‘And When the Heart is Sick, the Whole Body is Sick.’ Repairing the Person and the Urban Fabric through Everyday Sufi Ethics in Postwar Sarajevo

The author explores how the ritual religious practice of Sufism and the charismatic leadership of the sheikh play a role in ethical self-making and community-building in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. She traces how the Sufi concept of adab, or proper dervish conduct, represents at once a transcendent relationship with the Divine and urban civility. The author argues that Sufi practices in the care for the self represent an authentic response to the postwar and postsocialist ethical demand in the city of restoring urban social relationships. The processes analysed here reflect wider changes in what constitutes an Islamic authority in post-Yugoslav Bosnia, and the impact this has on the ongoing local debate on Islam as discursive tradition.