· Islam in Yugoslavia Today

S. P. RAMET

In September 1989 I visited Yugoslavia for the sixth time. As always,

there was electricity in the air, and as always, the national question, as
Yugoslavs fondly call it, had a great deal to do with that electicity.
Serbs fear everyone (so it seems these days), everyone fears Serbs,
Macedonians and Montenegrins fear Albanians, and Montenegrins
fear each other. Typical of this atmosphere was a conversation in
which I found myself, at a Belgrade cafe, as two local journalists drew
and redrew maps of the Balkans, showing a menacingly large arrow
projecting northward from Istanbul through Serbia, while they told
me of their fears of a Muslim threat to European civilisation.
'Albanian Muslims and Bosnian Muslims are in this together,' they
told me in deadly earnest. 'They have big families in order to swamp
Serbia and Yugoslavia with Muslims, and turn Yugoslavia into a
Muslim republic. They want to see a Khomeini in charge here. But
Belgrade is not their final goal. They will continue to advance until
they have taken Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London - all the great cities of
Europe. Unless they are stopped.' 1
Non-Muslims in Yugoslavia recall Libyan dictator Qaddafi's
generosity in providing for the Yugoslav Islamic community's
mosque-building programme, note Bosnia's long-term interest in
building economic and cultural contact with Syria, Iraq, and other
Arab states, point to the Muslims' efforts to align Yugoslavia with the
Arabs during the October 1973 war in the Middle East, and underline
the on-going contacts between Islamic clerics and believers in Bosnia
and their co-religionists in the Middle Ea~t, as, for example, in the
case of young Yugoslav Muslims who go to the Middle East for
Islamic theological training. For some non-Muslims, these are all signs
that the Muslim community is in some sense a foreign implant, that
I Psychiatrist Jovan Raskovc told Intervju magazine in September 1989 that Muslims
are fixated in the anal phase of their psycho-social development and are therefore
charact.erised by general aggressiveness and an obsession with precision and cleanliness.
(Croats, by contrast, suffer from a castration complex, according to Raskovic.)
Intervju (Belgrade), No. 216, 15 September 1989, pp. 15-16.
Islam in Yugoslavia Today 227

Muslims are not fully integrated into Yugoslav society, that they
should be feared.
Hence, when, after repeated delays, permission was finally granted
to Muslim, in 1981 to construct a new mosque in Zagreb, to replace
the one closed down after the war, controversy was inevitable.
Like the Serbs, Croats expressed concern that their republic would
be Islamicised. Three years later - in June 1984 - when much
of the construction on the mosque had been all but completed,
.arson destroyed much of what had been built. Y~Levntualy
in September 1987, the mosque was opened, with considerable
fanfare. 2
Needless to say, this fear of the Muslims has aggravated
inter-communal relations within Bosnia, and sharpened the recent
debate about Bosnia's place in the federation. Bosnian Muslims have
repeatedly talked of wanting Bosnia declared a 'Muslim republic',
while Serbs and Croats have from time to time hinted that Bosnia
might best be divided between Serbia and Croatia. Within Sarajevo,
one hears people declare for a united Yugoslavia, on the argument
that for inhabitants of Bosnia, there is no other realistic option: any
attempt at dividing it up - so they argue - would stir up
inter-communal violence in this divided republIc.

Yugoslav Islam

Some 40 per cent of Bosnia's population registered as 'ethnic

Muslims' in the 1981 census, as against 32 per cent Serbs, 18 per cent
Croats, and 8 per cent ethnic 'Yugoslavs' (the latter usually the
produce of mixed marriages).3 That makes Bosnia the only federal
unit in Yugoslavia in which no single nationality group constitutes a
local majority (See Table 1). More broadly, however, ethnic Muslims
remain a relatively small minority in this country - tallying about 9
per cent of the total population in 1981.4 In religious terms, one may
speak of some 3.8 million confessional Muslims in Yugoslavia,
accounting for about 16 per cent of the total population of
the country. Religious Muslims include not only the greater portion
of ethnic Muslims, but also varying numbers :Of Albanians, Turks,
and Macedonians, as well as some Gypsies, Montenegrins, Croats,
'Nedjeljna Borba (Zagreb), 5-6 September 1987, p. 4; Vjesnik (Zagreb) 7 September
1987, p. 3; and Danas (Zagreb), No. 290, 8 September 1987, pp. 23-24.
'Viktor Meier, 'Bosnien und seine Muslime als Sonderproblem des Vielvolkerstaates',
in Nationalitiitenprobleme in Siidosteurope, edited by Roland Schonfeld (R.
Oldenbourg Verlag; Munich, 1987), p. 125.
4 Statisticki kalendar Jugoslavije 1982 (Savezni zavod za statistiku; Belgrade, February

1982), p. 37.
228 Islam in Yugoslavia Today

Serbs, and even small groups of Pomaks in the region surrounding

Pijanac. 5
The Islamic community in Yugoslavia is organised into, four
administrative regions: Sarajevo Region (Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Croatia, and Slovenia, with its Supreme Head office in Sarajevo);
Pristina Region; Skopje Region (Macedonia, with its Head office in
Skopje); and Titograd Region (Montenegro, with its Head office in
Titograd). The Reis-ul-ulema, the head of the entire Yugoslav Islamic
community, has his office in Sarajevo. ,'_
At the dawn of the post-Tito era, the Islamic community had at its
disposal the following institutional resources and facilities: 6
Sarajevo Region:
- I,092mosques
- 569 mesdzids (smaller places of worship)
- 394 places for religious instruction
- 2 madrassahs (religious schools)
- 5 tekijas (cemeteries)
Pristina Region:
- 445 mosques
- 125 mesdzids
- 35 places for religious instruction
- tekijas (unknown)
- 1 madrassah
Skopja Region:
~ 372 mosques
- 19 mesdzids
- 10 places for religious instruction
- tekijas(unknown)
- 1 madrassah
Titograd Region:
-76mosques
-2mesdzids
- 36 other buildings
- 4 turbe (mausoleums)
- tekijas (unkn,own) ,

5 Ahmed Smajlovic, 'Muslims in Yugoslavia', in Journal Institute of Muslim Minority

Affairs, Vo!. 1 No. 2 (Winter 1979) and Vo!. 3 No. 1 (Summer 1980), p. 132; Rudolf
Grulich, 'Der Islam in Jugoslawien', in Glaube in der 2. Welt, Vo!. 7 No. 4 (1979), p. 6;
see also S. P. Ramet, 'Primordial Ethnicity or Modern Nationalism: the Case of
Yugoslavia's Muslims, Reconsidered', in Muslims in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia,
edited by Andreas Kappeler et al., (forthcoming).
'Smajlovic, 'Muslims in Yugoslavia', pp. 135-136.
Islam in Yugoslavia Today 229

In addition, every Muslifn town or village has a separate graveyard for

Muslims. The figures for mosques would be much higher today,
having passed the 3,000 mark in 1986 and given the energetic building
programme which the Yugoslav Islamic community has been able to
maintain.
As of 1980, some 120,000 children were receiving Islamic religious
instruction at the primary school level. This instruction is provided
free of charge to believers. Secondary religious instruction is available
at two madrassahs: Gazi Husrefbey's madrassah in Sarajevo, and
Alaudin madrassah in Pristina. The former is more than 450 years
old. In addition, an Islamic Theological Faculty opened in SarajevD in
1977,and a women's department was created the following year.
The Gazi Husrefbey Library in Sarajevo is an important repository
for Islamic materials, and contains several thousand original
manuscripts in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. Courses in Arabic are
offered in Sarajevo, Pristina, and Belgrade.
Each of the four regions also has a clerical association, known as an
Ilmija. These associations were .integrated into the work of the
Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia, and in this way
acquired a legitimate role in the public arena.
The Islamic community naturally maintains a number of periodical
publications. The chief ones are: Preporod, a fortnightly newspaper
published in Serbo-Croatian, in Sarajevo; Islamska misaiJ, a monthly
journal devoted to theological reflections and news of the community,
likewise published in Sarajevo; EI~Hila, a Skopje journal, published
in Macedonian, Turkish, and Albanian; the bimonthly journal
Glasnik, the official bulletin of the Supreme Head office of the
Yugoslav Islamic Community, published in 15,000 copies; Takvim, an
annual : publication; El-Islam, which. concentrates on religious
information; Edukataiislam an Albanian-language publication of the
Prisffna office; and Zemzem, a newspaper published by the Gazi
Husrefbeymadrassahand which is said to have won credibility among
young people. All four regional head offices also have extensive
book-publishing programmes for religious literature. 7 .
_ Many Bosnian Muslims emigrated. abroad, some of them prior to
World War One. Today there are Muslims who trace their origins to
the lands of present-day· Yugoslavia, living in the US, Canada,
Australia, Turkey, and in smaller numbers in several West European
countries, including Austria and Germany.· In 1977; Yugoslav
Muslims in Canada sent a request to the Islamic Community
of Yugoslavia to send a delegate to help organise their religious
life. A similar request was subsequently submitted also by the
Yugoslav Muslim community in Australia. Yugoslav. Muslims
1 Ibid., pp. 141-42.
230 Islam in Yugoslavia Today

have also taken employment, at certain times, in Libya,· Iraq,

and Kuwait. This experience must be presumed to have strength-
ened the affinity of at least some Yugoslav Muslims for the Middle
East.

The Social Presence of Islam

Despite this formidable institutional base, the Islamic -leadership has

adopted a much lower profile than either the Roman Catholic Church
or the Serbian Orthodox Church. While the two Christian churches
have been able to celebrate Christmas quite openly for several years,
with· Christmas Day even declared a state holiday in Slovenia as of
1989,8. one cannot imagine the Islamic community obtaining the same
access to the media, let alone seeing its festivals declared state holidays
in Bosnia.
A comparison of the leading Muslim newspaper, Preporod, with its
Croatian Catholic and Serbian Orthodox counterparts - Glas koncila
and Pravoslav/je respectively - is telling. Glas koncila has for years
struck a defiant posture, openly polemicising with the secular press on
a regular basis and publishing highly informative interviews, as well as
articles about state atheism, Christian-Marxist dialogue, proposals to
change the laws governing religious life in Yugoslavia, and other
social issues; Pravoslav/je, for its part has become ever more strident
(since 1981) in its defence of Serbian interests in Kosovo and its
advocacy of Serbian nationalism in general. 9 Yet Preporod rarely if
ever enters into the social arena, restricting itself. by and large to
reports on the construction of mosques and the observance of
religious holidays, along with information about Islamic teachings.
The same pattern carries· over into the behaviour of religious
'Ileaders. Catholic prelates (such as Zagreb's archbishop FraJijo
Cardinal Kuharic) deliver sermons defending human rights activists
(e.g. Dobroslav Paraga) or demanding an official exoneration of the
late Alojzije Cardinal Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb 1937-60 (tried
and convicted in 1946, on charges of collaboration with the Ustase
fascists). Serbian Orthodox prelates are somewhat less bold, but may
be found celebrating Serbian heroes such as Tsar Lazar, 10 Tsar
Dusan, and Vuk Kard~uc,n taking part in commemorations of
Serbian national holidays - most pointedly, the 600thanniversary (in
1989) of the famous Battle of Kosovo polje. One cannot imagine
Islamic leaders being allowed to celebrate the anniversary of the
8 Keston News Service No. 336, 19 October 1989, p. 14.
'See, for example, Pravoslavlje, 15 May 1982, p. I.
lORe. Tsar Lazar, see Nin, 17 September 1989, pp. 42-43.
Islam in Yugoslavia Today 231

Ottoman conquest of Bosnia, or feeling sufficiently confident to

undertake to speak out on human rights issues - at least not in the
years prior to 1990.
On the contrary, the Islamic community has often found itself on
the defence. For example, in November 1987, the Republican
Conference of the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Serbia
discussed the .activities of the Islamic community and concluded that
Islamic fundamentalism 'had reached Yugoslavia and ... threatened
JO spread all over Europe' .11 There have also been rumours and
charges from time to time, whether in Bosnia, or Macedonia, or
Serbia, that Islamic religious education is inspired by nationalist and
separatist orientations. (This will be taken up below.) .
In fact, the Islamic community adopted a more quiescent and
defensive posture - by comparison with the Catholic and Orthodox
churches - from the very beginning, and from an early time was able
to boast smooth relations with the authorities. In the initial years -
roughly1945 to 1966 - religious policy was basically worked out in
Belgrade, which meant that religious policy. throughout the country
was guided, within some limits, by a single vision. The decentralisa-
tion of the political and administrative system which began in the late
1960s and which was designed to satisfy irresistible pressures on the
ethnic .level inevitably had consequences for. the religious communi-
ties. Hereafter, the Catholic Church, with most of its believers living
in Slovenia and Croatia, had to worry principally about the
orientation of secular authorities in Ljubljanaand Zagreb, authorities
who, at least in Slovenia, generally showed themselves to be more
liberal than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. The
Orthodox, living predominantly in Serbia, Macedonia, and Monte-
negrd; had an entirely different set of authorities to deal with. At
times, a kind of alliance between church and party developed at the
republic level -=----- as, for example, has occurred in Serbia under
Slobodan Milosevic. And for the Muslims, with their largest
concentrations inhabiting Bosnia and the autonomous- province of
Kosovo - the authorities in Sarajevo and Pristina have been their
principal reference points for coexistence. This has made for a more
complex situation for Muslims for two reasons. First, the authorities
in Bosnia tended toward the dogmatic side through much of the 1970s
and 1980s. (This is not the' case today, however.) This meant that
Bosnian Muslims were more likely to be attacked in the press than
were, for example, Slovenian Catholics or Macedonian Orthodox,
and more likely to find their news organ subjected to pressure.
Second, Bosnia and Kosovo are the two regions in Yugoslavia with the
11 Aktualnosti krscanska sadasnjosti (AKSA), 13 November 1987, summarised in AKSA

Bulletin, No. 8, 26 January 1988, p. 14; see also Vjesnik, 12 November 1987, p. 4.
232 Islam in Yugoslavia Today

most delicate inter-communal relations. And while these relations are

usually defined in terms of ethnic groups, there are also· religious
dimensions - as was patently clear in 1981 and 1982, for example,
after Albanian Muslims desecrated the Orthodox shrines of Kosovar
Serbs, setting fire to the monastery atPec. An 'alliance' between the
Muslim community and secular authorities in either Sarajevo or
Pristina - on the model of MiloseviC's 'alliance' with the Serbian
patriarch ate or even on the model of the friendly relationship which
emerged between the Catholic Church and the communist authorities
in LjubIjana - is obviously ruled out, although as Bosnia follows the
lead of Slovenia and Croatia and adopts a multi-party system, as
seems likely, different parties will surely offer different programmes
affecting the religious sphere. Liberalisation is bound to be the result.
Yet despite the tradition of dogmatic rule in Bosnia and despite the
complexities arising from the· republic's ethnic fragmentation,
Muslims were able to maintain a vigorous mosque construction
programme throughout the postwar period. In Bosnia-Herzegovina
alone, some 400 new mosques were built between 1945 and 1985, and
some 380 mosques were renovated. By 1986, there were some 3,000
mosques in Yugoslavia as a whole. 12
From time to time, the communist press would attack the Muslim
community for allegedly misusing religious training. For example, in
1973, officials of Tetovo opstina in Macedonia estimated that some 20
per cent of students were receiving religious instruction after regular
school hours: The officials claimed, however, that religious
instruction was not being used strictly to instruct children in matters
of faith and worship. On the contrary, Nova Madedonija charged that
in' some places; religious education is even used' to orient' the
children in a direction entirely different from our social system,
in broadening national intolerance, and in promoting other
anti~socl manifestations. ..
But efforts to reach some understanding with local clergy proved
unavailing, according to the Macedonian newspaper. .
The measures that we have implemented in this respect have not
brought any particular results. We have had discussions on this
subject with the Isililmic religious community which has claimed
the opposite. 13
Aside from questions of the authorities, it is clear that in a
multi-confessional society (e.g., Bosnia), individual religions may

12 Radio Free Europe Research 30 June 1986, pp. 21-22.

IJ Nova Makedonija (Skopje), 19 June 1973, p. 2.
Islam in Yugoslavia Today 233

have to be more circumspect than would be the case in a religiously

homogeneous society (such as Slovenia).
For that matter, the Islamic community in Yugoslavia is itself
internally divided, insofar as the leaders of the Yugoslav Islamic
community have given the cold shoulder to the dervishes (or, as they
are more formally known, the Community of the Islamic Alia Dervish
Monastic Order). The dervish order was introduced in Yugoslavia in
1974, and by 1986, numbered 50,000 followers, organised in 70
monasteries across southern Yugoslavia (53 in Kosovo, 10 in
Macedonia, and seven in Bosnia).14 At one point, the Islamic
Community ordered Sheikh J emaly Haxhi-Shehu, senior leader of the
dervishes, to disband the order. Shehu replied by registering his order
as a 'self-managing' organisation, thus giving himself legal protection
- a move paralleled in Croatia, if for different motivations,by the
Catholic 'Christianity Today' publishing house.

Women and Islam

In the course of the 1980s, Muslim women have been taking a more
independent role in public life. The fact that a large group of Albanian
Muslim women organised a demonstration- independently, in late
1989, to protest deteriorating conditions in Kosovo is a sign of
increased awareness and self-confidence. Another sign of change
came earlier, in 1981, with the graduation of the first woman
(Nermina Jasarevic) from the Islamic Theological Faculty in
Sarajevo. 15
. By 1986, the first female imams had been educated in Skopje, and
were delivering sermons (the first being in the Kumanovo mosque). In
the course of 1986, Albanian men in Kumanovo went to the
autHorities to protest the appearance of women at the mosque, since,
according to Islamic teaching, women and men should not mix at the
mosque. It turned out that the sudden appearance of the women was
the result of direct pressure from the Islamic Central Board in Skopje,
yvhose elders were intent on upholding the equality of women and who
pointed to the tradition that every mosque has a special, separate
room for the women. Why had the women not come earlier? Isa
Ismaili, leader of the Islamic community in Kumanovo, explained it
thus:
For two reasons: first, until now we did not have female imams;
now we have them and they are capable of delivering their
14 Start (Zagreb), 19 April 1986 as cited in Radio Free Europe Research 30 June 1986, p.
21.
15 Preporod (Sarajevo), 15 November 1982, p. 10.
234 Islam in Yugoslavia Today

sermons. Secondly, we in Kumanovo have only a single mosque,

which is too small to hold even all the males; this is why we did
not insist that the women come . . . Long ago we asked the
authorities· for permission to build a new mosque, but we
unfortunately never got an answer . ~. if our women are
forbidden to go to the mosque, we will ask the men not to go
either. Why should the men (be allowed to) pray and not the
women? This is an attack on equality. 16

The Future of Islam in Yugoslavia

In 1989, a small publishing house in Zagreb brought out a

Bibliography of Croatian Writers of Bosnia-Herzegovina between the
Two Wars. The publication at once stirred controversy, because of its
inclusion of a number of Muslim literary figures in the ranks of
'Croatian writers'. The Islamic Community was outraged, and its
organ, Preporod, published a lengthy commentary, in which it
excoriated the bibliography for the 'Croatisation' of some 38 Muslim
writers. Among this number were such Islamic-sounding names as
Salih-beg Bakomovic, Enver Colakovic, Abdulatif Dizdarevic,
Husein Dubravic Djobo, Mustafa H. Grabcanovic, Kasim Gujic,
Osman Nuri Hadzic, Muhammed Hadzijahic, Mehmed Handzic,
Ahmed Muradbegovic, and others. Preporod called this a 'negation of
the cultural independence of a national tradition' .17
This controversy was symptomatic of a deeper problem which has
serious implications for the Islamic community - viz., the tendency
of the Croatian and Serbian nations to want to claim the land on
which the Muslims live, for their. own nations, and to absorb or
suppress Islamic culture. Both Croats and Serbs have claimed large
parts of Bosnia in the past, and Serbs have viewed Kosovo as their
ancestral heartland, depicting the Albanian Muslims as intruders.
Hence, while Serbs sometimes betray a desire to suppress or eject
Islamic culture from Kosovo, where Bosnia is concerned, Serbs and
Croats have long registered rival claims to 'annex' the Muslim
community, claiming alternatively that Muslims are 'really' Serbs, or
Croats.18
It is against this baclCground that periodic Muslim pressures to
declare Bosnia a 'Muslim republic' must be seen. Such a move would·
provide a small legal reassurance to the Muslims. It also reflects the
16Quoted in Radio Free Europe Research 30 June 1986, p. 23.
17 Preporod, 1 September 1989, p. 14.

I'For discussion, see Muhamed Hadzijahic, od tradicije do identiteta: Geneza

nacionalnog pitanja bosanskih muslimana (Svjetlost: Sarajevo, 1974); and S. P. Ramet,
'Primordial Ethnicity or Modern nationalism', op. cit.
Islam in Yugoslavia Today 235

fact that some Muslims at any rate are apprehensive at the prospect of
seeing Serbia and Croatia fight over the partition of Bosnia. It is
impossible to speculate as to what the long-term effects of a possible
breakup of Yugoslavia would mean for the country's Muslims. Be
that as it may, it is quite clear, all the same, that there are some sharp
differences in the orientation of Bosnia's Muslims, versus Kosovo's
Muslims,19 towards the question of the preservation of a Yugoslav
federation/confederation. For Bosnia's Muslims, at any rate, there
.does not seem to be any reasonable alternative.

TABLE 1

Proportion of ethnic Muslims, Serbs, Croats,

'Yugoslavs', and other nationalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
1948-1981 - in per cent.

Muslims Serbs Croats 'Yugoslavs' others

1948 30.7 44.3 23.9 N/A l.l

1953 31.3 44.4 23.0 N/A 1.3

1961 25.7 42.9 21.7 8.4 1.3

1971 39.6 37.2 20.6 1.2 1.4

l
198i 39.5 32.0 ·18.4 7.9 2.2

Source: Ante Markotic 'Demografski aspekt promjena u nacionalnoj . striIkturi

~tanovis Bosne i Hercegovine', in Sveske, Nos. 16-17 (1986), p. 292.

l'In February 1990 Muslim nationalist leaflets, supporting Kosovo'ssecession and

vilifying Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, appeared in Novi Pazar. See Belgrade
Domestic Service (6 February 1990), translated in Foreign Broadcast Information
Service, Daily Eastern Europe, 8 February 1990, pp. 74-75.