sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bosniaks, The World Factbook, Yugoslavs

AND

Mirnes Kovač1 and Aid Smajić2

1 Muslim Populations

According to the last official census in (here- after BH or Bosnia), conducted in 1991, 1,902,956 (or 43.5%) of the 4,377,033 inhabitants of the declared themselves as ‘’ by .3 Since ethnic and religious identities overlap to a large extent in the case of all three constituent ethnic communities in Bosnia, this figure is usually taken as indicative of the number of adherents of , just as most are usually considered Roman Catholic and most are considered Orthodox Christians. ‘Muslims’ were rec- ognised as one of the Yugoslav in the late 1960s. In 1993, the term ‘Muslims’ was replaced by ‘’ as the national name for Bosnian Muslims. Before the 1992–95 war, a significant number of Muslims declared themselves to be ‘’.4 Due to war-related death, expulsion and internal and external migration, the numbers and demographic distribution of ethnic groups within BH have signifi- cantly changed. A new census proposed for 2011, which may include questions on ethnicity, religion or language, is a sensitive political issue opposed by some Bosniak and Croat politicians because of the fear of

1 Mirnes Kovac is the editor of the bi-monthly Preporod Islamic magazine, pub- lished by the Supreme Council of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (ICBH). He graduated in Islamic Studies from the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sara- jevo and has an MA in International Relations from the University of Sussex, UK. He is the author of Islam: Globalni izazov? (Islam as a Global Challenge) (: IPA, 2004). 2 Aid Smajić holds BA degrees in Islamic Studies and Psychology and an MA in Islamic Civilization both from the International Islamic University in and International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in Kuala Lumpur. He is a senior assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in and has published several articles on interreligious relations and tolerance. 3 See details at http://www.fzs.ba/Dem/Popis/NacStanB.htm, accessed 7 November 2009. 4 For more about history behind and debates surrounding the question of national identity of Bosniaks see Kamberović, Husnija (Ed.), Rasprave o nacionalnom identitetu Bošnjaka: Zbornik radova (Debates about National Identity of Bosniaks: Collection of Papers) (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju u Sarajevu, 2009). 90 mirnes kovač and aid smajić implicitly ‘legitimising’ the new ethnic created by genocide and during the 1992–95 war and post-war obstruction of refugee return, especially in the , where many areas were completely cleansed of non-Serbs.5 According to estimates by the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the population of the country is 3,842,265,6 while the CIA Factbook estimates the total number of Bosnian citizens in 2008 at 4,613,414, of whom 48% are said to be Bosniaks, 37.1% Serbs, 14.3% Croats and 0.6% others,7 including more than 1.3 million living abroad.8 It is generally accepted that Islam arrived in Bosnia with the Otto- man armies in fifteent century. Bosnian Muslims are mainly descended from Christians (Catholics, Orthodox, or adherents of the extinct Medieval ) who converted to Islam during the four centuries of Ottoman rule from the middle of the fifteenth century until 1878, when Bosnia became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and remained so until 1918. From 1918 to 1992, the territory that makes up today’s Bosnian state was part of three , including the Kingdom of (1918–41), the Independent State of Croa- tia (1941–45), and Communist Yugoslavia (1945–92).9 A referendum on independence from Yugoslavia, already declared by and , was held in Bosnia in February 1992 and was boycotted by most Bosnian Serbs, whose forces, assisted by , initiated a bloody war in 1992–95. For about a year during 1993–94, the army of BH also fought Croat forces on most fronts. In March 1994, Bosniaks and Croats signed an agreement creating a joint Bos- niak-Croat Federation of BH. After the war atrocities culminated in

5 More detailed analysis of atrocities and genocide committed against Bosniaks during the 1992–95 war could be found in Cigar, Norman, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing (Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1995). 6 Estimated data as of 30 June 2008. For details see http://www.bhas.ba/new/, accessed 8 November 2009. 7 Estimated data as of July 2009. For details, see https://www.cia.gov/library/publi cations/the-world-factbook/geos/bk.html, accessed 8 November 2009. 8 See Svjetski Savez dijaspore Bosne i Hercegovine (World Association of the Diaspora of Bosnia and Herzegovina, www.bihdijaspora.com). 9 See Karčić, Fikret, The Bosniaks and the Challenges of Modernity (Sarajevo: El Kalem, 1999) and Malcolm, Noel, Bosnia: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1996). More detailed accounts of the history of the Bosniaks and the spread of Islam could be found in Imamović, Mustafa, Istorija Bošnjaka (History of the Bosniaks) (Sarajevo: Preporod, 1998) and Filipović, Nedim, Islamizacija u Bosni i Hercegovini (Islamisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina) (Tešanj: Centar za kulturu i obrazovanje, 2005).