Muslim Slavs

Mehmed Sokolović (1506-1579), Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire (1565-1579), one of the most notable Muslims of Slavic ethnicity.

Aladža Mosque in Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Muslim Slavs or Slavic Muslims are ethnic groups or sub-ethnic groups of Slavs who are followers of Islam. The term is most often used in the study of the Balkans, Southeastern Europe, Caucasus, Crimea, and Volga region.^[1]^[2]^[3] The majority of Slavic Muslims are found in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and some republics of Russia.^[1]^[2]^[3] Slavic Muslims can also be found in southern Serbia and North Macedonia.^[4] Slavic Muslims are one among the indigenous ethnic groups who are native Europeans of the Islamic faith;^[5] the others are the Muslim populations of Albanians, Greeks, Romani, Balkan Turks, Pomaks, Yörüks, Volga Tatars, and Crimean Tatars,^[5] unlike the Muslims in Western Europe which are mostly non-European recent immigrants or the descendants of old immigrants.^[6]

South Slavic Muslims[edit]

South Slavic Muslims can be divided in two main groups:

South Slavic Muslims of Bulgaria: Muslim Bulgarians (or Pomaks);
South Slavic Muslims of former Yugoslavia and its successor states, encompassing several ethnic groups and sub-groups (in alphabetical order):
- Bosniaks, by majority adherents of Islam; concentrated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and also in Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia;
- Gorani people, a small ethnoreligious community in Serbia, Kosovo,^[a] Albania, and North Macedonia;
- Muslim Croats, adherents of Islam among Croats;
- Muslim Macedonians (or Torbeši), adherents of Islam among ethnic Macedonians;
- Muslim Serbs, adherents of Islam among Serbs;
- Muslims (ethnic group), one of six constitutive peoples in former Yugoslavia; since 1993 mainly opted to adopt ethnic Bosniak designation; remaining communities who kept previous designation are concentrated mainly in Serbia and Montenegro.

Ethnic Slavic Muslims in the Western Balkans follow Hanafi, a subcategory of Sunni Islam.^[7] According to the religious ideology of Christoslavism, coined by Michael Sells, "the belief that Slavs are Christian by nature and that any conversion from Christianity is a betrayal of the Slavic race"^[8] as seen in Croatian and Serbian nationalism, Slavic Muslim are not regarded part of their ethnic kin, as by conversion to Islam, they become "Turks".^[9]

Notes[edit]

a.

^ Kosovo is the subject of a territorial dispute between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia. The Republic of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on 17 February 2008. Serbia continues to claim it as part of its own sovereign territory. The two governments began to normalise relations in 2013, as part of the 2013 Brussels Agreement. Kosovo is currently recognised as an independent state by 97 out of the 193 United Nations member states. In total, 112 UN member states have recognised Kosovo at some point, of which 15 later withdrew their recognition.

References[edit]

^ ^a ^b Cesari, Jocelyne, ed. (2014). "Part III: The Old European Land of Islam". The Oxford Handbook of European Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 427–616. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199607976.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-960797-6. LCCN 2014936672. S2CID 153038977.
^ ^a ^b Clayer, Nathalie (2004). "Les musulmans des Balkans Ou l'islam de «l'autre Europe»/The Balkans Muslims Or the Islam of the «Other Europe»". Religions, pouvoir et société: Europe centrale, Balkans, CEI. Le Courrier de Pays de l'Est (in French). Paris: La Documentation française. 5 (1045): 16–27. doi:10.3917/cpe.045.0016. ISSN 0590-0239 – via Cairn.info.
^ ^a ^b Bougarel, Xavier; Clayer, Nathalie (2013). Les musulmans de l'Europe du Sud-Est: Des Empires aux États balkaniques. Terres et gens d'islam (in French). Paris: IISMM - Karthala. pp. 1–20. ISBN 978-2-8111-0905-9 – via Cairn.info.
^ Macnamara, Ronan (January 2013). "Slavic Muslims: The forgotten minority of Macedonia". Security and Human Rights. Leiden: Brill Publishers/Martinus Nijhoff Publishers on behalf of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee. 23 (4): 347–355. doi:10.1163/18750230-99900038. eISSN 1875-0230. ISSN 1874-7337.
^ ^a ^b Popović, Alexandre; Rashid, Asma (Summer–Autumn 1997). "The Muslim Culture In The Balkans (16th–18th Centuries)". Islamic Studies. Islamic Research Institute (International Islamic University, Islamabad). 36 (2/3, Special Issue: Islam In The Balkans): 177–190. eISSN 2710-5326. ISSN 0578-8072. JSTOR 23076193.
^ Cesari, Jocelyne (January–June 2002). "Introduction - "L'Islam en Europe: L'Incorporation d'Une Religion"". Cahiers d'Études sur la Méditerranée Orientale et le monde Turco-Iranien (in French). Paris: Éditions de Boccard. 33: 7–20. doi:10.3406/CEMOT.2002.1623. S2CID 165345374. Retrieved 21 January 2021 – via Persée.fr.
^ Sabrina P. Ramet (1989). Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics. Duke University Press. pp. 380–. ISBN 978-0-8223-0891-1.
^ Steven L. Jacobs (2009). Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Lexington Books. pp. 82–. ISBN 978-0-7391-3589-1.
^ Omer Bartov; Phyllis Mack (1 January 2001). In God's Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century. Berghahn Books. pp. 183–. ISBN 978-1-57181-302-2.

Bibliography[edit]

Aščerić-Todd, Ines (2015). Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia: Sufi Dimensions to the Formation of Bosnian Muslim Society. The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage. 58. Leiden: Brill Publishers. doi:10.1163/9789004288447. ISBN 978-90-04-27821-9. ISSN 1380-6076. S2CID 127053309.
Bougarel, Xavier; Clayer, Nathalie (2013). Les musulmans de l'Europe du Sud-Est: Des Empires aux États balkaniques. Terres et gens d'islam (in French). Paris: IISMM - Karthala. ISBN 978-2-8111-0905-9 – via Cairn.info.
Cesari, Jocelyne, ed. (2014). The Oxford Handbook of European Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199607976.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-960797-6. LCCN 2014936672. S2CID 153038977.
Clayer, Nathalie (2004). "Les musulmans des Balkans Ou l'islam de «l'autre Europe»/The Balkans Muslims Or the Islam of the «Other Europe»". Religions, pouvoir et société: Europe centrale, Balkans, CEI. Le Courrier de Pays de l'Est (in French). Paris: La Documentation française. 5 (1045): 16–27. doi:10.3917/cpe.045.0016. ISSN 0590-0239 – via Cairn.info.
Friedman, Francine (2000). Mylonas, Harris (ed.). "The Muslim Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina (with Reference to the Sandžak of Novi Pazar): Islam as National Identity". Nationalities Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. 28 (1): 165–180. doi:10.1080/00905990050002498. eISSN 1465-3923. ISSN 0090-5992. S2CID 154938106.
Ghodsee, Kristen (2010). Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria. Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-13955-5. JSTOR j.ctt7sk20. OCLC 677987523.
Greenberg, Robert D. (2009). "Dialects, Migrations, and Ethnic Rivalries: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina". Journal of Slavic Linguistics. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers (Indiana University Press). 17 (1/2): 193–216. doi:10.1353/jsl.0.0022. JSTOR 24600141. S2CID 154466698.
Malečková, Jitka (2020). "Civilizing the Slavic Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina". "The Turk" in the Czech Imagination (1870s-1923). Studia Imagologica. 26. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 118–158. doi:10.1163/9789004440791_005. ISBN 978-90-04-44077-7. ISSN 0927-4065.
Račius, Egdūnas, ed. (2020). Islam in Post-communist Eastern Europe: Between Churchification and Securitization. Muslim Minorities. 35. Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-42534-7. ISSN 1570-7571. LCCN 2020907634.
Šuško, Dževada, ed. (2019). Both Muslim and European: Diasporic and Migrant Identities of Bosniaks. Muslim Minorities. 30. Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-39402-5. ISSN 1570-7571. LCCN 2018061684.
Zheliazkova, Antonina (July 1994). "The Penetration and Adaptation of Islam in Bosnia from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century". Journal of Islamic Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5 (2: Islam in The Balkans): 187–208. doi:10.1093/jis/5.2.187. eISSN 1471-6917. ISSN 0955-2340. JSTOR 26195615. S2CID 144333779.

v t e Islam in Europe
Middle Ages	Conquest of Hispania Al-Andalus Islam in southern Italy Transmission of the Classics Cultural transmission Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture Medieval Christian views on Muhammad Crusades Reconquista Tatar yoke
Early Modern	Reception of Islam in Early Modern Europe Protestantism and Islam Anglo-Moroccan alliance Ottoman wars in Europe Ottoman–Habsburg wars Barbary pirates Barbary slave trade Islamization of Bosnia and Herzegovina Russo-Turkish wars Islamization of Albania Muslim Slavs Orientalism in early modern France Islam in the USSR
Modern	Islam in the Far North Orientalism Islam and modernity Partition of the Ottoman Empire Nazi Germany and the Arab world Islam and secularism Islamic democracy
Contemporary issues	Islam in Europe European Islam Islamic terrorism Liberal and progressive Islam in Europe Religion in the European Union Hijab and burka controversies in Europe Islamophobia Jihadi tourism
By country	Albania Andorra Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kosovo Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Moldova Montenegro Netherlands North Macedonia Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales

Muslim Slavs

Contents

South Slavic Muslims[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Further reading[edit]