Always fascinated by the otherness, or what is understood as such,
I have conducted this ethnographic, qualitative study in the field of
comparative religion outside of my own cultural and religious spheres
and exposed myself to both different and similar ways of life in southeastern
Europe – in the Balkans. The research context is placed within
the borders of the mountainous and multicultural Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia,1
a small Balkan state, which is one of the successor
states of the socialist Yugoslavia. The focus group of the study
is the Muslim women of the Albanian minority. In the Republic of
Macedonia Islam is the second largest religious tradition and the majority
of Albanians are Muslims. Within the country’s Islamic demographics
most Muslims follow the Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school of
law, but Macedonian territory also embraces an old historical concentration
of tarikat (Sufi order) networks. Furthermore, new Islamic
strands have entered the religious scene since the dissolution of socialist
Yugoslavia and the declaration of independence by the Republic of
Macedonia in 1991 adding new pieces to the state’s Islamic mosaic.