Bosnian Muslims have been “like this” since Islam made its way to...
Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura@arnesa_kustura
14 views
Jun 16, 2024
~3 min read
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Bosnian Muslims have been “like this” since Islam made its way to our country, we have never been fundamentalists. Even the most “orthodox” of Bosnian Muslims view religion as a private matter between you and God alone and therefore do not judge others as if they are God Himself.
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There’s an old tale that says when the Ottomans came to Bosnia…the Bosniaks said “we’ll take your religion but we’ll keep our rakija”. The new wave of Salafists in Bosnia is what is foreign to us. It’s not “European influence”, it is how we have always been.
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That is not to say there are not or have not been many Bosniaks who take their faith seriously. Many do…but ultimately they/we have always viewed Islam as a private relationship between you and God. Many of us are very adherent to Islam, but many are also very secular.
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My great-grandmother, for example, wore niqab and was deeply dedicated to her faith. Even during Yugoslav rule, she adhered to her faith publicly even. But what she never did was shame or judge others if they did not practice Islam the way she does.
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Anyway, I truly loathe this entire story about how Bosniaks are “influenced” by Europe. We have always been Muslim in our own way. There’s entire scholarship on it. Not to mention that Bosnia has always been deeply Sufist and influenced by Sufism. It is in every aspect of us.
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This is historical revisionism. The vast majority of our soldiers were defending themselves from a genocidal aggressor and were simultaneously fighting for a secular state in which everyone was equal, not an Islamic state. Our history predates the 90s. Read a book occasionally!
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I’m not sure why salafists are so angry about this. The vast majority of the country is simply not going to attempt to enforce their faith on your, the vast majority has always viewed religion as a personal matter. It’s quite literally a matter of historical fact.
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Not to mention that a good portion, if not the majority of the country is simply “culturally Muslim” though as I’ve stated above there are a great many Bosnian Muslims who are deeply adherent to their faith but again almost everyone views it as a personal & private matter.
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And being angry that people in Bosnia view religion as a personal matter instead of a social or even political one is just quite strange to me. I’m not sure you can find many, if any, cases of Bosnian Muslims attempting to publicly shame or judge. It’s all mainly done privately.
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This is utterly insane…to say that Bosniaks “perpetrated jihad against the Serbs” is quite literally a Chetnik propaganda talking point and is not based in any sort of reality. There was no jihad. Bosniaks were defending themselves from a genocidal entity. This is shameful.
Nafi‘@Tsunalyst
Yes, the Bosnians who perpetrated Jihad against the Serbs totally viewed religion as a private matter, as did Alija Izetbegović himself, or the Sufis in their Tekkes eager for a revival. Why slander the entirety of your people for the sake of defending your own errors?
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This is genuinely terrifying to me. The way that young Bosniaks have fallen prey to propaganda is actually terrifying. Not only is all of this historical revisionism but it’s quite literally borderline genocide denialism to state things like this.
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Whether or not you wish to accept it, Bosnian history is quite clear on this record. Entire academic, historical books and essays exist in which they delve into the different way Bosniaks practiced and related to Islam as well as how they viewed the religion: as a private matter.
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That aside, to portray the Bosnian Genocide as some sort of a jihad” is both inaccurate & shameful. The genocide occurred b/c we were Bosniaks- it was rooted in our identity…not just our religious identity but our ethnicity hence why irreligious Bosniaks were also murdered.
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The fact that these responses are coming from young people in the Diaspora shows just how divorced from reality they are on Bosnia’s history. But anyway saying that the majority of Bosniaks view religion as a private matter is not saying that Bosniaks are all irreligious/secular.