Society, Ethnicity, and Politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina (original) (raw)

New Islamic Interpretations Arriving At Bosnia During and After 1992-1995 Bosnian War

By 1990, after forty-five years of communism, all of Bosnian society was very secularized, and though all three ethnic groups had their origins in a religion, religion played little role in the lives of any of the elite. Thus one not should see Bosniak, Serbs, and Croats as being Muslim, Orthodox, and Catholic, but as being of those three respective backgrounds. As since persons of all ethnicities were twenty-century, modern, secular Europeans, led by members of the Communist Party of BiH, there was much intermarriage among different groups in BiH cities. Between the Second World War and 1991 roughly 40 percent of urban marriages were mixed and over 20 percent of urban Bosnians declared themselves in censuses “Yugoslav” or other, refusing to define themselves in ethnic terms. Thus the first definition for the term “Muslim” after the 1968 was ethnic and few educated Muslims gave Islam much thought.

The Muslim National Question in Bosnia. An Historical Overview and an Analytical Reappraisal.

Revista Militar, 2009

This text aims at to understand what kind of country Bosnia-Herzegovina was in 1992 when the war broke-out, and to what extent the ethnic groups living in it identified themselves with the state and with each other. What did really mean to be a Bosnian? To answer those questions we decided to study the evolution of ethnic relations in Bosnia- Herzegovina and the role played by ethnic elites in different historical contexts from a historic sociological perspective, focusing our attention on: the relationship between ethnic groups and power holders; the impact of that relation in the ethnic groups relations; the development of group identity and its forms of expression; and on the evolution of the Muslim question, since the emergence during the Ottoman period of a Muslim community endowed with a separate and particular group identity.

Bosnian Islam as ‘European Islam’: limits and shifts of a concept

Islam in Europe

As of 1993, the national name of "Bosniac" (Bošnjak), has officially replaced the term "Muslim" (Musliman), currently used since the end of the nineteenth century. However, for the purpose of clarity, we have chosen to continue using the term "Muslim", except for the translation of quotations explicitly using the term "Bosniac". Finally, it is important not to confuse the term "Bosniac", which applies only to Bosnian Muslims, with the term "Bosnian" (Bosanac), referring to all the inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina. On these identity and linguistic questions, see Xavier Bougarel, "Comment peut-on être Bochniaque?" [How Can One Be Bosniac?], in Alain Dieckhoff and Riva Kastoryano (eds.), Nationalismes en mutation en Méditerranée orientale [Changing Nationalisms in the Eastern Mediterranean],

Crosses of Blood: Sacred Space, Religion, and Violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina

The disintegration of the former Yugoslavia has been commonly attributed to ethnic, economic, political and social factors. Religion is commonly seen as not relevant to the conflict or as a disguise for deeper causes. Yet religion, in two senses, was a factor. First, victims were selected largely on the basis of their formal religious affiliation as Croat, Serb, or Muslim -that is, on the basis of their affiliation with Catholicism, Serb Orthodoxy, or Islam. In most cases there was no other distinguishing factor, such as appearance, language, or clothing. When the target identity was not apparent from personal names, then informants or records (such as voter registration lists) were needed to select victims for persecution. Some survivors have remarked, for example, that they had not viewed themselves as religious or even thought about their religious identity until they were singled out for persecution because of it: they discovered they * Direct correspond«« 309 310 SoeOjOGY OF RELIGION had a religious identity only in the act of its being imposed upon them. This identity is commonly named ethnic rather than religious because it was handed down through the family, rather than being a matter of personal belief or religious practice. Because "religious" can refer to belief and practice, I am using the term "religion identity** rather than "religious identity" to refer to that identity, handed down through the family but connected to a religious tradition, that was the marker of difference in the Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH) conflict. The second role of religion in the tragedy centers on the institutions, symbols, rituals, and ideologies through which the violence was motivated and justified. This double aspect of religion is erased in discussions of ethnic hatreds or crimes of "ethnic cleansing" that are attributed Serb or Croat nationalists. The crimes were committed by Serb and Croat nationalists who were at the same time Orthodox Christian and Catholic nationalists and the cleansing that took place was based upon religiously informed ideologies and constructions of difference. 1 The language of ethnicity to refer to the conflict in BH is grounded partially in the constitution of the post'WWII Yugoslavia, which on the one hand embraced several formal republics () but also divided population by "narlon" (narod) Slovenians, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Macedonians. Non-Slavic populations were given the appelation of "nationality* (narodnost). The category of "Muslim" was created in the 1980's to offer Bosniacs and other Slavic Muslims a nationhood and thus a group enfranchisement that would be parallel to that of Bosnian Croats, and Serbs, but the term led to contradictions. Thus a Bosniac with a Muslim name but who was atheist and non-observant was of the "Muslim" nation while an Albanian Muslim who happened to be a believer and observant was designated 1 Islamic militancy played a vole, but a lesser one. It was largely reactive. It had lacked any program to create a religiously homogenous nation state and any contiguous nation state with which to align and potentially unite. Islamic nationalists influenced a faction of die Bosnian government and army, but never controlled them. The election of Alija IzetbegoviCas the first president of BH was greeted as a triumph for multireligious democracy by some and feared as a herald of Islamic rule by others. Izetbegovic" had been imprisoned under Tito for activities associated with an Islamic advocacy group. The "Islamic Manifesto" Izetbegovic'had authored at the time was reprinted and circulated by both Islamic nationalists and Serb nationalists wishing to convince Serbs that Bosnia was inevitably to become an Islamic state, but the vast majority of Bosnian Muslims never read it. An international force of Islamic fighters, mujahidin, did come to BH, and tor a time the Bosniac population, in anger and despair at the inaction of NATO and the UN in the face of the slaughter, were vulnerable to influence by outside militants. After the war, missionary and aid groups based in the Gulf promoted dress codes and other Islamic statements of Gulf identity at odds with Bosniac tradition. Eventually, most mujahidin were expelled and those who did remain, though a thorn in the side for local populations of Muslims and non-Muslims, never gained political power. Within a few years a strong Bosniac backlash had set in against aggressive identity statements on Muslim fundamentalists.

Islam as a Way of Defining the National Identity of Bosnian Muslims

and has taught "Islam and the Balkans" at the University of Western Macedonia (Greece). He is involved in the contemporary and latter cultural and religious history of the countries of Ex-Yugoslavia, researching the modern religious-political relationships between the Croatians, Serbs and Bosnians and publishing conferences papers and journal articles. He is the author of the monograph "The Civil War in Yugoslavia 1990-1995: Historical and Religious Aspects" (Thessaloniki, 2008). He is also strongly interested in the activities of the Greek community in Zemun (Serbia) during the 18th and 19th century.

BOSNIAN IDENTITY BETWEEN NATIONALISM, (IN)TOLERANCE AND (A)THEISM

This article discusses the historical changes in religious practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina from the communist era to the postwar period in line with their influence on identity and intergroup (inter-ethnic, inter-religious) relations. There is a lack of evidence on whether people did not overtly express their religious beliefs during communism even though they were covertly religious, or whether they started engaging in the religious practice during and after the 1992-1995 war in order to establish group connectedness, cohesion, and fulfill certain needs. " Bosnian identity " will be described as a puzzle formed by the " remains " of the previous regime and the " new additions " of the postwar period. The discourse of power dominates in Bosnia-Herzegovina and enables prohibitions of different types of dialogue that can lead to better understanding of differences and Other(s). The main problem that will be addressed in this article is the (non)existing Bosnian identity analyzed through " jouissance " of nationalism, intolerance and religion. The contradictions of Sigmund Freud's concept of identification, and the relation of that concept to the body and power in a postwar divided society will be discussed. We can conclude that the main discourse of power operates with religion in order to establish the " jigsaw puzzle of Bosnian identity ". The presence of those who either live in a different system (yugonostalgic people, Homo Yugoslavicus), or those who do not believe (atheists) simply adds a new dimension to the currently established system which can be used to further explain if the overtly expressed beliefs will remain unchanged in case of the establishment of a new system.