Acknowledgements
There are numerous collogues and friends who made the completion of this book possible, by sharing their thoughts and their time, and by being a source of guidance and inspiration to me during, before, and beyond the production of this book. I thank them all, starting with my mentor, Nadia al-Bagdadi.
I thank Nadia for her crucial input at times when I was getting lost in a torrent of boycott fatwas. Her provocations and conversations anchored and sustained me through every phase of this book—from its conception to its present form. I thank her and Aziz al-Azmeh for inviting me to participate in the Striking from the Margins Project that, while short-term, proved to be a stimulating context in which to meditate on the difficult question of religious authority and knowledge.
A special thanks goes to Charles Hirschkind, whose scholarship on Muslim ethics and practices served as an important signpost for developing and articulating my own ideas for exploring BDS activism in Tower Hamlets and Stari Grad. Both through his close reading of this book, and through his own writing, Charles widened my knowledge and ethnographic vision, for which I am beyond grateful.
Then there are colleagues and friends whose ideas and interventions made me consider a number of issues that would have otherwise escaped my attention. In this regard, I would like to thank Thijl Sunier, Laleh Khalili, and Cornelia Sorabji. I would like to thank Darryl Li for his assertion that I show the affective dimensions of BDS activism, an assertion that helped me rethink chapters 4 and 5 and write them anew, in their current form. To John Eade I am indebted for introducing me to a complex history of Tower Hamlets, and for nurturing and guiding my interest in the years to come. I am grateful to Nicolae Roddy for his patient but passionate elucidations, which proved to be a tremendous source of insight. I thank him for being an intellectual sparring partner—a sounding board—who pushed me to think more thickly about different conceptions of self that operate within the contexts of ethical and political action.
The research and writing of this book were supported by the Open Society Foundations. In particular, the Civil Society Scholar Award, which I was fortunate to receive twice, allowed me to conceptualize many of the ideas animating this book during my stay at the University of California, Berkeley.
I thank Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar, an Associate Editor at Brill, whose generous assistance in turning my thoughts into the final product and delivering this book to the reader was invaluable. I am also grateful for the suggestions and comments made by the anonymous reviewers for Brill.
Now, I want to thank my family. Zdravka Grebo Jevtić and Rade Jevtić—my mom and dad—for being supportive, tolerant, and patient with my research and writing, which at stages seemed endless. I thank them for encouraging my curiosity, for letting me live my passions, and for believing in me when I was beginning to doubt myself. I thank my sister Asja Jevtić Pezo—the one I love the most. Without her support, advice, and absolute confidence in my ability to succeed, many of the big decisions I made, like the one to write this book, would not have been possible. To Sid Jevtić and Maggie Smith Jevtić—my sidekicks and partners in crime—thanks for loving me and comforting me in any situation. During my time in Stari Grad, I benefited enormously from the kindness and hospitality of Muamira Smječanin, to whom I extend my heartfelt thanks. I am also grateful to my friends—Una Beganović, Damir Softić, Belma Čemalović, Asja Kratović, Mirna Dragaš, Jahmel Alexander Edwards, and others—who stuck by my side through years of fieldwork, exhausting revisions, and infinite struggles with formatting. To all of them I am deeply grateful.
Last but not least, my deepest gratitude goes to Bangladeshis and Bosniaks who, in various ways, supported or participated in this book. Thanks for generously sharing stories with me. I hope I did them justice.