The Bosnian Muslims

Denial Of A Nation

Francine Friedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813320960
• eBook ISBN: 9780429976414
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Although their plight now dominates television news worldwide, the Bosnian Muslims were until recently virtually unknown outside of Yugoslavia. This meticulously researched, comprehensive book traces the turbulent history of the Bosnian Muslims and shows how their mixed secular and religious identity has shaped the conflict in which they are now so tragically embroiled. Although their plight now dominates television news worldwide, the Bosnian Muslims were until recently virtually unknown outside of Yugoslavia. Who are these people? Why are they the focus of their former neighbors rage? What role did they play in Yugoslavia before they became the victims of ethnic cleansing? Why has Bosnia-Hercegovina, once a model of ethnic tolerance and multicultural harmony, suddenly exploded into ethnic violence?Focusing on these questions, Friedman provides a comprehensive study of this national group whose plight has riveted governments, the press, and the public alike. With a name reflecting both their religious and their national identity, the Bosnian Muslims are unique in Europe as indigenous Slavic Muslims. Descendants of schismatic Christians from the Middle Ages, they converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia.The book follows them as they went from victims of crusades during the Middle Ages to members of the ruling elite within the Ottoman Empire; from rulers back to subjects under Austria-Hungary; and later subjects again, this time under the Serbs in the interwar Yugoslav Kingdom and the Communists after World War II. The Bosnian Muslims have survived through it all, even thriving during certain periods, most notably when they were recognized by Tito as a nation.Meticulously tracing their turbulent history and assessing the issues surrounding Bosnian Muslim nationhood in Yugoslavia, Friedman shows us how the mixed secular and religious identity of the Bosnian Muslims has shaped the conflict in which they are now so tragically embroiled.

1

Origin of the Bosnian Muslims

“On the road, when I met people, I asked them always about the past. Only in this way could the present become comprehensible.”

—Robert D. Kaplan¹

“The Balkans produce more history than they can consume.”²

Boundary changes have been infrequent since World War II. However, contemporary clashes over frontiers in Central Europe, encouraged by irredentism, reinforce the fact that national groups rarely dwell within clearly demarcated borders. Settlement patterns harken to deeper imperatives than fair boundaries. Central Europe, once the scene of large multinational empires, is a striking example of how national groups, previously subjugated by imperial designs, can rise as states in their own right with perceived injustices to be corrected, stolen lands to be reclaimed, and enemies to be vanquished.

Perhaps the most poignant example of the nastiness of national-boundary problems and the deadly attempts to redress perceived injustice is found in the territories of the former Yugoslavia. This land has been traversed and conquered so many times by so many peoples that it is not surprising that most of twentieth-century Yugoslavia’s internal frontiers, as well as some external borders, are contested.

Yugoslav intellectuals, as well as politicians, continue to view the origins of the South Slavs, their settlement patterns, and their political conditions as central to a consideration of the legitimacy of contemporary territorial and political demands. Serb and Croat claimants are currently attempting to carve out their own realms at the expense of the Bosnian Muslims, a national group once relatively unknown except within Yugoslavia. The anguished Odyssey of the Bosnian Muslims may be a foretaste of what other nascent national entities will have to endure to achieve self-determination in the post-Communist world order.

Who are the Bosnian Muslims, and how did they come to this sorry pass? Was there something about the history of the various Yugoslav peoples or about their twentieth-century unification or the institutions and regimes they created that encouraged the depredations of ethnic cleansing in the name of ethnic homogeneity? In attempting to confront the issue of the viability of the Bosnian Muslims as a nation and to understand why they have suffered at the hands of their compatriots, we must, of course, consider contemporary conditions. However, first we must search for clues in their singular history to discredit the dubious claim that today’s murder and mayhem are merely a renewal of racial hatreds rather than a contemporary land grab.

Early Balkan Settlement

Although the earliest immigrants into the Balkan Peninsula may have arrived around three thousand years ago,³ the ancestors of today’s South Slavs likely first crossed the Danube and then the Drava Rivers in the middle to late sixth century.⁴ The names Serb and Croat,⁵ not used meaningfully by Balkan inhabitants until the nineteenth century,⁶ were probably taken from later-arriving, possibly Iranian groups who were assimilated by the Slavs already in the Balkans during the seventh century. There is every reason to believe that the antecedents of today’s Serbs and Croats, who were part of the larger Slav movement westward, were originally of the same Slavic stock, becoming differentiated only because of settlement patterns rather than by racial and cultural differences.⁷

Encouraged, ironically, by the invasion of the Turkic Avars, the Slavs created a substantial number of settlements in the area. Until the arrival of the Avars, Slavic settlement of the Balkans had been fitful at best. The Slavs were living a wild and primitive life unhampered by leaders or other authority, but when the Avars appeared, they either conscripted the Slavs or forced them to flee south of the Danube. Together, the Avars and some of their Slav subjects wreaked havoc on the borders of the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine army was occupied with a war against Persia and could not spare troops to control the Balkans. The Slavs and Avars gained and retained control of the Pannonian area of the Balkan Peninsula for three centuries, during which time many South Slavs fell into a sedentary existence, settling and cultivating the land. Ancestors of the Croats inhabited what is now Croatia, Dalmatia, and western Bosnia. Forebears of the Serbs settled in what is now southern Serbia, Zahumlje, Trebinje, Pagania, and Konavli.

Avar military aspirations effected the first cooperative, albeit sporadic, Slavic merger to wage war against Byzantium.⁸ However, the Avar-encouraged merger of South Slavs was not a lasting or a profound union, for the Slav colonists were not subject to strong unifying political leadership during this era.

The Byzantine counterattacks against the Avars and their Slavic cohorts were generally unsuccessful, partially because of Byzantine Emperor Maurice’s capricious leadership and later because of the ineptitude of his successor, Phocas. But even when the Avars and Slavs were defeated in a battle, it was the military contingents rather than the Slavic settlers who were adversely affected. The settlers merely continued to diffuse throughout the area. They gradually mingled with and assimilated the indigenous Illyrian populations, who had settled perhaps as early as 1800 B.C.⁹ in the northwest—including present-day Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, and northern Italy, as well as Transylvania and Romania.¹⁰

Avar strength began to decline during the second decade of the seventh century, culminating in the Avar defeat by the Frankish King Charlemagne in 796. The Slavs accepted his rule, and control of the Balkan interior from the head of the Adriatic across to the Black Sea devolved to the Slavic tribes.

The Slavs had settled widely throughout the Balkans, breaking the land tie between Constantinople and the few remaining Romanized cities in Dalmatia. Thus, the eastern and western sections of the empire, already estranged, were now cut off from communication with each other. In contrast to the eventually revitalized western part of the empire, the east became a dreary place. The flavor of the Slav-settled Byzantine lands was captured in the following passage:

In the lost areas urban life disappeared or declined; many of the towns became little more than villages. Commerce as well as communication across the Balkans virtually ceased owing to both urban decline and the insecurity of the roads. Christianity as a religion of the Balkan population almost disappeared in the interior. Literate culture more or less died out.¹¹

The Slavic tribes continued to maintain their primitive tribe-centered organization. The early Slavic patriarchal clans were organized in a series of small, independent districts, each of which was called a župa, meaning “bond” or “confederation,” led by a župan. Often, some clans affiliated and chose a grand župan.

The religion of the Slavs, too, remained primitive for some time. The early Slavs appear to have followed an animistic type of religion, believing they were surrounded by invisible spirits that could be either benevolent or hostile. They also worshiped a supreme being and supported priests and medicine men. When the South Slavs were finally brought to Christianity, the ancestors of the Serbs accepted the gospel and rites of the Eastern Church as preached by Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century. Although the forebears of the Croats appear to have been introduced to Christianity by missionaries from Rome as early as the late seventh century during Pope Agathon’s reign (678–681), they do not seem to have accepted it wholeheartedly until the ninth century.¹² Reflecting the eastern versus western split in the empire, the acceptance of different religious rituals exacerbated the differentiation of the Serbs from the Croats that geographical and historical factors had already initiated.

The Balkans in the Middle Ages

As the tenth century drew to a close, the outlines of the political and demographic landscape of the Middle Ages emerged. The Bulgars had long been dominant actors in the Balkans, but other Slavic states also arose, only to be merged with stronger neighboring empires. Ancestors of today’s Slovenes and Croats were Frankish vassals, although at times the Croat lands also fell within the Byzantine sphere of influence. However, the Croats, allied with their Dalmatian cousins, were finally able to throw off Byzantine and Frankish domination in the late ninth century and build an independent Croat state that lasted for two hundred years. Some contemporary Croats insisted that the foundation of the Croat kingdom was laid as early as the end of the eighth century to the middle of the ninth century.¹³ However, the independent Croat state was only finally realized under Branimir (879–892) and the Kingdom of Croatia under Tomislav (910–928). In fact, the strength of Croatia during this period may have compared favorably with that of the Serbs, who were unable to resist Bulgar incursions.¹⁴

The Serbs became politically and militarily active in the region at about the same time Croat fortunes were ebbing, in the wake of Tomislav’s death in 928. Croatia was forced to seek Byzantine assistance against the Serbs, as well as against the Venetians and others who were attacking Croat-inhabited lands. Hungarian power, however, overwhelmed the Croatian kingdom, which lost its independence to the Hungarian monarch Ladislav and then to Ladislav’s successor, Koloman, through the Treaty of Zagreb in 1102.¹⁵

In the latter part of the twelfth century, Stjepan Nemanja united Serbia, founding a powerful dynastic state. Serbia and Byzantium were at loggerheads throughout the rest of the Middle Ages. The Serb kingdom grew stronger and more aggressive, particularly in the fourteenth century, whereas Byzantium was racked by civil war. The upshot of all the alliance manipulations among the Serbs, Byzantines, and Bulgars was that the newly created Serbian patriarch crowned the Serbian King Stjepan Dušan emperor of the Serbs (and the Romans, as he called himself¹⁶) in 1346. Dušan’s territory then extended “from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth and from the Adriatic to the Aegean,”¹⁷ making Serbia one of the most powerful forces in the area.

The existence of the medieval Croat and Serb kingdoms is fairly well documented, but what of Bosnia? Historians have found relatively little written evidence about Bosnia and Herzegovina’s early history, in part because its mountainous terrain discouraged casual travelers and other observers. We do know that many peoples—including the Serbs, Croats, Hungarians, and Byzantines— controlled parts of the region at various times from the tenth through the twelfth centuries. In fact, lacking historical sources to the contrary, some Croats claimed absolute suzerainty over Bosnia and Herzegovina based on certain periods of domination,¹⁸ just as the Serbs put forward their claim based on possession of Bosnian lands during Časlav’s reign in the middle of the tenth century and control of Hum (modern Herzegovina) from the mid-twelfth century to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Usage and Pronunciation
• Introduction: Ethnicity, the Concept of a Nation, and the Bosnian Muslims
• 1 Origin of the Bosnian Muslims
• 2 Bosnian Muslims in the Ottoman Empire
• 3 Bosnian Muslims Under Austro-Hungarian Rule
• 4 Bosnian Muslims in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes
• 5 Bosnian Muslims in World War II
• 6 Growth of Bosnian Muslim Nationalism Under Tito
• 7 Bosnian Muslims and the Dynamics of Post-Tito Politics
• 8 Collapse of Yugoslavia and the Fate of the Bosnian Muslims
• 9 The Case of the Bosnian Muslims: Relevance for the Social Sciences
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index