The muezzins call the faithful to prayer every day, women wear headscarves and veils, there are halal butcher shops, and Arabic inscriptions are everywhere: the Muslim Bosniaks of Sarajevo are the majority in the city of 300,000. But not all of them are religious: alcohol is served in restaurants, and many of the women are dressed modernly, writes the German "Die Zeit" in a report from the Bosnian capital.
The publication recalls that when the Ottoman Empire invaded Southeast Europe in the mid-14th century, these places were mostly inhabited by Christians. But due to the rivalry between Rome and Byzantium for supremacy in the region, and the then-existing independent Bosnian church, declared by the pope and patriarch as "heretical", the Ottoman faith easily imposed itself.
From religion to identity
The Balkan countries were subjected to systematic Islamization, and in addition to violence, bureaucratic coercion was also used to establish Islam: only Muslims were allowed to take on important state and administrative tasks and acquire land, while "infidels" had to pay a tax because of their religion. The mixture of incentives and discrimination prompted many people to accept Islam, the German publication explains.
At the beginning of Ottoman rule over Bosnia - around 1463 - the Turkish governor chose the small provincial town of Vrhbosna as his official residence. There he built his palace - a Turkish saraj. Since then, the city has been called Sarajevo.
The new rulers turned the churches into Islamic temples, built mosques, Islamic schools, hamams, caravanserais and the Baščaršija bazaar. Already in the 16th century, Sarajevo became an administrative and commercial center - and a typical Ottoman city. At the invitation of the sultans at that time, Sephardic Jews, expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquista, also settled in the city. In Sarajevo, they founded a Jewish community and built a synagogue.
Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews live in separate neighborhoods, but meet daily and have mutual respect, the publication says further. Until the end of the 19th century, their identity was based on their faith, and religious and ethnic affiliation were in close symbiosis. In the times of nationalism, Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims gradually formed as Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks. United by language and traditions, they differed mainly in the religion of their ancestors.
The Habsburgs - against the "oriental" spirit
When in 1878, by virtue of the Berlin Congress, Austria-Hungary received the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Slavic population there expressed its desire for independence, and the Muslims resisted. New quarters appeared in Sarajevo in the Habsburg and pseudo-Moorish style - in order to expel the "oriental" spirit from the city. Governor Benjamin von Kalay invented "Bosniacism" to create a national feeling associated with the monarchy. But Croats, Serbs, and Muslims had already turned to Yugoslavism - the idea of unifying all South Slavs in a common state.
It was the Serbs in particular who continued to oppose the Habsburgs. On June 28, 1914, a Serbian assassin assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia, in Sarajevo, triggering World War I.
After the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which was called Yugoslavia from 1929. The founders of this state union fought for a single South Slavic nation with its own culture, which, however, turned out to be a complete chimera against the backdrop of the meanwhile well-developed self-awareness of the individual nationalities.
Nationalism after the collapse of socialism
Even after 1945 in socialist Yugoslavia, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins were recognized as independent peoples, and later - from the 1960s onwards - Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) were added to them. Tito's ideology of "brotherhood and unity", as well as strong economic growth, helped to overcome the old conflicts. During this period, national identity and religion increasingly lost importance and people began to perceive themselves primarily as citizens of the internationally recognized Yugoslavia, and only secondarily as Bosniaks, Serbs, or Croats, writes "Die Zeit".
In the 1980s, everything changed: with the collapse of socialism, nationalism began to gain strength again, and many rediscovered the meaning of faith. While in 1967 only a third of Yugoslavs (including Muslims) identified themselves as religious, by 1987 this number had risen to more than half, and politicians, clergymen, and theologians saw an opportunity to revive national identity and religion.
Muslims in Bosnia were considered "particularly European": in the 1980s, few of them attended mosques or observed the ban on alcohol and pork. But there were also supporters of radical political Islam, such as the lawyer Alija Izetbegović, author of the secret "Islamic Declaration", calling for a centrally governed pan-Islamic state from Morocco to Indonesia, from Africa to Central Asia. In 1983, Izetbegović and his associates received multi-year sentences: the court assessed their demands for the introduction of Sharia law, for women to wear headscarves and for a ban on religious "mixed marriages" as an attack on the principle of "brotherhood and unity".
The victims of the war in Bosnia are over 100,000
In 1990, Izetbegović founded the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), which won the first multi-party elections that same year, and he became the first president of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was recognized as independent in 1992. The SDA maintains close ties with the Islamic religious community, with which it seeks to strengthen the Bosnian nation through re-Islamization: Muslim clerics preach fasting during Ramadan, veiling of women, banning alcohol, studying the Koran, religious education, and a ban on religious "mixed marriages".
In 1991, Slovenia and Croatia, and in 1992 the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, declared independence. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bosniaks and Croats achieved this through a referendum - despite the resistance of the Serbs. When the new state was recognized by the European Community and the United States in April 1992, the Bosnian War broke out: Bosnian Serb armed forces conquered large parts of the country, expelled the non-Serb population, and imposed a siege on Sarajevo that lasted 1,425 days. Despite the international airlift, more than 10,000 residents of the capital lost their lives. In total, between 1992 and 1995, over 2.2 million people from various ethnic groups were expelled from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and over 100,000 died. The main victims of "ethnic cleansing" as in Srebrenica were Muslims.
The revival of Islam - a prerequisite for successful business
The war put an end to cultural diversity and tolerance in Sarajevo, and most of the Serbs and Croats left the city. Today, it is inhabited mainly by Bosniaks, and the suburbs of East Sarajevo - by Serbs. Most residents communicate almost exclusively with people from their own ethnic group, and the traditions of coexistence and good neighborliness have long lost their meaning. Few still maintain the old custom of visiting their neighbors of other religions during their holidays.
For investors from Turkey and the Persian Gulf, the revival of Islam is becoming a business model: they are building hotels, holiday homes, shopping malls and casinos; tens of thousands of Arab tourists visit the country every year. Events such as the international food fair "Halal Expo Sarajevo" attract companies from all over the world.
Sarajevo is on its way to becoming a Bosnian-Muslim city with a pan-Islamic flavor. Its former multi-religious character will soon be just part of its cultural and historical heritage, concludes the article in "Die Zeit".