The present paper is a discussion of the dual analytical perspectives that can be applied to the issue of (contemporary) interpretive activities: Whether to underline the obstacles that prevent Muslim women from transgressing from more domestic and semi-public spaces into the public sphere; or to throw more light on the opportunities women have both seized, and to some extent fashioned, in order to have their voices heard in the formulation of contemporary Islamic theology. The Bosnian material presented in this paper gives arguments to both perspectives; and, perhaps most importantly, both these perspectives are used by women when defining arguments for various strategies of how to move on when the claiming the right to religious leadership. The examples of Muslim women in the lead of religious activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina provided in this paper come with an emphasis on collective rather than individual leadership. The conditions for Muslim women's religious activism in Bosnia and Herzegovina have radically changed during the last 20 years, but for reasons different than in most other parts of the Muslim world. Experiences of authoritarian secularization campaigns during the communist era and the aftermath of the war on the Balkans in the 1990s have made 'the religion issue' a tense one. The close link between identity politics and ethnicity defined in religious terms leaves little space for any public theological interpretation that challenges religious convention; theological statements are - or are supposed to be - part of political agendas. The specific case presented in the paper comes from a formal organisation with the explicit primary aim to support women in their family roles by means of education and personal development. The activities are not directed toward rituals or piety, but are instead carefully stated by the organisation to be focused on values and life-style. Instead of using mosques and formal teaching premises the organisation has successfully established a multi-functional meeting ground where leadership duties are distributed among several women with and without formal Islamic education. This draws attention to the many forms of collective leadership among Muslim women and how comparatively complex interpretations of faith and canonical texts can take the shape of community counselling.

In Egypt, the formal/official Islamic educational system is embodied in al-Azhar University and is organized as a pyramid from al-Azhar on down. The standard for judging one's authority is how deeply one is involved in the Islamic knowledge system of the orthodox al-Azhar in accepted and legitimate ways. In other words, to give authority to their discourses, individuals as agents have to recognize and enter the Egyptian authority system that is the official Islamic educational system. Personal charisma, pedigree and lineage of a reputable 'ulama family are relatively less important. These attributes assume importance only for the person who already has the official Islamic educational background. It is significant here that social capital such as academic background, public profile and academic career required to attain Islamic authority in Egypt are acquired, not inherent. Additionally, the way to obtain these types of social capital has had no gender gaps in the system since 1961, when al-Azhar University began admitting female students. The 'ulama have traditionally rejected Islamic discourses propagated by people who have no formal Islamic educational background, especially if they were women. Thus, women have been at a higher risk of being cut off from the arena of Islamic discourses than their male counterparts. To prevent this from happening, women have sought ways to gain acceptance for their Islamic discourses foremost among them recognized Islamic education. Under such circumstances, how do women become religious authoritiest In this paper, based on cultural anthropological fieldwork, I will focus on the work and daily activities of two female preachers (da'iyah) and the participants in their classes (dars) in Cairo and its suburbs. I will present a ethnographic picture of the everyday life of these women and their students. The two female preachers handle Islamic discourses well because of their higher Islamic legal literacy and, in trying to obtain an accepted voice, they consciously stress their academic background. They have also entered the arena of Islamic discourses in a conscious attempt to deconstruct or re-write gender norms and concepts. As part of their ongoing struggle, they aim to acquire authority and authenticity. I will analyze their various activity and strategies to acquire religious authorities based on the concepts of 'authority,', 'authenticity' and 'legal literacy.'

This paper focuses on women members of the Sunni-dominated national organisation Sveriges Unga Muslimer [Sweden's Young Muslims] and some of its local youth associations in different Swedish towns. Living as a religious minority in a highly secular society and confronting considerable internal diversity, the youth raised questions on identity and 'proper' Islamic practice. Although maintaining strong bonds with mosques and the elder generation of scholars, the youth also turned to alternative authorities, including converts and women. The openings provided by the 'crisis of religious authority' were recognized by the youth, who aspired on creating a new generation of Muslim leaders with experience of living Islam in the West. The analysis draws on participant observations and spontaneous talk among the youth, along with repeated in-depth interviews with nine women. The women were initially 18 to 25 years old, and unmarried. They were born in West Asia, North and East Africa, came to Sweden during childhood and would speak fluent Swedish. I will argue that within their youth associations the women were recognised as personally responsible before God, and thereby expected to both acquire and disseminate knowledge about Islam. They were engaged as leaders in their youth associations, as members of boards and committees and as chair persons. They acted as teachers of children and peers and as guides in mosques. In fact, both fellow Muslims and non-Muslims had a demand on the young women to function as public representatives of Islam. This led their Islamic activism beyond the frames of mosques and classrooms, into identity politics in civic centres and TV studios. Religious authority was not necessarily depending on lineage or kinship, but on an extrovert personality, some basic knowledge on Islam and the ambition to practice their religion here and now. With such religious leadership in mind I will analyse challenges to the women's present and future religious authority, their impact and choice of agenda once having 'a voice'.

Gender segregation has been described as a hindrance for women's access to public spaces and religious knowledge. This paper, however, is looking at the opportunities gendered spaces provide for the development of female leaders in fields of production and transmission of religious Islamic knowledge. On the basis of research in German mosques, Islamic representational bodies and Muslim women's initiatives I will argue that gender separation may have exclusive effects but can also open spaces for the development of female religious authorities and distinct female practices of religion. While male authorities often dominate both gendered spheres, the creation of women's sections can be a vehicle for women to become indispensable transmitters of knowledge. However, while male authorities are present in the women's sections, cases of acknowledgement for female leaders in male spheres are rare. This paper explicates different strategies women employ to achieve positions for leadership and participation in both religious practice and community life. In contrast to other contexts, Muslim women in Germany are not only struggling with changes in structures of Islamic authority but, merely, trying to come up with basic structures in the fields of community organisation, religious practice, religious instruction, and knowledge production. The absence of historically grown institutions presents itself as ambivalent. On the one hand, knowledge production and diffusion are hardly institutionalised and largely influenced by trans-national contexts. On the other hand, there are no established or even 'outdated' structures to be overcome. This enables women to take an active role in shaping the Islamic religious sphere in Germany. This paper portrays three different structural approaches to enforce women's objectives: 1. gender segregated spaces and structures in mixed gender organisations, 2. integration and equality in mixed gender organisations which includes access to resources and decision making by both women and men of the congregation, 3. exclusive organisations for Muslim women with structure, space and decision making in the hands of women. The description of these strategies enables us to address not only the questions of how women use public space in Germany's mosques and teaching institutions but also what public space actually signifies in this context.

Religious authority in Islam, grounded in foundational Islamic values and principles, but devoid of a globally recognized, permanent regulatory structure, has been locally constructed (Kr?mer and Schmidtke 2006; Berkey 2001), and periodically reconfigured to create opportunities for women's access to that authority in different contexts at various moments in history. The recently institutionalized role of murshida (sing.), the title assigned to women preachers and spiritual guides, trained and certified to offer spiritual counseling and instruction in Islamic doctrine and practice to women in mosques and other institutions, is the most recent manifestation of this reconfiguration in Morocco. This new religious authority position for women constitutes one facet of a broader ongoing religious educational and administrative institutional reform program, which has also encompassed the appointment of women to advisory positions in the High Council of 'Ulama'. Both of these new positions comprise wielding religious authority based on a high level of knowledge of and a great capacity to interpret and apply the foundational Islamic sources, the Qur'an and the sunna of the Prophet, albeit under widely differing circumstances. Furthermore, both, unlike many of their historical and contemporary female counterparts in Morocco and elsewhere, entail official state recognition and remuneration equivalent to that of their male counterparts. Murshidat (pl.), in contrast to the women council members whose rank is superior, enjoy wider visibility and greater proximity to the general population, in particular to those groups benefitting from their services and upon whose recognition and acquiescence their authority ultimately rests. This visibility and proximity expand their potential for reshaping interpretations of Islam and understandings of women's right to exercise religious authority among Moroccans from a variety of backgrounds, but also increase the need, as well as the number of occasions and locations for staking their claim to that right. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Morocco in 2009, this paper investigates the logistics, parameters and contexts of murshidat's service and their techniques for negotiating their right to exercise religious authority in these contexts. It foregrounds the investigation with the contextualization of the murshida role within the wider framework of women's historical and contemporary access to religious authority in Morocco, followed by an examination of the incentive for and logistics of the murshida role and training module as one component of the larger religious institutional reform program, which includes a comparison with the role and training module of the murshid, the murshida's male counterpart.

Currently, one-fourth of Turkey's state-sponsored preachers are women. Employed by the country's Directorate of Religious Affairs, these women regularly issue legal responsa to men and women at official muftiates distributed throughout Turkey, give weekly sermons and lectures to predominantly female congregations in state-controlled mosques and municipal community centers, and supervise the quality of Qur'an instruction for male and female students in centers run by the state bureaucracy, among many other tasks and responsibilities. Based on extensive research and fieldwork in Turkey, this presentation delves into the burgeoning phenomenon of female religious personnel who are employed by a Turkish state bureaucracy to preach and educate others about Islam. Through the active support and intervention of Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs, these female preachers are establishing a new model of female religious authority in Turkish society based upon the elevation of well-trained and certified women to official positions of religious influence, whereby they are energetically engaged in shaping the populace's understanding and interpretations of Islam. This emerging model makes inroads into preexisting official male as well as informal female domains of religious instruction, encountering some resistance as it genders religious authority in Turkey in new ways.