Bosna Hersek’te ‘İslam Adına Kim Konuşuyor?’un tarihi: Bir Resmi İslam, Halk İslamı Tartışması/ A History of " Who Speaks for Islam? " in Bosnia- Herzegovina: An Official Versus Popular Islam Debate (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religion in Communist Lands, 1990
In September 1989 I visited Yugoslavia for the sixth time. As always, there was electricity in the air, and as always, the national question, as Yugoslavs fondly call it, had a great deal to do with that electicity. Serbs fear everyone (so it seems these days), everyone fears Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins fear Albanians, and Montenegrins fear each other. Typical of this atmosphere was a conversation in which I found myself, at a Belgrade cafe, as two local journalists drew and redrew maps of the Balkans, showing a menacingly large arrow projecting northward from Istanbul through Serbia, while they told me of their fears of a Muslim threat to European civilisation. 'Albanian Muslims and Bosnian Muslims are in this together,' they told me in deadly earnest. 'They have big families in order to swamp Serbia and Yugoslavia with Muslims, and turn Yugoslavia into a Muslim republic. They want to see a Khomeini in charge here. But Belgrade is not their final goal. They will continue to advance until they have taken Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London-all the great cities of Europe. Unless they are stopped.' 1 Non-Muslims in Yugoslavia recall Libyan dictator Qaddafi's generosity in providing for the Yugoslav Islamic community's mosque-building programme, note Bosnia's long-term interest in building economic and cultural contact with Syria, Iraq, and other Arab states, point to the Muslims' efforts to align Yugoslavia with the Arabs during the October 1973 war in the Middle East, and underline the ongoing contacts between Islamic clerics and believers in Bosnia and their co-religionists in the Middle Ea~t, as, for example, in the case of young Yugoslav Muslims who go to the Middle East for Islamic theological training. For some non-Muslims, these are all signs that the Muslim community is in some sense a foreign implant, that I Psychiatrist Jovan Raskovc told Intervju magazine in September 1989 that Muslims are fixated in the anal phase of their psycho-social development and are therefore charact.erised by general aggressiveness and an obsession with precision and cleanliness. (Croats, by contrast, suffer from a castration complex, according to Raskovic.
2012
This thesis contributes to the study of religions, particularly Islam, in the successor states of former Yugoslavia from 1989 to 2009. The theoretical contributions of this work lie in the comparison of the communist and post-communist periods, where clear similarities and differences have been drawn for better understanding of the continuity between them. Current works on the state of Islam and Muslim communities in the Balkans have mainly focused on recent developments without insight into the conditions and effects of religious life under communism. This work is concerned with the continuity of religious practice from the communist period, religious changes and the revival of Islam at the institutional, public, intellectual and individual level. The thesis begins with a historical background of the region and the arrival of Islam. It moves then to examine constitutional and legislative changes regarding religion and their impact on Islam. After analysing the most visible signs of...
Güneydoğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2009
ISLAM AS A EUROPEAN RELIGION: SOME VIEWS ON ISLAM IN THE TERRITORY OF THE EX-YUGOSLAVIA - THE CASES OF SLOVENIA AND BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA The paper wishes to present the exmnpfe of two repub/ics from the exYugosla via: Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina that claimed independence in 1991, a11d to draw atte11tio11 to some of the stereotypes about !slam a11d Muslims, natio11al mythologies and racism tliat have served as toots i11 the hands of politicians and culminated in the f orm of war in Bos11ia and Herzegovina. Stereotypical conceptions about Islam and Musfim s stiff mark the attitude of S fo venia 's inhabitants towards the Muslims who live in Slo venia as Slo venian citizens. ln the article I will expose some consequences of this stereotypical perception of the "oth er" and "d(f!erent ". Key Words: Stereotype, Racism, Islam. Bosnia Herzigovina
The Making of Secular Islam in Yugoslavia and Reis Ul-Ulema Džemaludin Čaušević
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 38 : Iss. 5 , Article 5., 2018
"The 1920s and 1930s was labeled the Golden Age of Bosnian Islam. Arabic, Persian, and Turkish were widely used by Bosnian Muslim scholars and there were several attempts to modernize and Europeanize Bosnian Islam. Among them were attempts to develop a separate Bosnian Muslim identity linked to the history of Muslims in the Balkans and changes in the education system for Muslims in the area that would become Yugoslavia."
A History of "Who Speaks for Islam?" in Bosnia- Herzegovina: An Official Versus Popular Islam Debate
This paper examines the organisation of popular and official Islam during and after communism in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Through studying the interaction between the popular and the official forms of Islam in the historical context, this paper unfolds the debate on who speaks for Islam? That took place between official representatives and popular Islamic groups and movements in the former Yugoslavian republic. Such an enquiry revealed firstly that a close contact with the existing regime (regardless of its ideology) is essential for becoming and remaining as the official Islamic authority, as seen in the Islamic Community's pro-Titoist stance throughout in the former Yugoslavia. The findings of the enquiry secondly suggest that popular Islam and official Islam represent transitive positions; meaning that a popular Islamic movement can become the official Islam, vice versa. Accordingly, a former popular Islam front, the Mladi Muslimani (Young Muslims), in Yugoslavia evolved into an official Islamic authority after the dissolution of the country and by the Bosnia-Herzegovina's establishment, in the scope of which new popular Islamic groups bred. Published in the 'Gazi Akademik Bakış' journal (June 2017, Vol. 10, No. 20, pp. 299-312).
“Islamic tradition”: questioning the Bosnian model
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe, 2019
When Riada Asimović Akyol recently wrote in the Atlantic that ‘the istory and practice of Bosnian Islam yields a number of noteworthy lessons for those seeking to cultivate a liberal Islam in Europe’, she identified such a liberal version of Islam with the Bosniak’s acceptance of the modern state during Austro-Hungarian rule, in the administrative centralisation of its institutions, in the prominence of Islamic modernism in Bosnia and in history of secularisation – in short, the Bosniak’s adaptability to modernity and secular contexts is a model to be imitated. This paper aims to question the idea of a ‘progress towards a liberal Islam’ as being too straightforward by providing historical, political and also intellectual context to the practice of Islam in Bosnia and, above all, by analysing the present logic of looking for a particular Islamic identity. I will propose a reflection on what the ‘Bosnian model’ might mean in three steps – defining the Bosnian model; placing it in historical context; and reconstructing the context of t he contemporary Islamic community’s efforts to define the Bosnian Islamic tradition and assessing its results.
Foreign Influences in Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995
During and just after the war in BiH the financial support coming from foreign Muslim countries undermined the power of the well organized and structured Bosnian Islamic community. The Islamic revival that began in Yugoslavia in the 70’s decade, which was developed in the framework of the local Muslim institutions and tradition, turned during and after the war to a different revitalization influenced by alien elements as some foreign fighters and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) from the Middle East. The Official Islamic Community of BIH (IZ) has been taking control of Islam in BIH since the end of the 1992-95 war. However, the IZ has recognized the presence of religious organizations outside its control, and that one of these organizations is an obstacle for the legitimate activities of the wider Islamic Community. Besides efforts on behalf of the IZ to counter external influence, ordinary believers are very often staunch opponents of Salafis and that might be the really insurmountable obstacle in front of Salafism in BIH. Since the end of the war the largely secular and European attitude among the Bosniaks has caused friction with foreign Islamic creeds. Different reports on incidents involving moderate and radical Muslims have shown that Salafi communities are willing to use coercive methods to spread their radical ideas. Traditional Muslims have also demonstrated that they can use radical methods to counter the spread of the Salafi movement in BIH. Assessments show that, despite their efforts, the Salafi movement does not have many supporters in BIH. The general population is afraid of their fundamentalist approach towards religion. BIH Muslims want to maintain the local traditional and moderate version of Islam. While the predominance of traditional ‘Bosnian’ Islam is widespread, the Salafi movement has established itself in some areas of BIH. Some radical groups have been determined in their efforts to publicly confront the role of the IZ and its control over Islamic religion in BIH, using their literal interpretation of the Koran. Their actions have drawn the attention of both local and international media and security services. An element of the local media, that often shows nationalist or political bias, has tried to show the problem of Salafism in BIH as a growing threat against the safety and security within BIH and perhaps within the rest of Europe. This media element has used a theme that is similar to that used at the beginning of the 1990’s, in changing the term ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ to ‘Wahhabism’ or Salafism. To counter this, media close to the Bosniak establishment, have tried to ‘hide’ any evidence of the Salafi presence in BIH or, at least, to downplay the significant of their influence. Most of the information gathered until now about this topic is based on the regurgitation of media or biased spread of rumours without further confirmation. This article, which is focused on the current situation of Salafism, intents to represent original thinking about the real picture of the Islamic community in the country and not a ‘regurgitation of open-source wisdom’. It is very important to defeat prejudices and misunderstandings that present obstacles to make a serious analysis on this issue.