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Yugoslavia Muslim Slavs
Beginning in the late 1960s, the Yugoslav government
recognized the Muslim Slavs of Bosnia and Hercegovina as a
particular "nation" and not merely as a religious group. Belgrade
granted this recognition in an effort to resolve the
centuries-old struggle in which Serbs and Croats claimed ethnic
ties with the Muslim Slavs to gain a political majority in the
disputed republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Muslim Slavs lived
in every Yugoslav republic and province, but by far the largest
concentration was in Bosnia and Hercegovina (39.5 percent of the
population). In the 1980s, Montenegro was 13.4 percent Muslim
Slavs, Serbia 2.3 percent, and Kosovo 3.7 percent.
Controversy surrounds the geographic and ethnic origins of
the Muslim Slavs. The best-known theory holds that during the
Middle Ages Slavs in Bosnia and Hercegovina embraced a heretical
form of Christianity known as Bogomilism, then converted in large
numbers to Islam when the Ottoman Turks conquered them. A second
theory says that the Muslim Slavs were Serbs who embraced Islam
and settled in Bosnia. A third is that the Muslims were Turkish
settlers from Anatolia who adopted the Serbo-Croatian language.
In any case, Islamization brought tangible economic and social
benefits to those who converted while the Turks ruled their
territory; by 1918 Muslim Slavs accounted for 91 percent of
Bosnia's landowners and a large portion of its merchants. Many
emigrated to Turkey, however, after the end of Ottoman rule, and
the Yugoslav land reforms of 1918 impoverished previously
prosperous Muslim Slav landowners.
Islamic culture dominated Bosnia for centuries, and the
region now boasts a wealth of mosques, medreseler (Islamic
schools), tekkeler (dervish monasteries), Turkish inns and
baths, graceful stone bridges, covered bazaars, cemeteries, and
ornate Turkish-style homes. Modern Western culture penetrated
Bosnia and Hercegovina only after Austria occupied the region in
1878, but most Muslims saw its influence as alien and a portent
of a Roman Catholic resurgence. Gradually, Latin and Cyrillic
scripts replaced the Arabic that was used for centuries to write
Turkish, Arabic, and Persian literature. After 1918 secular
education began supplanting Islamic schools, and education became
available to women. Many Muslim Slav landowners became urban
tradesmen and craftsmen after losing their properties in the
interwar land reform. Long after World War II, the Muslim Slavs
engaged predominantly in traditional crafts and modern services
such as auto and electronics repair.
In need of inexpensive oil supplies in the 1970s, the Tito
government encouraged relations between Yugoslavia's Muslim Slavs
and their coreligionists in the oil-rich Arab countries,
especially Libya. But by raising the status and visibility of its
Muslim Slavs, Yugoslavia created another potential nationalist
issue within its borders. In 1983 a dozen persons were convicted
of fomenting religious and national hatred and planning to turn
Bosnia into a religiously pure Islamic state. The likelihood of
major upheaval sponsored by Muslim fundamentalists abroad was
considered small, however, because most of Yugoslavia's Muslim
population belonged to the Sunni branch of Islam not in sympathy
with the main fundamentalist groups of the Middle East.
(see Islam
, this ch.).
Data as of December 1990
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