The Christian–Muslim Frontier

The Christian–Muslim Frontier Religion has always been used to build political organizations – from the multi-ethnic empires of the Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, Austrians and Russians to the present-day nation states. This book explores the complex social and political relationship of the frontier between Christianity and Islam, arguing that it should be understood as a zone of contact rather than a distinct line of confrontation. The Christian–Muslim Frontier describes the historical formation of this zone, and its contemporary dimensions: geopolitical, psychological, economic, and security. Special attention is given to the concept of states- frontiers, to the effects of the uneven development of nation states and the contemporary interspersing of communities, which creates new functional frontiers. Further, the frontier is described as a mental construc- tion, imagined by people in their search for social order, and individual and collective security. Apostolov demonstrates that it is the political and economic situation of the local people that determines whether these frontiers result in conflict or cooperation. Rather than imposing unilateral principles of good governance, and to ensure cooperation prevails in Christian–Muslim relations, he argues that world society needs to undertake multilateral efforts to build participatory political institutions that accommodate groups with different identities. Mario Apostolov currently works for the United Nations Economic Com- mission for Europe. He is also a visiting scholar at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, where he took his PhD. RoutledgeCurzon Advances in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 1 Iraqi Kurdistan Political development and emergent democracy Gareth R.V. Stansfield 2 Egypt in the Twenty-First Century Challenges for development Edited by M. Riad El-Ghonemy 3 The Christian–Muslim Frontier A zone of contact, conflict or cooperation Mario Apostolov 4 The Islamic World-System A study in polity–market interaction Masudul Alam Choudhury The Christian–Muslim Frontier A zone of contact, conflict or cooperation Mario Apostolov First published 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2004 Mario Apostolov All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-49386-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-57301-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–30281–1(Print Edition) Contents List of illustrations vi Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1 The concept of the Christian–Muslim frontier as a zone of contact 6 2 The history of the Christian–Muslim frontier 22 3 Modern nation states and the frontier 40 4 Interspersing communities and the postmodern functional frontier 82 5 Geopolitics of the frontier 90 6 The Christian–Muslim frontier as a psychological phenomenon 105 7 The international security dimension of the frontier 134 8 The economic dimension of the frontier 168 Conclusion 177 Bibliography 186 Index 195 Illustrations Figure 7.1 Breaking the pattern – the population of Egypt since antiquity 152 Tables 2.1 Communal structure as percentage of total population in Russia 37 3.1 Rating countries in the zone of contact according to their level of nation-state building 49 5.1 The potential for conflict or cooperation in the zone of contact 99 7.1 Military (mis)balance across the frontier in 1998 138 7.2 Population growth rates in Serbia 149 7.3 Annual population growth differences across the Mediterranean frontier from 1975 to 2000 150 7.4 Annual population growth differences across the Central Asian frontier from 1975 to 2000 150 8.1 Rating countries in the zone of contact according to the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) 2002 169 8.2 Income of the various communities in the former Yugoslavia in 1981 172 Maps 2.1 The two waves of Islamic advance on the Christian– Muslim frontier 26 2.2 The triple rivalry over Bosnia and Herzegovina 33 3.1 The difficulty of constructing nation states in Lebanon (1982) and Bosnia (1996) 70 5.1 Mackinder’s vision of geopolitics 92 5.2 Contemporary geopolitics of the frontier between Christianity and Islam 95 Preface The idea of writing this book was born in 1998. At that time I was finaliz- ing my doctoral thesis on religious minorities and security in the Balkans and the Middle East. The thesis contained a short section that ran through my initial idea of the Christian–Muslim frontier as an element of order in an increasingly globalized society, where each cultural commun- ity had its place, and frontiers between communities served as both a divide and a bridge. Although the subject fascinated me, I felt that it was not realistic to plan more detailed research. Nevertheless, one day I came across a short message in the students’ newsletter of my institute in Geneva about a fellowship for research, promoting the idea of world society. My immediate reaction was that there was hardly anything that would better fit the objectives of this fellowship than my study on the Christian–Muslim frontier. A quick glimpse at the relevant website, with names of former and current fellows and topics of sponsored research, confirmed my idea. And I was right. The foundation attributed to my project exactly the amount I had requested. This allowed me to carry out one of the most rewarding endeavours in my life. It gave me the time and resources to undertake research on a topic that fascinated me, and to carry out field studies in the Balkans and the Middle East: the heart of the Christian–Muslim zone of contact. The results of my research took the form of a manuscript, which I offered to the publishers in 2000. I was happy to receive a prompt and very positive response from one of the editors at Routledge. A couple of months later, however, a certain scepticism from a marketing perspective eliminated the chances of accepting the book. Would any reasonable person buy and read a book on such a subject as the Christian–Muslim frontier in the year 2000? The topic seemed obsolete in comparison with works on the problems of economic liberalism, e-business or the information society, for example. Moreover, at the beginning of the twenty-first century people seemed to have accepted unquestioningly the Hegelian understanding of the world, which recognized the (nation) state as the finest, and probably final, product of social evolution. Hardly any altern- ative in the form, for example, of religious identity would have seemed viii Preface plausible in global power politics. Yet the dramatic events of September 2001, marked by the rise of what François Heisbourg called ‘hyperterror- ism’, seriously damaged this self-congratulatory vision of a universally expanding system of nation states. A second review at Routledge, soon after those tragic events, gave brighter prospects for my book, and it was subsequently accepted for publication. This story illustrates indirectly a key argument of my research: namely that the essentially political relations across the Christian–Muslim frontier and their impact on society depend on the concrete acts and statements of people who cherish aspirations for power and use various means to get it. Mario Apostolov Acknowledgements My thanks for the help extended to me on this work go first to the members of the board of the World Society Foundation, who I never met, but who made my project possible. I also want to thank, not for the first time, my tutor and friend André Liebich, Mohammed Reza Djalili, and Frédéric Grare for their unequivocal encouragement and useful advice, as well as Curt Gasteyger, Hans Hansell, Nora Neufeld, Geoffrey Hamilton and James Bevan for their comments on the text. I am grateful to my friends Viken Cheterian, Paul Sarkissian, Rakovski Lashev and Stephen Kinloch-Pichat, who helped me organize my field research and the interviews with leaders and members of various communities in Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Chechnya, Lebanon and Egypt. Even if I cite but a small portion of those interviews in my book, they were an important source in building the concept of the frontier, especially of its psychological dimension, and left a significant imprint on the manuscript. As just one example, in May 2000 the Maronite Patriarch Sfeir told me something that became a major argument of my research: ‘all these conflicts are about politics and nothing else’, a view confirmed in the offices of Hizbul- lah in Beirut, in the Coptic Museum and the University of Cairo, and in the taverns of Zenica in Bosnia. Thanks are also due to Ashgate Publishing Limited for permission to reuse Maps 2.2 and 3.1 from Religious Minorities, Nation States and Security: Five Cases from the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean, by Mario Apostolov (2001). Introduction The collapse of communism, the destruction of the Iron Curtain and the Wall, was supposed to usher in a new era of liberty. Instead, the post-Cold War world, suddenly formless and full of possibility, scared many of us stiff. We retreated behind smaller iron curtains, built smaller stockages, impris- oned ourselves in narrower, ever more fanatic definitions of ourselves – religious, regional, ethnic – and readied ourselves for war.

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