Bosnia Islam the Islamic Faith

Bosnia Islam

The Islamic Faith in Bosnia: A Critically Overlooked Diversity

The Islamic faith represents one of the most widely spread and acknowledged religions in the world. Often misunderstood and even more often exploited, members of the Muslim faith have developed an identity in the modern world which is problematically associated to such issues as conflict and terrorism. However, an examination of Islam finds it to be a deeply complex faith based in a rich history of tradition. Moreover, it demonstrates that the perception of Islam as a violent and archaic faith driven by political aggression and a set of laws governed by an extreme orientation on human rights is neither universal nor accurately representative of all Muslim faith. An exemplary Muslim population for consideration in this discussion is that of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has endured in the face of centuries of communist rule, Civil War and, today, a revitalization that sees it as among the most accessible of global Muslim populations. And yet, Islam in Bosnia is colored by a recent history of political strife and a current reality of relative uncertainty. The people of Bosnia have worked to achieve a stable sovereignty in the last decade that is underscored by a simultaneous drive for its Muslims to reestablish themselves as a faith of cultural, political and legal influence. In its friendliness to the West, its proclivity toward religious freedom and national pluralism, and its efforts at creating a gendered modern faith with the intent to reverse Islam's often outmoded and cruel treatment of women, Bosnia's Islamic population represents a counterpoint both to perceptions of the Muslim faith as being radical, violent and anti-American and to the movement of Islam itself, which in other regions is categorically more sympathetic to fundamentalist aims.

The discussion hereafter denotes though that the Muslims of Bosnia are on a threshold. With the worlds of American materialism and Islamic tribalism clashing violently with another, the Islamic surge in Bosnia may still be formed to reflect either of these paths. Though to the perspective of American allies, Bosnia's Muslims are a breed apart from those North African or Persian Gulf Muslims that have intended us military harm and political undermining, there remains a concern over the cultural direction proceeded upon by Bosnia's Muslims. In a European continent itself noting a significant rise in the radicalization of the Islamic population, Bosnia's population is at a sensitive point in its history where proper support may continue its push toward modernity but where alienation and disenfranchisement could threaten to reduce Bosnia's Islamic people to fodder for a militarized movement against modernity and industrialization. Though Islam is today a majority faith in the secular nation, many Bosnians are concerned by evidence that its Muslims could be radicalized. Further, there is concern that this population could be radicalized to the point of threatening the secular sovereignty of the state.

Key to facilitating the continuity of an Islamic tradition with roots in the faith rather than in the modern politicization of its struggle against colonial occupation is a more accurate understanding of this population than that which already persists. Namely, because Islam makes up roughly 40% of the population in Bosnia, and because this makeup is almost entirely Sunni Muslim, the nation does have a cultural connection to the Islam which is practiced throughout the Middle East. This cultural connection is frequently overlooked though as we choose to understand Bosnia as a sort of bastion to a more agreeable sort of Muslim.

The text by Bougeral (?) explores the rationality of the perception, remarking that "the will to present Bosnian Islam as a sort of positive cultural exception sometimes entails a conception of this 'European and tolerant' Islam as homogenous and sui generis, set in opposition to another, implicit Islam, considered 'intolerant since non-European', which is located beyond the Bosporous and the Strait of Gibraltar, or represented by the 'non-autochthonous' Muslim populations living in Western Europe." (Bougeral, 97) To make this distinction is to understand the Islamic population of Bosnia as being somehow inherently more acquiescent to peace and the commercial interests of western nations.

And yet, because Bosnia is a nation less than a decade removed from war and from the oversight of totalitarian authority, its population is in an area of high risk where radicalization is concerned. Following a decade of attempted recovery from a brutal ethnic conflict that found Muslims as a secondary victim to the Christian majority which focused its 'cleansing' efforts on the ethnic Albanians in Serbia, the former Yugoslavia is now splintered into sovereign regions demarcated across cultural lines. This would mark a moment of inflection for Bosnia, which would become a template to Europe of a secular state with a majority Muslim population. Bougeral connects the fallout from years of conflict to the emergence of a self-sufficient Bosnian Muslim identity, reporting that "in the 1990s, the disappearance of the Yugoslav federation and the independence of Bosnia-Herzogovina, followed by its violent partition, deeply transformed the context in which these debates were taking place. Having proclaimed their own political sovereignty, Bosnian Muslims attracted the attention of the whole Muslim world and thus rendered such debates more significant than ever." (Bougeral, 98)

This would be a compelling emergence perceived differently in the western and Muslim worlds. In the former, this would be a positive demonstration of the capacity for Muslim coexistence in a modern secular state, with a significant degree less extremist proclivity than Muslim theocracies throughout the Middle East and North Africa. However, the transition would also enliven the imagination of Islamic leaders from more theocratic contexts in the Muslim world. This ascendancy in Europe corresponded with the implications of the Jihad, which called for the achievement of a pan-Islamic global regime. The disbanding of the atheist Communist forces that had held sway in Bosnia and the de facto emergence of a moderate Islamic voice in the region would suggest an orientation more susceptible to the ambitions of said Jihad but simultaneously moderate in its practice of faith.

This is demonstrated where Bougeral tells of efforts on the part of a rising voice in the leadership of Bosnia's Islamic communities to promote an agenda of Sharia-based administration. However, "the party's efforts to reintroduce certain religious prohibitions in everyday life came up against the multiform resistance of a largely secularized society. These inner dynamics of the Bosnian Muslim community, which are unusual and most often implicit, have escaped the attention of most external observers, or have been reduced to an inevitable consequence of the war. Since 1996, the transformation of Bosnia-Herzegovina into a de facto international protectorate has limited the room for menoeuvre of Muslim leaders." (Bougeral, 99)

It is thus that in spite of the contestation of its preachers, Bosnia's people and culture seem to be allied in a certain orientation denoted by recent cultural history. The thrust of socialism has been a crucial factor in reducing the amount of religious extremism or religious rule throughout Eastern Europe, where most living individuals of working, socializing and governing age emerged at a time when religion was illegal. Under the authority of sweeping Soviet aims, Bosnia would be largely inhospitable to all forms of religious expression. Thus, when finally Bosnia did gain self-rule with the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, the relationship of its Muslim population to the international network of Islam would be limited at best. Instead, those who were Islamic by heritage would reflect a greater cultural proximity to western cultural values on religion than to those reflected in an ever more extreme global Islam. It is to this end that Cesari (2006) indicates that "in Europe and the United States, the hierarchies and clerical dynasties of the Muslim world symply [sic] cease to apply. Instead, the mobilization of ordinary Muslims is the deciding factor for the new forms of authority. This mobilization is seen, for example, in the development of mosques and Islamic centers throughout the Western world. . . . Such rapid growth in the number of Islamic centers -- not to mention the increase in Muslim funeral parlors, halal butcher shops, Islamic schools, and so on -- is a striking indication of how well Islam has adapted to its democratic and secularized context." (Cesari, 127)

Indeed, it also causes us to question the reason for the dominance of a single impression concerning Muslims where many in the west are concerned. Certainly, this is not done for a lack of exposure to these populations as Cesari reports myriad statistical figures in order to demonstrate their proliferation in North America and Western Europe. However, these populations who are integrated into their respective modern societies while still practicing some level of observation are significantly shadowed by the activities of the most extreme of adherents; those who consider themselves freedom fighters in contexts such as Iraq and Afghanistan; those who govern with ruthless theocratic intolerance as in the Sudan or Saudi Arabia; and those who act with impunity in the face of international law such as the Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda organizations.

The armed activities of resistance or assault committed in these contexts tends to drive a view of Islam as a radical force counterintuitive to the philosophical aims of western capitalism. As Malik (2004) contends on this point, "it is not surprising that islamophobic authors frequently resort to the concept of secularism which they say needs to be defended against an increasing influence of political Islam in Europe." (Malik, 148) It is under this very set of terms that we are given over to a proclivity where the Islamic identity of Bosnia is concerned. Specifically, the secular society in which this Islamic faith has achieved cultural dominance is belied by a brewing discontent in Bosnia.

A history of ethnic tension, a war still fresh in the memories of all inhabitants, and the new infusion of religious exploration produced by the withdrawal of communist authority are having the effect of diversifying and intensifying the Islamic tendencies of some pockets of the populace. The security which is taken by those in the Western world in the liberal leadership of Bosnian Islamic population may soon be dispelled. The homogenized impression of Bosnian Muslims as reflexively more sympathetic to western aims and ideologies will increasingly subside as young men and women come of age without ever having known the atheist administration of the Soviet Union. For those that instead emerge in a formative stage ensconced by an intensifying interest in the Islamic faith, its roots and its practice around the world, there may yet emerge a connection between the political frustration of life in Bosnia and the tendencies toward extremism demonstrated elsewhere in the Muslim sphere.

A false comfort that this is not feasible in a secularized nation reflects a failure to fully understand both the Islamic experience throughout the world and the implications of the struggle between the values of the west and those elsewhere, especially in the developing sphere. The research by Yavuz (2004) is telling on this point, reflecting on globalization as a force with the capacity both to bring groups closer to the fold of a world community and to alienate or disenfranchise those groups by virtue of ethnic, ideological or political difference. Yavuz argues that "the main impacts of globalization have been the two contradictory processes of homogenization and fragmentation. At present, in most of the Arab and Muslim world, the fragmentation aspect is more dominant than homogenization or cooperation. Nonetheless, it would be legitimate to argue that globalization has created two competing visions of Islam. At the extreme end of the spectrum is the liberal and market friendly Islam, dominant in Turkey and Malaysia, and at the other is the 'ghetto Islam' of some parts of Pakistan and some Arab countries. Muslim reaction to these processes is very much shaped by idiosyncratic local histories and socio-political conditions." (Yavuz, 214)

Bosnia is a clear demonstration of that fact, with its population proceeding to demonstrate much of what one might expect in the face of Soviet rule and its categorical prohibition against the practice of religious faith. A clear response to that era of repression is the heightened demonstration of religious faith in all contexts, even as Bosnia continues to be governed by secularist ideologies and a religiously integrated society. However, as noted, we are now entering a second generation following the fall of the Soviet Union.