Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective

9. Bosnian Muslims during the Cold War: Their Identity between Domestic and Foreign Policies

182 Chapter 9 Bosnian Muslims during the Cold War Their Identity between Domestic and Foreign Policies Aydın Babuna Although the Bosnian War of 1992–1995 posed a real threat to the physical existence of the Bosnian Muslims, it produced some important results in terms of their national development.1 The Bosnian Muslims entered the war as Muslims but emerged from it as Bosnjaci (Bosniaks).2 In September 1993, the Bosniak Assembly—349 Bosnian Muslim politicians, intellectuals, and clerics convening in Sarajevo as a consultative body—accepted Bošnjastvo (Bosnianhood) as the national identity of the Bosnian Muslims. The name Bošnjak (Bosniak) officially became the national identification of the Bosnian Muslims for the first time in history.3 The fact that the Bosnian Muslims were fighting against the Bosnian Serbs as well as against the Bosnian Croats strengthened their national consciousness as a distinct nation. During the war, Alija Izetbegovic continued to act as the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while the Muslims controlled the Bosnian army and the state bureaucracy, which had a multiethnic character. Both during and after the war, the Muslim leadership acted as an independent political agent involved in international negotiations concerning the political future of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the Dayton Constitution, the Bosnian Muslims were referred to as Bosniaks and their language as Bosnian, and the Dayton Accords confirmed the status of the Bosnian Muslims during the Cold War | 183 Bosnian Muslims as a constituent nation along with the Croats in the establishment of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.4 Although the Bosnian Muslims were referred to as Bosniaks in the Dayton Constitution, the Bosnian media continued to use the term Muslimani (Muslims) alongside the term Bosniaks, and often both terms together, as in Bosnjaci-Muslimani. The leaders and the intellectuals of the Bosniak community , who consider Bosniak the national term to be applied to the Bosnian Muslims, nevertheless have various perceptions of the label. Some of them point to its Islamic content, while others stress the purely secular and national character of the term and its connection with Bosnian territory and history.5 On one hand, despite the fact that Muslim is still in use and despite various perceptions of the term, in the Bosniak community it seems that Bosniak has become established as the national name of the Bosnian Muslims. On the other hand, the national distinctiveness of Bosniaks is today less controversial than ever, although some Serbian and Croatian nationalists are still disinclined to accept the Bosniaks as a nation of their own. The national development of the Bosniaks in the post-Communist period was based on the achievements of the socialist period. In 1968, the Bosnian Muslims were recognized by the socialist regime of Yugoslavia as “Muslims in the national sense,” the first time Bosnian Muslims had been recognized as a nation by any state in which they lived. However, the phrase “Muslims in the national sense” was somewhat ambiguous, and the nationalist Serbs and Croats continued to reject the idea of a distinct nationality for the Bosnian Muslims, as did some Western scholars.6 This chapter explores the complicated process of the recognition of the Bosnian Muslims as a nation during the socialist period, together with the rationale behind it; that is, this analysis shows the crucial importance of the Cold War period in the national development of the Bosniaks. Economy, Decentralization, and the National Question Socialist Yugoslavia was established in 1945 as a federation of six republics and their five constituent nations. The Slovenes, Serbs, and Croats were recognized as nations alongside the Macedonians and Montenegrins, who had not previously been recognized as separate entities.7 Bosnia-Herzegovina was the only republic that, because of its mixed demographic structure, was not established on a national basis.8 The Bosnian Muslims were not at that time recognized as an ethnic group but were treated as a religious or ethnically undefined community . In 1948, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria signed an agreement for the formation of a new federation. The preference that the Yugoslav leadership gave to 184 | Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective Bulgaria over Albania shows that the “brotherhood and unity” concept had not abandoned the South Slavic dimension.9 Tito seems to have hesitated over leaving behind this aspect of Yugoslav cohesion, at least in the early postwar years, although in his later speeches he would claim that he had never entertained the thought of creating...