles and female right to education. However, the final argument in this debate was delivered by the socialist regime which banned niqab/veil on September 29, 1950.