by Ivan Mršid

Tone Bringa is a Norwegian-bornanthropologist who conducted ethnographicfield research in a mixed Muslim/Catholic villagenear Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina(former Yugoslavia). She did the bulk of herwork from the late ’80s until the mid-to-late’90s, witnessing the Bosnian war and its effectson a rural community where neighbors ofdifferent faiths had previously enjoyed peacefuland friendly relations.

“Being Muslim the Bosnian Way” is the culmination of thisresearch, and a lengthy ethnography detailing the everydaylife, customs, habits, beliefs, and social interactions of Bosnian Muslims in thefictitiously named village of Dolina. To protect the safety of those she workedwith, she changed the name of the location where she did her research andapplied pseudonyms to those she interviewed.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is located in southeastern Europe, at the historical crossroads betweenempires and faiths. The population is about 40-50% Sunni Muslim, 25-30% Serbian Orthodox and 10-20%Roman Catholic. The remainder of the population are unaffiliated or atheists, due to fifty years under anatheistic communist regime.

Bosnia was one of the six countries constituting the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ),an independent socialist state that broke with Stalin and the Soviet Union during the early 1950s, hence neverbecoming a part of the “Eastern Bloc”. Bosnia was the most ethnically and religiously diverse of all the formerYugoslav republics, and here religious affiliation corresponded very closely with ethnicity & the broaderconcept of nationhood.

According to Bringa, “religious identity is also a social

and cultural identity and in the Bosnian context has an ethnicaspect, since a person usually ‘inherits’ his or her religiousidentity from his or her parents and, above all, from the fatherwho passes on his surname to his children and thus establishes achild’s ethnic identity” (p. 21).

Thus there exists a strong ethnic basis for religiousidentity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and this owes to the fact thatunlike Serbia and Croatia which are predominantly Orthodox &Catholic respectively, Bosnia-Herzegovina was always home to aplurality of confessional groups.

The various people of Bosnia-Herzegovina share a common history and language, butreligious differences are the defining factor when it comes to “ethnicity”. Bringa writes:

Bosnian families’ present religiocultural affiliation to one of the three religioustraditions—Orthodox Christian, Catholic Christian, or Islam—was in most casesdetermined during a period of more than five hundred years of coexistencebetween these faiths on Bosnian soil. At some point in the past their forefatherswould have decided to join one of these communities, Orthodox, Catholic, orMuslim. Adherence was communicated to others by practicing certain ritualsspecific to that faith, and not least for Muslims by changing their name. There arefor instance several documented examples of brothers throughout the history ofthe Ottoman presence in Bosnia…belonging to different religious communities. Onebrother might be an Orthodox Christian while the other declared his allegiance toIslam. (18)

The presence of several religious denominations in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the resultof centuries spent under foreign occupation by the Byzantine, Turkish and Austro-Hungarianempires. The population speaks a Slavic language, descending from waves of Slavic settlers whoarrived in the Balkans during the 6th & 7th centuries CE, following the Roman empire’s collapse.Many Slavs became Orthodox Christians under Byzantine influence, while the Turkish conquestof the Balkans introduced Islam to the region, and the brief period of Austro-Hungarian rule inBosnia strengthened the Catholic element. Thus all three communities belong to the same“ethnic” substratum, although each group has followed its own unique cultural trajectorythrough interaction with the various empires that have visited the Balkans.

The close relationship between religion & nationhood is arguably a legacy of 400years under Ottoman Turkish rule. Bringa argues that along with Islam, the Turks introducedan administrative framework (the millet system) “whereby membership in a ‘nation’ wasdetermined by religious affiliation…millet was a term which originally meant a religiouscommunity and in the nineteenth century came to mean a nation, although ‘nation’ did notbecome integrated with ‘state’ the way it is in western Europe” (20).

Religion was thus the only basis for constructing collective cultural identity in theBalkans. Thus three ethnic/religious communities eventually emerged in Bosnia-Herzegovina—Muslims, Catholic Croats & Orthodox Serbs—each of which perceived theiridentity as something distinct from the other two, with a growing trend toward nationalaffiliation (Catholics with neighboring Croatia, a predominantly Catholic country, andOrthodox Christians with Serbia, a mostly Orthodox country). By the 19th & early 20th

centuries Bosnian Serbs and Croats had already achieved a “national re-awakening”, whileMuslim nationalism remained dormant and ideas about a distinct “Bosniak” ethnic identitydid not enter mainstream discourse until the early ’70s.

Tone Bringa mentions the term narod, which was the everyday term used to referto the “people” or a people (the French, Germans, etc.) and later applied to the three nacije(“nations”) of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Yugoslav constitution, thereby solidifying theoverlap/association between religious denomination, ethnicity/nationhood and“peoplehood” (p. 22).

Bringa notes that while the constitution of every other Yugoslav republic stated that it was the

republic belonging to the particular nation concerned (Serb, Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, etc.), Bosnia-Herzegovina was the only republic in the SFRJ which was not defined as the national homeland of oneparticular “narod”. Instead it was home to three—Muslims, Serbs and Croats, obviously—and none of them[yet] carried an ethnonym which identified them with Bosnia (the same way Serbs are directly identified withSerbia, Croats with Croatia, Montenegrins with Montenegro, and so on). Today the situation is muchdifferent, with Bosnian Muslims having adopted the name “Bosniak” (Bošnjak sing., Bošnjaci pl.) and assumedthe de facto role of titular nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but this wasn’t achieved overnight.

Initially Muslim Slavs in Bosnia-Herzegovina faced much opposition from Serbian and Croatianinterests, both of which sought at various points to claim them as either “Islamicized Serbs” or “IslamicizedCroats”. The Yugoslav population census from 1948 included the option of “Muslims of undeclarednationality”, and five years later those who did not wish to declare themselves as Serbs or Croats could choose“Yugoslavs of undeclared nationality”. By 1961, widespread recognition of a Muslim Slav “narod” (despiteprotests from certain Serb & Croat elements) led to the creation of “Muslim in the national sense” as acategory, and finally the 1971 census allowed Bosnian Muslims to declare themselves as simply “Muslims”(with a capital ‘m’). Many Muslim Slavs among the communist intelligentsia considered this acompromise, including the politician Hamdija Pozderac who famously declared “*t+hey don’t allowBosnianhood but they offer Muslimhood. We shall accept their offer, although the name is wrong, but with itwill start the process”.

The “process” which Pozderac referred to was the so-called “national awakening” or ethniccrystallization process which the Orthodox and Catholic Slav population of Bosnia-Herzegovina had alreadygone through. The latter were now Bosnian Serbs and Croats, while by the mid-20th century only Muslimsremained without a concrete national name. Bringa notes that Muslim Slavs achieved their nationalconsciousness far differently from their Orthodox and Catholic counterparts, at first seeking to simplytransform the category “Muslim” from a purely religious identity to a national one (p. 27-28). This they hadsuccessfully achieved by 1971, and the following decade there was already talk of reviving the old regionalterm “Bosniak” as an ethnic name for all Muslim Slavs in the former Yugoslavia (not just Bosnia-Herzegovina).

As Tone Bringa observes, there was never any officially recognized national identity such as“Bosnian” that would include all Bosnians, whether Muslim, Orthodox or Catholic (p. 29). Social, political &historical circumstances had instead favored a “triple” ethno-denominational differentiation that eventuallyserved as the basis for complete division along national lines.

It’s necessary to examine the term “Bosniak”, since this has become the official ethnonym for mostSlavic Muslim communities in the former Yugoslavia, not just in Bosnia-Herzegovina but also the Sandžakregion between Serbia and Montenegro as well as certain portions of Kosovo. Today the term indisputablyrefers to Bosnians of Islamic religious background & orientation, while several hundred years ago it was apurely regional term used to designate anyone from Bosnia-Herzegovina, whether Muslim, Orthodox orCatholic. Surnames such as Bošnjak and Bošnjaković are very common among Croats in Croatiaproper, indicating ancestral origins in Bosnia-Herzegovina at a time before Bosnian-Herzegovinian Catholics hadachieved ethnic/national consciousness as Croats.

The website www.CroatianHistory.net confirms this (despite its nationalist slant), maintaining onits page about Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina that “Croats in Bosnia are also Bosniaks. Indeed, many of thembear Bosniak as their second name. The meaning of Bosniak is simply – a Bosnian.” A footnote further pointsout that the Zagreb telephone book contains “a long list of as many as 210 surnames of [Bošnjak], with onlyone Muslim forename, and also more than 30 [Bošnjakovids].” This suggests that the modern day exclusivity ofthe term “Bosniak” is historically unfounded, since many non-Muslims outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina bear thename themselves and have deep roots in Bosnia. Indeed, the aforementioned web page goes to great lengthsto explore such “deep connections between Croats and Muslim Bosniaks”, even though its motives are not todefend the Bosnianness of Bosnian Croats so much as to assert the Croatness of Bosnian Muslims (and Bosnia-Herzegovina generally).

Perhaps the most interesting historical example of the term’s inclusiveness (as well as the fluidity

of modern ethnic/national labels) is the Franciscan friar Ivan Franjo Jukid, a 19th century writer from Banja Lukawho petitioned for greater Christian rights in the Ottoman empire on behalf of Bosnia’s Catholic and Orthodoxpopulation.

Coming from a distinctly Roman Catholic perspective, Jukid nonetheless defined himself as a

Bosniak nationally and ethnically, frequently writing under the pseudonym Slavoljub Bošnjak (“SlavophileBosnian”) and applying the term inclusively to all inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina regardless of faith. Jukidwrites:

We Bosniaks, the once-famous people, now that we are barely alive, our friends of sciencesee us as head detached from the Slavic tree and pity us ... It is time to awake from a longlasting negligence; give us the cup, and from [a] well of apprehension, inexhaustibly gainknowledge, wisdom; firstly let us try to cleanse our hearts from prejudice, reach for booksand magazines, let's see what the others did, so that we can use the same means, that ournation of simple people from the darkness of ignorance to the light of truth we bring.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Franjo_Juki%C4%87

Most sources would undoubtedly treat Ivan Franjo Jukid as a Croat ifhe were alive today, but his own preferences were infinitely clear. To him“Bosniak” meant the same thing that “Bosnian” does today, i.e. anyone whocame from the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina and identified with it culturallyand politically.

The growth of Serbian and Croatian “national feeling” in Bosnia, combined with anascent Bosniak ethnic consciousness among Muslim Slavs (the logical response toSerbian/Croatian assimiliationist policies toward Bosnian Muslims) has contributed to the ethnicdivisions & social ruptures that precipitated the breakup of Yugoslavia, and along with it afratricidal war that turned former neighbors/friends against each other and claimed over 100,000lives (along with countless more displaced). Media attention to the Bosnian conflict (1992-95) ledto assumptions that “ancient ethnic hatreds” were the root of the problem in the Balkans, acontention which logically supported the idea that only separation between peoples & territorialcarve-up would resolve the dispute among Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats.

But as Tone Bringa’s work illustrates, the relationship between Muslims and Christiansin Bosnia-Herzegovina has more often than not been one of cooperation and mutual respect.Violence and ethnic cleansing only entered the picture after the 18th and 19th centuries, when the“nation” as a political & cultural idea became married to the concept of “state” (i.e., the notionthat every ethnic group must have its own exclusive state, and to hell with any minorities livingwithin that nation’s self-appointed territory). The transition to nation-states has historicallybenefitted industrialized western European powers with largely homogenous populations, but ineconomically under-developed and ethnically heterogeneous areas like the Balkans (as well asthe New World with its indigenous population, along with many other societies that fell undercolonial rule) it has led to ethnic, racial & religious strife, not to mention the countless genocidesthat have occurred since the dawn of the 20th century alone.

Professor Stephen Schulman of Southern Illinois University points out the flaws of the “civic” vs.“ethnic” nationalism dichotomy often drawn by Western scholars (such as the exclusivity that has characterizedmany Western countries’ treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, among other factors that I’ve alsopointed out), however I think it’s still useful to distinguish between positive examples of nationalism that havehistorically promoted inclusiveness and solidarity among oppressed peoples (e.g. Yugoslavism in the Balkans)and negative examples that have tended toward ethnic, national & religious exclusivism/chauvinism (theUstashe movement in Croatia, the Serbian Chetniks and numerous others).

Professor Charles King on the other hand raises some very good points about successful nationalistmovements throughout history, and what sets them apart from so-called “loser nationalisms” that have failedto achieve any widespread popular support or mobilize people toward desired goals. His analysis is key tounderstanding why inclusive ideologies like the Yugoslavism of the Tito era or the multi-confessionalBosnianism of Ivan Franjo Jukid gave way to more nefarious political developments in the Balkans. Beyond the“antiquarian nationalisms” of historical movements like the American Confederacy, King recognizes thatvirtually all nationalism is tied on some level to real or desired statehood, hence he identifies several types ofstates—unrecognized nation-states, or national groups which manage to secure broad-based popular backingbut fail to receive international recognition, as was the case with ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s autonomousprovince of Kosovo until very recently (a complicated issue that I won’t explore here); weak nation-states, which may enjoy full support from both domestic constituents and the international community butlack competent state institutions, as is still the case in many developing countries; warlord states, or stateswhich exercise control over a given territory but fail to gain the trust or support of anybody they govern, likemany military dictatorships around the world; “state-nations”, or states which create national consciousness &appeal the reverse way, as did numerous multinational empires throughout history (Austria-Hungary’s policiesin the Balkans immediately come to mind); and finally nascent nation-states, or ethnic/national groups whoexperience the first “flush” of nationalism and the desire for self-determination, but whose dreams ofstatehood remain deferred until a more opportune time, which could easily characterize the predicament ofBosnian Muslims throughout the 20th century (p. 41-44).

The main problem with King’s analysis is that doesn’t adequately address trans-ethniccultures like those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which Tone Bringa has described as “synergistically inter-dependent” and encompassing several different ethnicities and faiths, as opposed to the many mono-ethnic groups striving for sovereignty or statehood which very easily fit into King’s framework. If oneplays the role of devil’s advocate and assumes that peaceful co-existence between cultures and religiousgroups is inherently destined to fail, then perhaps it’s easy to see why King doesn’t offer a model to dealwith societies that are the sum of multiple parts (assuming such a social arrangement is evennatural, and indeed many have considered Bosnia-Herzegovina and Yugoslavia alike to be quiteunnatural creations).

I personally don’t feel this way at all, and I think it’s time to start thinking beyond thenarrow confines of exclusivist ideas like “nation” and “state”. In chapter 2 of “Being Muslim the BosnianWay”, Bringa notes that each ethnic/religious community in Bosnia-Herzegovina needs the presence ofthe other to construct its identity, since contact with the “other” is what raises one’s awareness of theself (p. 79). From her experience in a mixed Muslim/Catholic village, she observes that neighbors ofdifferent faiths/ethnicities interacted closely with one another and through shared activities“acknowledged the existence of a village community beyond the ethno-religious one”. Socializingbetween villagers provided an opportunity for identifying with one’s ethnic & religious community andexpressing that belonging to those outside it, e.g. Bosnian Muslims vis-à-vis their Catholic/Croatneighbors, Orthodox Serbs or any other combination. “At the same time”, Bringa continues, “it gavemembers of the two communities an opportunity to focus on shared experiences and other aspects oftheir identities that were common to both (being women, neighbors, villagers, Bosnians)”. Living in atypical mixed Bosnian village prior to the war of the 1990s meant sharing certain characteristics with co-villagers irrespective of nacija or nationhood (p. 65-66).

Using the mixed Bosnian village as amodel, we can begin to conceive of usefulalternatives to mono-ethnicnationalism, homogenous nation-states and thepainful processes that tend to accompany theircreation (population transfers, ethniccleansing, genocide, etc.). Acknowledgingdifferences and social boundaries is crucial, andwe should not assume promoting a “pan-Bosnian”identity to mean eradicating the key distinctionsthat have existed in this cultural space since timeimmemorial. A noteworthy example of such aboundary from chapter 2 is when Bringa quotes aMuslim mother expressing reluctance to see herdaughter married to a Catholic, saying “*w+erespect their [Catholic] holidays, theirchurches, their prayers and we see it as a sin toblaspheme against their sacred symbols, but wedo not marry them” (p. 79). Ironically, inter-ethnic/religious marriage was one of the waysthese boundaries were blurred in the cities, wheremixed marriages were far more common than inthe countryside and historically contributed toboth a sense of common “Yugoslav” as well as“Bosnian” identity.

The obvious parallel is the contemporary Bosnian constitution, which draws from this tradition byrecognizing Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats as the three “constitutive nations” of Bosnia-Herzegovina, meaning that none can be considered minority or immigrant, and each exists on an equal planewith the other. This is a positive step forward, despite the numerous shortcomings of the Dayton Agreementand “democracy imposed from above” by United States & NATO intervention.

Since the end of the 1990s conflict and the signing of the Dayton Agreement, most BosnianMuslims have come self-identify as Bosniaks and view Bosnia-Herzegovina as their ethnic state, and theyreserve every right to do so. Historical antagonism with hostile Christian powers and, tragically, their ownOrthodox and Catholic neighbors has forced them into a defensive position vis-à-vis nearly 2/3 of the Bosnianpopulation which sees its future with Serbia and Croatia respectively. However, this should not precludeCatholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs from feeling a sense of belonging to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and mostprogressive policymakers since the Tito era have tried to respect this. Most famously, the documents producedby the First Session of the National Anti-Fascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Bosnia-Herzegovina(ZAVNOBiH), enacted during late November of 1943 at Mrkonjid Grad, stated:

Today, the nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, through their sole political representative body, the National Anti-FascistCouncil of the People’s Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, wish their country, which is neither Serbian, nor Croatian, norMuslim, but is equally Serbian and Muslim and Croatian, to be free and brotherly Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will ensurefull equality of all Serbs, Muslims and Croats. The nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall participate on an equal footingwith our other nations in the development of the people’s democratic federal Yugoslavia.

Source:http://books.google.com/books?id=PvjLRzgyKKkC&lpg=PA477&ots=6TbAdoMxrd&dq=avnoj%20bosnia%20neither%20croatian%20nor%20serbian%20nor%20muslim&pg=PA477#v=onepage&q=avnoj%20bosnia%20neither%20croatian%20nor%20serbian%20nor%20muslim&f=false

The seminal Bosnian Croat journalist & intellectual Ivan Lovrenovid draws a clear distinctionbetween the nationalist ideologies that emerged during the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries and the nationalidentities and feelings that have evolved through centuries of complicated historical and socioculturalinteractions in the Balkans. He suggests that an alternative approach to nationhood and one’srelationship with others can allow the concept of the nation “*to be] lived and experienced as aproductive fruit of civilization” rather than a destructive force which only causes division and ethnicconflict. The epilogue to his book “Bosnia: A Cultural History” distinguishes culture by its very nature asopen and inclusive from ideology (every ideology, especially nationalism), which he views as closed andexclusive. This is a similar but far more substantial re-iteration of the “civic” versus “ethnic” nationalismdichotomy (Schulman, et al), building not upon any inherently “better” Western virtues or values, butinstead acknowledging realities far more complicated than nationalism (at least as we currently know it)can adequately address. “National ideology strives to achieve cleansing”, Dr. Lovrenovid writes, “its idealis the essence of the nation, pure of the admixture of anything alien. This means that the alien must beproclaimed a threat to the purity of the nation, and distaste and hatred must be fostered. The finalresult is a dried butterfly under a glass case. Self-mummification”.

Instead of crude nationalist ideology, Lovrenovid suggests“nation as culture” as a dynamic alternative that is “capable ofreceive and giving. It does not hold back from what is foreign, buteasily makes it its own; it does not fear for its own, but is happy toput it into circulation”. He describes this capacity of inclusion as a“game of exchange” rather than cleansing & purity that ultimatelyallows the achievement of a “fullness of identity and communicationwith others” (p. 227).

Lovrenovid & Bringa are essentially talking about the same thing; whatLovrenovid calls “permanent cultural interaction”, Bringa describes as a process wherebyMuslims, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics define each other as essentially “mirrorreflections” of themselves. Each needs the other to maintain its sense of self, withoutwhich the unique Bosnian-Herzegovinian social, cultural & religious matrix would not exist.“Being Muslim the Bosnian Way” is valuable not only as an ethnography detailing the livesand culture of Bosnia’s indigenous Muslim Slavs, but also an in-depth look at inter-ethnicityand multiconfessional culture as it’s shared in a typical mixed village.

Beginning her work during the late ’80s when many of her own colleagues couldhardly locate Bosnia on a map, Tone Bringa initially intended to shed light on a little knownculture and society in what was then a broad federation of six countries, six constitutionallyrecognized nationalities and about twenty-six total ethnic groups. As she persisted into the1990s during the heat of Yugoslavia’s violent breakup and the Bosnian conflict, she alsoexpounded a great deal about the close and sometimes strenuous relationship between thethree main ethnic/religious communities in what Slovenian literary critic and essayist JosipVidmar has called “the most complicated country in Europe”.

“Being Muslim the Bosnian Way” is a comprehensive look at ordinary village lifeaffected by the political turmoil that was happening in all the major cities of Yugoslaviaduring the late ’80s and early ’90s. It contains a wealth of cultural and ethnographic data foranthropologists, sociologists, scholars of comparative religion, as well as activists and socialreformers seeking ways to overcome religious, ethnic and racial divisions at a time whensuch conflicts are becoming more and more prevalent around the world. It’s not ahandbook on solving these problems, but it may certainly provide better insight on how toaddress them.

Left: Ethnic & religious map of Bosnia-Herzegovina, showing the unique demographicsof every region. Muslim Bosniaks arepredominantly concentrated in centralBosnia, Catholic Croats maintain a strongpresence in western portions ofHerzegovina, and Orthodox Serbs arewidespread in all regions. Distribution doesn’tnecessarily reflect populationsize, however, since Bosniaks comprise anumerical majority over Serbs and Croatsdespite their concentration in the centralregions.Right: regions outside Bosnia-Herzegovina with

significant Muslim Slav/Bosniak populations. Along withthe border region between Serbia and Montenegro(called the Sandžak, named after the Ottoman Turkishadministrative unit which existed in this area during theearly 20th century), there are also large numbers inKosovo where Muslim Slavs have coexisted uneasilywith ethnic Albanians since the Middle Ages.