Many histories of the Balkans and several theories of nationalism are based on the idea of a linear transition from empires to nation-states. However, the history of the Muslims/Bosniaks forces us to rethink such teleological views. On the one hand, the case of the Muslims/Bosniaks highlights the enduring imperial dimensions of the history of the contemporary Balkans. In particular, this case prompts us to extend the analyses in terms of loyalty and allegiance to the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian Empires, applying it also to the two Yugoslav states. These analytical categories complement rather than replace the categories of national identity, national identification, and the like. On the other hand, the national indetermination of Muslims/Bosniaks until the 1960s—or even later—shows how national identities in the Balkans were formed belatedly and haphazardly. Particularly visible for the Muslims/Bosniaks, this uncertain genesis of national identities can be found in other Muslim and Christian populations of the Balkans. The lengthy national indetermination of the Muslims/Bosniaks thus prompts us to expand the analyses in terms of “national indifference” to the Ottoman and post-Ottoman space. But at the same time, we need to distinguish better what reflects the premodern primacy of religious and provincial identities, what relates to the strategic avoidance of national categories, and what simply reveals that nationality is not an issue in most daily interactions.
The case of the Muslims/Bosniaks also provides a particularly clear illustration of the modern and constructed nature of national identities, even though this case contradicts some deterministic interpretations or hasty generalizations. The fact that the traditional Muslim elites rejected any national project of their own and that the nascent Muslim intelligentsia hesitated between a Croat, Serb, or Yugoslav national identification shows that the construction of Balkan national identities depended on specific and local historical trajectories, as well as various demographic, political, and geopolitical balances of power. Beginning with the “national affirmation” of the 1960s, the new Muslim political and intellectual elites struggled with the latent contradiction between affirmation of Muslim political sovereignty and preservation of Bosnian territorial integrity. This reality took a dramatic turn in the 1990s, when the very existence of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Muslim/Bosniak nation was under threat. The Muslim/Bosniak case also forces us to search for a more complex version of Rogers Brubaker’s triad nationalizing state/national minority/kin state in order to analyze Central and Eastern European nationalisms.1 Indeed, the historical trajectories and balances of power at work in Bosnia-Herzegovina make this explanatory model partially inoperative: the Muslims/Bosniaks have no nationalizing state or kin state to refer to, and Bosnia-Herzegovina is characterized by the fact that none of its communities has national minority status and none would agree to be reduced to such status. At stake in the 1990s was not the relationship between a nationalizing state and national minorities, but rather the very existence of a plurinational state. Similar situations can undoubtedly be found in other Balkan states where nation-state rationales have been unable to erase post-imperial political and social realities, as in Macedonia, Cyprus, and post-Soviet Moldavia. Lastly, the Muslim/Bosniak elites’ continuous search for a new empire not only reveals the persistence of certain imperial dynamics after the demise of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, but also shows that the processes of building national identities in Central and Eastern Europe must be viewed in the context of their international environment, as illustrated by the role of the EU in resolving national disputes between certain Central and Eastern European countries, in managing the Yugoslav crisis of the 1990s, and last but not least, in placing post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina under tutelage.
Another frequently highlighted feature of Muslim/Bosniak national identity is its close ties with Islam. Yet until the mid-twentieth century, Muslim religious identity was a substitute for national identity, rather than its foundation, as the Muslim elites renounced any nation-state project in favor of non-sovereign religious minority status, and no massive nationalization of the Muslim population took place. Beginning in the 1960s, the new Muslim political and intellectual elites attempted to dissociate the new Muslim national identity from the religious identity of the same name, even though the absence of secular national institutions allowed the Islamic Community to position itself as a proxy national institution. In the 1990s, the ties between Muslim/Bosniak national identity and Muslim religious identity grew closer than ever before, but this process resulted in a paradoxical nationalization of Islam and its main symbols. Thus, the Muslim/Bosniak case is unique, notably due to a belated and incomplete nationalization, but the ties between religious and national identity for Muslims/Bosniaks show many similarities to those of Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats, as described by Vjekoslav Perica and Klaus Buchenau.2 After 1990, the closer ties between Islam and the Muslim/Bosniak national identity resembled similar changes in other European countries such as Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Cyprus, or further afield, Poland and Northern Ireland. In every case, as shown by Patrick Michel and Antonela Capelle-Pogacean, this was not a one-sided “return of religion,” but rather a complex reshaping of the relationship between political and religious elites in search of renewed legitimacy.3 The result of these transformations seldom called into question the profound effects of secularization.
The question of the ties between Islam and Muslim/Bosniak national identity inevitably raises the question of secularization of the Muslim/Bosniak community and, more generally, of Bosnian society as a whole. The appearance of a small Muslim intelligentsia in the late nineteenth century was the precursor of secularization in the Muslim community, which then became apparent during the interwar period with the development of mixed leisure activities, despite the indignant reactions from the revivalist ‘ulama’ and the Young Muslims. During the communist period, Bosnian society underwent an accelerated secularization, with religion being expelled from the public sphere, religious institutions being dismantled to a large extent, and religious practice declining rapidly. This authoritarian secularization process was similar to that of other communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. However, beginning in the 1960s, the Islamic Community successfully rekindled its activity within socialist society itself, in a way not dissimilar to the Catholic Church in Poland. After 1990, the Islamic Community benefited from a sharp rebound in its activity and visibility, but religious practice remained the preserve of a pious minority, and the few attempts at authoritarian re-Islamization led by the Islamic Community and the SDA came up against strong resistance. As in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe studied by Patrick Michel,4 there was no real “return of religion” in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Much to the contrary, the end of the Islamic Community’s monopoly on religious life, the diversification of practices, and individualization of faith show that the religious changes in post-communist Bosnia-Herzegovina largely converge with those in the rest of Europe, as analyzed in the work of Danièle Hervieu-Léger and Grace Davie.5 More in-depth research needs to be done to determine whether Europe—including Bosnia-Herzegovina—is really a religious exception worldwide, or if certain paradoxical forms of secularization can also be noted in Turkey, Iran, or other Muslim countries.
In this context, one of the most notable features of the Muslim/Bosnian case is that, in the 1990s, nascent Muslim nationalism was taken over by a previously marginal pan-Islamist current. Generally speaking, pan-Islamism is associated with the policy of Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid, certain religious mobilizations such as the Khilafat Movement in the Indian sub-continent in the 1920s, and the pan-Islamic Congresses of the interwar period. As an organized movement, it faded in the 1940s with the rise of nationalist and anti-colonialist movements. The persistence of a pan-Islamist current in Bosnia-Herzegovina after 1945 may thus look surprising, especially as it gained power in 1990 and remained in power for nearly a decade. However, we can solve this riddle if we adopt the view that pan-Islamism is a form of proto-nationalism. Having come to power in particularly dramatic circumstances, the Bosnian pan-Islamist current not only struggled to resolve the national contradictions facing the Muslim community, but also largely reproduced the political practices of the former communist regime, simply replacing communist ideology with Islam turned into a discriminating political ideology. These excesses fueled a strong disillusion regarding politics and religion, and the case of the Bosnian pan-Islamist current thus supports the analyses of Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel on the “failure of political Islam” and the “decline of Islamism.”6 Instead of a one-party SDA state with tight control over the Islamic Community, the SDA has now adopted a pragmatic approach, religious institutions have won back a large degree of autonomy, and the political and religious life is becoming increasingly pluralistic. These phenomena prove that Bosnian society is taking part in political and social changes affecting all of Central and Eastern Europe – or even all of Europe. On a doctrinal level, the reflections of Fikret Karčić and Enes Karić on the relationship between a secular state and Islam as a minority religion have contributed to the intellectual elaboration of a “post-Islamist” Islam. These reflections are pertinent not only in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also for all Muslims in Europe.
In sum, the specific features of the Bosniak case are mainly attributable to changing and haphazard balances of power and to deliberate strategic choices, not to a supposed unchanging nature of Islam. This would be even more apparent with a more in-depth comparison between Serb, Croat, and Bosniak nationalisms, showing all their similarities and their forms of ideological and institutional mimicry. Apart from the specificities and tragedies of its post-Ottoman history, the Bosniak nation fits into the underlying trends of European history, and has paid a heavy price during each of Europe’s major crises. Against this backdrop, the Bosniaks’ aspirations to join the European Union—regarded as a new empire ensuring peace and prosperity—appear more than legitimate, even though it is too early to say whether this “empire” will offer sound protection against future upheavals on the European continent.