daryl li “bosnian history”
Darryl Li situates his research in the context of the Bosnian War from 1992-1995 and the post-9/11 global war on terror that followed. More broadly, the book is situated within the context of American empire and the series of “client states” that have acted to further US interests around the world (Li, 197). The US-led global war on terror has had a dramatic impact on the lives of the members of the Bosnian jihad, many of whom were stripped of their citizenship, deported, or arrested as suspected terrorists. This war on terror has historically been informed by global racialized hierarchies: “Internationals [i.e. humanitarian workers, peacekeeping forces] can cast suspicious Arabs as ‘foreign’ to Bosnia while treating their own foreignness as unremarkable and incidental” (Li, 195).
My research is related to the zar spirit possession cult that is found throughout Egypt, Sudan, Iran, various Gulf countries, and elsewhere. This indigenous East African practice has become so geographically widespread as a result of the Arab slave trade (see image below). More specifically, the influx of Ethiopian and Sudanese slaves (and their religious traditions) into Egypt was largely fueled by the ambitious political, economic, and military reforms taking place under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century. Because of this historical mobility, zar has branched off into a number of different variants throughout the Middle East and East/North Africa. In my research, I will need to be sensitive to the local specificities of zar as practiced in Egypt while simultaneously offering a broader glimpse into zar as a transregional phenomenon.