This article was downloaded by: [134.117.10.200] On: 05 July 2014, At: 12:57 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cnap20 In the service of the nation: intellectuals' articulation of the Muslim national identity Iva Lucic a a Department of History , Uppsala University , Uppsala , Sweden Published online: 02 Feb 2012. To cite this article: Iva Lucic (2012) In the service of the nation: intellectuals' articulation of the Muslim national identity, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 40:1, 23-44, DOI: 10.1080/00905992.2011.635642 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2011.635642 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions
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This article was downloaded by: [134.117.10.200]On: 05 July 2014, At: 12:57Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Nationalities Papers: The Journal ofNationalism and EthnicityPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cnap20
In the service of the nation:intellectuals' articulation of the Muslimnational identityIva Lucic aa Department of History , Uppsala University , Uppsala , SwedenPublished online: 02 Feb 2012.
To cite this article: Iva Lucic (2012) In the service of the nation: intellectuals' articulation of theMuslim national identity, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 40:1,23-44, DOI: 10.1080/00905992.2011.635642
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2011.635642
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
In the service of the nation: intellectuals’ articulation of the Muslimnational identity1
Iva Lucic∗
Department of History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
(Received 23 January 2011; final version received 26 August 2011)
This article explores the emerging national narratives about Muslim national identity inthe period of the 1960s and 1970s. After the national recognition of a Bosnian Muslimnation, which was proposed by the members of the Central Committee of Bosnia andHerzegovina, it was the intellectuals’ task to endow the national category with culturalrepertoire. Hereby affirmative as well as negating discursive practices on the nationalstatus of Muslims entered the debates, which geographically expanded the republicanscope of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author examines internal discussions of theLCY on that issue as well as the intellectuals’ engagement in the public spheres inSocialist Yugoslavia. By integrating the nation-building activities of intellectualsoutside Yugoslavia, the author postulates for a trans-national dimension of nation-building processes.
intellectuals as articulators of the nation has been a subject of analysis across disciplinary
boundaries in the past three decades, and has been explored with increasing academic curi-
osity about their private lives, social roles, political sympathies, institutional spaces and
political positions as creators of national discourses. Consequently, many perspectives
and methodological approaches have been accumulated.
Several scholars have dedicated their works to the central question of the intellectuals’
motives for involvement in nation-building projects. Looking through the prism of func-
tionalist theories, intellectuals are perceived as rational actors with self-serving motives
(Kennedy and Suny 3), whose engagement is explained solely by pragmatism on the indi-
vidual level. More nuanced approaches, however, have stressed the importance of the his-
torical contexts in which the intellectuals act, thus highlighting the importance of the
specific political, ideological, social and economic circumstances as conditions for their
scholarly role as articulators of nation (Dragovic-Soso 7; Kennedy and Suny 39).
However, more recent studies have focused on the products of the intellectuals’ works,
i.e., their texts as the subject of study. Beginning with the understanding of nation as a nar-
rative (Bhabha), the primary concern here is the narrative itself, whose structure and logic
are the subject to which so-called narratological methods are applied. It is based on “the defi-
nite awareness that all phases through which research unfolds are constructed and not given,
however, without falling into postmodern skepticism” (Berger and Lorenz 7). As Berger
argues, narrative has been a pervasive term in the cultural theory of the past two decades,
a practice which has led some observers to speak of a “Narrativist Turn in the Human
Sciences” (Berger and Lorenz 26). Within the realm of the studies of intellectuals in the
nation-building processes, this approach focuses on their narrative strategies, particularly
looking at the framing procedure of national narratives; the relationship between national
narratives and religious, class, ethnic and gender narratives; as well as the relationship
between “facts” and the possibilities of narratively framing those “facts” (Berger 10).
In this article, I aim to combine those two approaches. In analyzing intellectuals who
during the 1960s and 1970s were engaged in articulating a Muslim nation, I am interested
in two aspects. The first one is concerned with the structural and contextual conditions of
the Muslim nation-building process and the intellectuals’ involvement in it. Within this
aspect, I distinguish between two different levels.
The first, narrower level concerns the specific mechanisms and dynamics of the
Muslim nation-building process that carried unique features when compared to contem-
porary national projects in Yugoslavia. Led by the findings of my empirical case
studies, I try to grasp inter alia the ambiguous institutional policies as related to the
Muslim nation-building process and reflect upon the power relations between the intellec-
tuals as national articulators and the party apparatus. I argue that those were important
structural determinants of the intellectuals’ agency as articulators of the Muslim nation.
The exploration of these contextual structures represents an immanent part of my empiri-
cal analysis in this paper and is based on primary archival sources.
The second and broader structural conditioning of the process of national narrative
production was the political context of Yugoslavia at that time, which had strong repercus-
sions on the cultural policies of the country. Here we arrive at the next argument of this
paper, which stresses that while the case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the
Muslim national identity do bear unique features in terms of narrative structures and insti-
tutional policies, it must also be understood as a symptomatic case of the national(istic)
models prevalent in the other Yugoslavian republics at that time. In contrast to the first
contextual aspect, this broader context is based on secondary literature and is largely con-
veyed in the introduction of the case studies.
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In the second approach, I deal with the logic of narratives as such. In this case, I am
mostly interested in the internal logic and structure of the arguments of the historical
texts, which served as national narratives. Following the examples of narratological
approaches, my analysis of the Muslim national narrative focuses on the identification
of the object and its importance, the elaboration of the categories through which it is
analyzed, the criteria of proof, and the stylistic and narrative forms by which the text is
transmitted to the reader (Berger 7).
As to the structure of the article, it is formed by the exploration of several case studies
with a micro-historical approach combined with an actor-oriented analysis.
Yugoslav context in the 1960s
Even though scholars might point to different key dates as the turning point in the course of
Yugoslav history, they all agree that it was the 1960s that marked a gradual turn for both
Yugoslav nationalist policy and for inter-republican relations (while Burg emphasizes the
year 1966 with the ouster of Rankovic (Burg 31), Ramet, for example, sees the turning
point in 1964 at the 8th Congress of the Leagues of Yugoslav Communists (Ramet 51)).
Beginning with economic reform in the form of a series of adjustments to administrative
mechanisms, the debate soon took on an ideological character, stimulating considerable
organizational and procedural changes in the direction of the federalization of the
country and away from its former, highly centralized system. The constitution of 1963
reflected this turn, when granting the right of secession to the “peoples of Yugoslavia,”
that is, the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Muslims, and at
the same time endowing the republics with “the right to engage in cooperative ventures
among themselves without any role being played by the federal government” (Wachtel
174; Ramet 73). By encouraging the republics to increase their independence, throughout
the 1960s and 1970s the Yugoslav system became increasingly characterized “by multiple
regional centers of political and economic power divided by conflicting interest,” which
became framed as nationality issues, turning soon into political nationalisms (Burg 33).
In order to meet the decentralized visions of Yugoslavia, two major trends in the cul-
tural realm became increasingly visible: the gradual delegitimization of the Yugoslav ideal
that represented some form of a unified culture for all of its citizens and at the same time
the increasing of support for national-based cultural formations (Wachtel 184).
If the synthesizing nature of the Yugoslav idea was mainly associated with the unifac-
tory trends of the 1950s, the political structural changes in the course of the 1960s called
for updating Yugoslavia’s image. At the time, Yugoslavia would be best described through
a multinational cultural model, while at the same time trans-locating the Yugoslav idea in
the realm of pejorative discourses taken now as a symbol for non-democratic etatism.
Numerous events in the cultural sphere, ranging from educational to literacy and lin-
guistic fields, took place in the 1960s and 1970s, indicating the gradual emphasis on cul-
tural differences, seen now as a sign of strength at the expense of the concept of a unified
Yugoslav culture (Wachtel 173–74).
In the field of literature and literary criticism, new topics entered fictional plots where
themes of the self and other were now presented in light of insurmountable differences due
to which mutual understanding as a basis for a common and shared identity and culture
could no longer exist. Antun Soljan’s short stories, like “Special Envoy” (quoted and dis-
cussed in Wachtel 181–82), demonstrated in an exemplary way this new climate, in which
the loss of faith in the supranational Yugoslav project increasingly dominated.
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Similar patterns of narration were provided in other republics like Slovenia, Croatia
and as Bosnia.
Educational programs were another strong cultural and intellectual expression of the
new inter-ethnic and inter-republican dynamics. Compared to the efforts of the 1940s
and 1950s to ensure a unified educational program throughout Yugoslavia, the 1960s wit-
nessed the beginning of a fragmentation into separate programs on the republican level,
stressing the cultural, historical and linguistic aspects that were unique to the given repub-
lic. Thus, in the subject of history, much more attention and space was given to the events
and personalities that were more representative and unique to the individual republic. An
illuminating example is given in the Slovenian program, in which the life of Boris Kidric
received more attention than did that of Tito (Wachtel 179).
Literature lists from now on would include first and foremost their own national
authors, while neglecting writers from the other republics of Yugoslavia. In Croatia, for
example Croatian authors, such as Krleza, Nazor, Senoa and Kovacic, were the most rep-
resented on literature lists (Wachtel 180). This outnumbering of authors from other repub-
lics demonstrated the new policy embodied in the republican educational programs, in
which elements from other republics appeared as something alien and were given only sec-
ondary importance.
Probably the most significant events were those in the realm of linguistic policy, which
attracted not only huge media attention but were also received by the party leadership as
political statements with clear nationalistic overtones. This included the publication of
Dekaracija and Prijedlog in the republics of Croatia and Serbia.
On 17 March 1967, the “Declaration on the name and position of the Croatian literary
language” made headlines in Croatia, demanding that Croatian and Serbian be considered
two distinct languages. In that sense, the document illustrated a direct denunciation of the
Novi Sad Agreement of 1954, which enshrined the “Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian”
language, one of the strongest symbols of unity that originated in the Yugoslav movements
of the nineteenth century (Burg 68; Ramet 102–03; Wachtel 185). Despite its immediate
denouncement by the Croatian party leaders and Tito himself as an unacceptable nationa-
listic manifestation (Burg 69), the Declaration was soon followed by a response from
Serbian intellectuals, who two days later published the “Proposal for Consideration.”
The Serbian counterpart began with a complete acceptance of the Declaration’s demand
for linguistic separation, at the same time putting forward their claims for a Serbian
language and asserting that Serbs in Croatia (and Croats in Serbia) be guaranteed the
right to “independent development of national language and culture” (Audrey 413).
This cultural polarization in the form of nation-based cultural formations accompanied
by the gradual dismissal of the Yugoslav culture were both reflecting and guiding new pol-
itical visions of Yugoslavia.
With this Yugoslav-wide understanding of the cultural sphere in the 1960s as a contex-
tual determinant, I will turn now to my case study of the Bosnian Muslim national narrative
processes, which undoubtedly were conditioned by these new trends, while at the same time
revealing unique aspects given the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time.
1968: the past of the republic and the Muslims, conference on the history of Bosnia
and Herzegovina
The year 1968 marked the beginning of the engagement of historians in the construction of
a Muslim national history. During the seventeenth session, at which the national status of
Bosnian Muslims was declared, most of the party members agreed that there was still
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substantial academic research about the Muslims missing. Avdo Humo even went so far as
to suggest withholding information from the public until a better preparation had been
achieved:
My suggestion would be that today we discuss some of the directives but that we still do notmake them public until we have not worked on them more. Before we go with this to thepublic, certain directives and approaches from contemporary social and political situationhave to be done. Otherwise going public with this would just cause misunderstandings andwould probably not contribute to any clarifications. (AJ – 507, CKSKJ, II BiH, K. 6, fasc.1, p. 78)
The political affirmation of a Bosnian Muslim nation, therefore, called for an explicit
master narrative, the production of which would soon become the task of the intellectuals.
A two-day conference with the title “Istorijske pretpostavke Republike Bosne i Herze-
govine” (Historical Premises of the Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina) was held on 18
November 1968, marking the official recognition of the republican status of Bosnia and
Herzegovina as beginning on 29 November 1943.
The main organizer and host was the Institute of History in Sarajevo, which was
founded by the Central Committee in 1965. As its first director, Redzic, remembers, the
main purpose of the conference was to produce research on the history of the republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Redzic, Moje zivotne dionice). The ceremonial opening
speech was given by Central Committee member Stojan Bjelajac, who greeted the partici-
pants in the name of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Bosnia and
Herzegovina (CK SK BiH). He recounted in a short keynote presentation the two meetings
of 1943: the AVNOJ meeting in Jajce and the first ZAVNOBiH meeting in Mrkonjic Grad,
signifying them as the cornerstones of the Bosnian peoples’ cohesion and freedom (Istor-
ijske pretpostavke 10). The AVNOJ therefore marked the beginning of a new period in the
history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The speech was concluded with a call to scholars to
provide a basis for the republic’s equal status with other Yugoslav republics, and to
make impossible any tendencies to negate the equality of the three national groups in
Bosnia and Herzegovina (Istorijske pretpostavke 10).
Branislav Ðurdev from the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and Vasa Cubrilovic, member of the Academies of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade and
Zagreb concluded the ceremonial opening. The constellation and order of the orators
and their background alluded to the complexity of the interdependence between Bosnia
and Herzegovina and Serbia and Croatia.
The thematic focus of the conference was on the socialist period and World War II,
which also represented the socialist revolution in the context of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav
and Austro-Hungarian periods were also covered, although these presentations were
mainly restricted to political history. Most of the thematic sessions were presented by
scholars with different national backgrounds, with the exception of the Muslim historian
Avdo Suceska, whose paper traced the history of the republic as a political entity to the
Ottoman period. In his view, foreign rule was understood as having passed smoothly,
thus representing an understanding of the historical process that emphasized continuity
(Suceska 48). Since the Ottoman period was associated with the formation of the
Bosnian Muslims as an ethnic group, this guaranteed an even stronger connection
between the history of Bosnia and the Muslims.
Vasa Cubrilovic presented a strong antithesis to this view. In his presentation, Bosnia
and Herzegovina was created to the disadvantage of Croatia and Serbia. In Cubrilovic’s
view, historical developments in Bosnia were the result of pressures from external
forces that made it possible for Bosnia to be established at the expense of Serbia and
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Croatia (Cubrilovic 15). By locating the origin of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the national
states of Croatia and Serbia, Cubrilovic implied that the territorial cohesion of Bosnia
should be extracted from the aspect of Bosnian Muslims.
Atif Purivatra was the second explicit articulator of a history of (Bosnian) Muslims. In
his presentation concerning the attitudes of the CPY towards Muslims during World War
II (Purivatra 498), Purivatra presented leaflets from the period, which addressed Muslims
as a separate group fighting for the liberation of Yugoslavia together with Serbs and
Croats, which according to him proved that the CPY had recognized the Muslims
already twenty-five years earlier. His argument was further supported by the formation
of separate Muslim military units within the partisan movement.
By restricting the temporal frame of his analysis to the period of World War II, Pur-
ivatra was not only able to draw an affirming and uniform picture of the party’s attitude
towards the identity of Bosnian Muslims, but also factored out the ambiguous and strategic
aspects of the party policy towards Muslims that were implemented soon after the estab-
lishment of socialist Yugoslavia. This was one of the main points in the discussion that
followed with the director of the Institute of History. Redzic strongly criticized Purivatra’s
insufficiently defined category of “Muslim.” He felt the definition was not clear about its
geographical representativeness (Yugoslav Muslims or Bosnian Muslims) and was a sim-
plified view that glossed over the political inconsistency of the party, oscillating between
recognition and repudiation of Bosnian Muslims. According to Redzic’s view, the recog-
nition of Bosnian Muslims as a nation was a much more recent occurrence. As he pointed
out, the leaflets from the 1940s aimed mainly at mobilizing Muslims, which at that time
were perceived as a cultural or religious group, thus, did not imply any recognition of a
Muslim nationhood. Recalling his personal experience as a participant in the revolution,
Redzic also criticized an interpretation that framed the creation of Muslim military
units as a proof for the recognition of the Muslim nation (Istorijske pretpostavke 583).
Subsequently, the conference opened the floodgates to a continuous and heated polemic
between Redzic and Purivatra that lasted for many years.
Another central topic of the discussion focused on the role of the Yugoslav Muslim
Organization in the first Yugoslavia. The main question concerned whether the presence
of the first political Muslim organization, JMO, was crucial to maintaining Bosnia’s auton-
omous status during the first Yugoslavia. Entering the debate, Hamdija Cemerlic, con-
ceived of the JMO as the guarantor of territorial integrity during the negotiations
preceding the adoption of the centralist Vidovdan constitution in 1921, which defined
the new territorial division of Yugoslavia (Istorijske pretpostavke 571–77). According
to such a configuration, Bosnian Muslims were seen as the cohesive force of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, without whom Bosnia and Herzegovina would have been split
between Serbia and Croatia.
It is interesting to note that none of the participants in the discussion, who were mainly
coming from the Bosnian academic milieu, dared to challenge Cubrilovic’s view, which
marginalized Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Bosnian Muslims, since he
viewed both as being historically predisposed to a unification with Croatia and Serbia.
Being a member of the prestigious academies in Zagreb and Belgrade, Cubrliovic was
not so much infallible (after all, he was criticized, at least implicitly, by those historians
with less extreme views) as incontestable at the given moment.
To conclude, the papers at the conference in Sarajevo in 1968 introduced two subjects
to the historiographical debates in Bosnia and Herzegovina: a historical perspective on the
integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a historical perspective on the national identity of
Bosnian Muslims.
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In doing so, they represented an attempt to introduce a Bosnian context to the debate
while articulating two key interpretational paradigms, which was in line with general his-
toriographical practices in Yugoslavia from the early 1960s onwards. The first element of
the debates concerned the territorial model for the conceptualization of the historical nar-
rative frame. The prevalent territorial horizon of the historical narratives was now
restricted to the scope of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The delineation of
which was the main objective of the majority of the presented accounts when proving
its political legitimacy. If history was to be utilized as a catalyst for political claims,
then the new narrative was to provide a twofold emancipation of Bosnia and Herzegovina:
firstly, as a republic within the Yugoslav federation, and secondly, as an autonomous
republic in relation to its neighbors, Croatia and Serbia. Although not all conference par-
ticipants shared this view, they all based their work on a common methodological
approach to the territorial aspect of the interpretation of the past, i.e., fostering histories
of republics and thus dismissing a Yugoslav framework that hitherto guided the notion
of a common historical experience on the Yugoslav-wide level.
The second key paradigm of the narratives was the national supremacy model that
aimed to produce national views on the past, which in this particular case focused
mostly on the case of Muslims as a nation. The main objective was the generation of a
historical national narrative for the Muslim national category, which in the presented his-
torical texts was organically connected to the past of the republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Thus, the prevalence of the territorial aspect and the national supremacy model as new
perspectives on the past were the two main objectives of the Bosnian participants at the
conference in Sarajevo.
Given the Yugoslav context in the 1960s, such historical concepts represented a symp-
tomatic case for the new academic climate in most of the Yugoslav republics. Increased
delegitimization of the Yugoslav unity and the proclamation of separate national identities
as new paradigms were already present, meaning the previously discussed events were not
radical when compared to the tendencies of the rest of Yugoslavia and, in many respects,
characteristic of that time.
Nevertheless, beside those paradigmatic commonalities, the Bosnian debates together
with the Muslim national category illustrated a unique example of the mechanisms and
reasoning for national narrative productions in the Yugoslav context. In contrast to
other national categories in socialist Yugoslavia, the political recognition of a Muslim
national category was only a recent phenomenon. Only a few months earlier, in February
1968, the Central Committee of Leagues of Communists in BiH resolved the political
status of Muslims by stating that “[. . .] as was demonstrated still earlier and as contempor-
ary socialist experience continues to show, that Muslims are a separate nation” (quoted and
discussed extensively in Lucic 106). Returning to the Bosnian historical debates at the con-
ference, as it appeared in the papers of some participants, such as Atif Purivatra or
Hamdija Cemerlic, this historiographical debate was not only an academic exercise, but
also at stake was the legitimization of a recent political agenda of the LCBiH. Given
this only recently established political understanding of the Muslim national specificity,
the intellectual and academic assertion of a Muslim national culture and historical pedi-
gree was still in its embryonic phase. In that sense, the 1960s and early 1970s would rep-
resent a crucial period for the academic exercises of Muslim intellectuals, who were about
to enter a phase of producing numerous, yet contested, national narratives.
Moreover, in the case of the Muslim national category, the most contested issue in
national narrative would be the crucial territorial aspect. As the texts of Muslim historians
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at the conference showed, Muslim national identity was understood as organically con-
nected to and inseparable from the past of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
While the narrative practice of locating a national history within a republic-wide territorial
scope reflected a generally accepted narrative technique, in the case of the Muslim national
category, this would be a point of strong contestation. Therefore, differing visions and con-
flicting narratives would range from a federation-wide Yugoslav perspective to a more
restricted Bosnian perspective.
Thus, whereas the narration practices of most national categories appeared structurally
compatible with a republic-wide mapping of the nation, the example of the Muslim
national identity would prove to be a source conflicting narratives and inter-republican
conflicts.
Consequently, the presented attempt to restrict the Muslim national category to the
republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, framing it as a republican citizenship, soon had to
face political contestations that proposed an alternative geographical mapping on a Yugo-
slav level.
Writing a “True History”: Salim Ceric’s The Serbo-Croatian speaking Muslims as
the intellectual project of nationalizing the past
While the conference mainly dealt with the history of the republic Bosnia and Herzego-
vina, in the same year there also appeared the first politically appropriate study on the
history of the Muslims, thus adding a Muslim national(ist) voice to the historiographic
practice. According to this new interpretation, the main dividing line of history was to
move from class differences to the “nation,” which was to be liberated from foreign
oppression.
Salim Ceric’s book The Serbo-Croatian speaking Muslims was the first monograph
dedicated to the history of the Muslims as a separate nation. The media attention given
to the book, not just in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but all over Yugoslavia, had an astonish-
ing effect. More than 15 book reviews were written within a short period. The horizon of
expert opinion ranged from admiration to dismissing it as a piece of adolescent literature
(Macan 37). The time for a “true history” had come, in which the Muslims finally “would
become a subject of Bosnia’s history,” exclaimed Mustafa Imamovic in his evaluation
(Imamovic, “Istorijske opservacije” 49). While in most Bosnian journals and newspapers
this argument became prevalent, in other republics, a more distanced and reserved
approach was more common.
Nonetheless, Ceric’s book was a pioneering work on the national past of the Muslims.
It had the style of an essay or popular text, written in narrative prose, simple in its language
and thus accessible to a wider audience. Regarding the question of the geographical scope
of the Muslim national category, Ceric’s work provided an answer, which could be charac-
terized as ambiguous at best, implying multiple possible readings of his work. According
to the title of the book, Ceric’s definition of the boundaries of the Muslim nation was based
on language as the main criterion. The territory of their dispersion was implicitly
announced by the reference to Serbo-Croatian speaking Muslims only. Following the
title, the narrative would include Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sandzak, and
Montenegro, while Muslims from Macedonia and Kosovo were excluded. A closer analy-
sis of the narrative, however, revealed a more restricted understanding of the Muslim
national category, which in the text did not exceed the spatial sphere beyond the republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, thus narratively locating the “nation-ness” within the bound-
aries of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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The chapters of the book were conceptualized chronologically in which the time order
and epochal subdivision were configured in accordance with the Marxist understanding of
history.
In the chapter on feudalism and capitalism, the modes of production received primary
attention, followed by socio-political circumstances and cultural forms. Thus, in the pre-
vailing historical materialist mode of thinking, the history of the Bosnian Muslim as a
national subject was presented from a teleological perspective, as constantly progressing
towards the present. Ceric traced the nation’s genealogy back to medieval times. Although
the formative moment of the confessional tripartite constellation was situated in the
Ottoman period, the roots of the Bosnian Muslims needed to be found even further
back in the past. This made the notion of the Muslims as an indigenous ethnic group
even more palatable, but it also required two narrative constructs: the first was to prove
that the Muslims had anteceded the arrival of the Ottoman Empire, and the other was to
facilitate a smooth passage from one era to the other. In contrast to the previous narrative
framing of the Ottoman period as an era of invasion, oppression, and cruel foreign rule,
Ceric’s narrative discourse gave another view, associating the Ottomans as the liberators
of the Bogumils from Christian oppression. According to Ceric, the Slavic Bogumuils con-
verted to Islam en masse soon after Muhamed II. el Fatih’s “act of liberation,” because
they had a religious belief that was almost interchangeable with other religions (Ceric,
Muslimani 52). It was thus argued that a dogmatic and religious affinity between Islam
and Bogumil faith provided a smooth passage from pre-Ottoman Slavic to Ottoman
Muslim society. Similarly, the ethnic character of Bosnian Muslims was perceived as a
synthesis of Slavic origins mixed with the “foreign” Islam. Consequently, in contrast to
hitherto articulated historical assumptions, which traced the formative moment of the
Muslim past in the Ottoman period, in the course of nationalizing the Muslim past, the
starting point of the Muslim nation was defined in the times of the Bogumils.
Ceric argued that Muslim society in the Ottoman period was subdivided into a class
structure consisting of ayans, beys, merchants, the ulama (clergy), free peasants and the
reaya, but “despite its heterogeneous class structure Muslim society perceived itself as a
cohesive entity” (Ceric, Muslimani 117). In the course of Ottoman decline, class differ-
ences diminished as the Muslim allegiance to the Ottoman state was overshadowed by
more patriotic feelings towards Bosnia and Herzegovina (ibid. 104–13).
With the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 came the end of the feudal
period and the entry into capitalist modes of production, which the author chronologically
subdivided into the periods of Austro-Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Ceric
classified the two periods by distinguishing between the domination of external
(Austria-Hungarian) elite, and the latter period of what he called “domestic” hegemony.
Industrialization and modernization entered Bosnia during the Austro-Hungarian admin-
istration, yet they did not succeed in homogenizing the population within the boundaries
of a common Bosnian nation. Ceric explained this with the argument that “the internal
market remained ethnically split with cohesive forces [existing] only among the individual
ethnic communities” (Ceric, Muslimani 147). Besides modernization, the character of
Habsburg rule was described in a positive light, because it guaranteed the Bosnian
Muslims their identity and Bosnia and Herzegovina its autonomy, as opposed to Serb
and Croat nationalist aspirations that were depicted as assimilatory, striving to turn
Bosnia and Herzegovina into parts of the Serbian and Croatian nation-states (ibid 158).
This period represented an era during which the first forms of political representation of
Bosnian Muslims appeared through the JMO, which in Ceric’s account was endowed
with idealizing narratives.
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The most interesting and important question in the history of Bosnian Muslims con-
cerned the interwar period, when the Muslim elite officially described itself in Croatian
or Serbian national terms. As Ceric argued, the belief that the Muslim population would
become Croats or Serbs based on its cultural development, represented an assimilatory
tendency towards the Muslims. In regard to this he wrote: “The assimilation policy did
not bring about any decisive results. The Muslims conceived it as pressure on their cultural
heritage and resisted it with all available means” (Ceric, Muslimani 201). For the author,
those intellectuals who proclaimed themselves as Serbs or Croats did so out of political
opportunism, and the variability of their national affiliations served Ceric as the best
evidence for this state of affairs (ibid. 202). For him, the fact that organized assimilation
policies, led by Muslim cultural associations, failed to influence the “Muslim masses” was
the best proof of Bosnian Muslim nationhood.
Only with the communist takeover and the socialist revolution were Bosnian Muslims
finally awarded their previously neglected national rights (ibid. 215). Like Purivatra, Ceric
argued for a consistent communist national policy from the beginning. Thus, this admiring
view of the role of communism may well have been determined by the author’s party
affiliation and ideological premises rather than the testimonies of archival materials.
Indeed, the book was of potential value not only for ordinary Muslims and intellectuals
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also for the political apparatus. In the archival material of
the Bosnian commission for inter-ethnic relations from 1969, what can be found among
other documents is a typewritten manuscript on the “Problem of the Yugoslav Muslim
Nation” (ABH, Komsija za medunacionalne odnose 1969 [material without signature]).
Although no author signed the document, its content is identical to Ceric’s officially pub-
lished work, and annotated with textual interpolations on Marxist considerations of the
nation-building processes. As it was written in the ekavica with different ink color than
the typewriter, it suggests that the reflections on Marxist ideology on nations derive
from another anonymous author. This document was archived with a compilation of
book reviews and a short letter from Ceric addressed to Dzemal Bijedic, which contained
the following remark: “I send you all the review on my book, which I have received until
now. Hope to hear your opinion about it soon” (ABH, Komisija za medunacionalne
odnose 1969). Although it does not appear clearly that the book was ordered by the pol-
itical authorities, it was used as the party’s new master narrative on the Bosnian Muslims.
Moreover, it went relatively unchallenged until prior to the census in 1971, when alterna-
tive narrative models appeared within the Muslim intellectual strata.
In the name of the Republic or the Nation? Pre-census mobilization patterns,1970–1971
In the period between September 1970 and April 1971, the Yugoslav, and especially
Bosnian, media were overflowing with articles on the importance of the forthcoming
census. For the first time, the Bosnian Muslim identity was a subject of discussion in
the wider non-academic public sphere.
Considerable media space was dedicated to two most disputed census categories: the
Yugoslav and the Muslim categories. The discussions were mostly framed in a rhetoric of
new democratic ideas, new solutions within the course of reforms, and more democratic
self-management, in which a new relationship between republic and federation would
guarantee national and republican affirmation, and equality between developed and
under-developed regions (Oslobodenje 1 Mar 1971, 5). As the media discourse all over
Yugoslavia confirmed, the achievement of a balanced policy was depicted as mainly
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preconditioned by two aspects: the affirmation of republican national categories and their
political power, and the devaluation of the “Yugoslav” category as it was now associated
with unitarism, thus symbolizing the political power of the federation.
Political separatist trends of the 1960s, which hitherto had been strengthened mainly in
the cultural realm through intellectual exercises, were meant now to meet wide popular
support, encouraging people to choose national identities in their census declaration. Con-
sequently, academic debates, which hitherto were creating and strengthening separate
nationally oriented culture mainly in the narrower academic realm of the cultural
sphere, were being politically utilized in the pre-census period and thus relocated to a
wider public sphere with the purpose of mobilizing popular support for the given political
goals. Whereas the 1960s were characterized by the competing interaction of the Yugoslav
idea and more particular national cultures, by 1971, the political climate changed and par-
ticularist views were supported and politically encouraged to triumph.
The media in Bosnia and Herzegovina reflected its own republican national policy. As
some internal documents of the commission for inter-ethnic relations in Bosnia and Her-
zegovina reveal, the party’s main concern lied not only in the supervision of the pre-census
discussion in the media, but first and foremost in engaging intellectuals in propagating the
party’s official identity policy (ABH, Komsija za medunacionalne odnose (Commission
for inter-ethnic relations) 1971).
In the course of the 1960s varying conceptualizations of the Muslim national identity
were elaborated, as a result of which, different interpretations of Muslim ethno-genesis
developed, ranging from the neglect of ethnic attributes to the endowment of this category
with national rights. One of the main objectives in the months preceding the census was to
publicly combat any views that neglected the national attribute of the Muslim category,
while at the same time promote a Bosnian Muslim national category in the media.
As part of this strategy, articles on Muslim identity that were two or more years old
were now re-actualized and utilized as instruments for social mobilization. One of the
most prominent examples of an article that negated Muslim nationality was written by
the Croat Vladimir Blaskovic and published in 1967 in the Croatian journal Kritika.
Three years later, it made headlines in the daily magazine Oslobodenje in Bosnia and Her-
zegovina. Blaskovic doubted any
developed present awareness of an ethnic authenticity among the Muslims. Moreover, whocould neglect apodictically the presence of traditional Croatian or Serbian national affiliationsamong the Muslim population in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Sandzak. (Blaskovic 12–17)
Similar statements were also presented in the media of the neighboring republic of Serbia
(Logor 3) and on occasion in Macedonia, though in that case, they mainly referred to the
Macedonian Muslims as Macedonians of Islamic faith, without challenging the concept of
a Bosnian Muslim national category (Ramet 182). As a reaction to these negations of a
Muslim nationality, on 8 January 1971, Oslobodjenje published a special issue, condemn-
ing the collected media material from Croatia (Blaskovic 12–17) and Macedonia
(Palikruseva 5) as having anti-democratic, nationalistic aspirations, which in the article
were framed as the embodiments of leftovers from the old bureaucracy (Oslobodenje
8 Jan 1971: 5).
Such massive proliferation of academic debates did not primarily serve academic
needs, but was symptomatic of an intensified popular mobilization. At the same time,
the Muslim claim to being different was given the ambiguity of the category “Muslim,”
interpreted as a lack of political rights in other republics (like Macedonia, Serbia, or
Montenegro.) While in the political debates the Muslim category was more explicitly
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articulated in terms of power relations, in the public sphere it was the intellectual debates
that provided the main frame for it, thus turning history into a means for mobilization in
the politicized public sphere. In this given context, intellectuals were to serve first and
foremost political goals by mediating between the elite and the population.
Not only was the Muslims’ national status negated across the other republics, the
internal Bosnian debates were not accordant. As it appeared, tensions were present even
in the internal Bosnian debate among the Muslim intellectuals, among which Redzic
and Ceric played central figures in the context of the pre-census mobilization.
In April 1970, Oslobodenje published Ceric’s critique of Redzic’s article in the aca-
demic journal Pregled (Redzic, “O posebnosti” 19–32), in which Redzic spelled the
word “Muslim” without a capital “M”2, therefore denying its national character. Accord-
ing to Redzic, who proposed instead the adoption of a “Bosnian” national identity, the
“Muslim” category was inadequate, since it referred to religious attributes. For his alterna-
tive intellectual elaboration of the Muslim identity issue, Redzic began with the same per-
iodization as Ceric (see above), arguing, however, that it was rather the strong affiliation
with the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina rather than religion that was the primary
determinant of Bosnian Muslim identity. For Redzic, the distinction between the
Muslims living in Bosnia and those from other parts of Yugoslavia represented an evoca-
tive boundary (Barth 4).
Actually, Ceric also referred exclusively to the Muslims living in Bosnia, but for him
the national diversity of Bosnia and Herzegovina was of crucial importance. It follows that
both intellectuals, in fact, shared the same understanding of the Bosnian Muslim identity
as national, but used different identification markers. In other words, while Redzic did not
challenge the idea of a Bosnian Muslim collective identity, he did raise a critical voice in
regard to the national nomenclature. Whereas in the period between 24 February and 13
March 1971 (see Oslobodenje 24.2.1971–13.3.1971) all 18 volumes of Ceric’s elaborate
work were published in the most popular daily in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Redzic did not
have the same opportunity to make his voice heard.
It is interesting to note, that in his recently published autobiography, Redzic’s recount-
ing of the 1970s only mentions Mustafa Imamovic’s critique of his article in Pregled
(Redzic, Moje zivotne dionice 95). This critique referred mainly to the (mis)spelling of
the name “Muslim” (Imamovic, “Ne radi se o slucajnosti” 5) and was published under
the title “It was no accident” in the daily newspaper Oslobodenje in 1970. In contrast
to that, Ceric’s text remained factored out of Redzic’s personal memory.
To conclude, whereas contesting views of the Muslim national status that originated in
other republics were publicly addressed in the Bosnian media in order to refute them,
Bosnian internal quarrels over the Muslim nationality were mostly silenced, while at
the same time the more politically conformative national narratives were given public
voice.
Oslobodenje was not meant to provide public media space for academic polemics, but
served as a mobilizing force in order to assure popular acceptance of the “Muslim” cat-
egory. Given the fact that the policy of Bosnia’s affirmation as a republic was conceptu-
alized under the premise of a tripartite national structure, the “Bosnian” concept did not
comply with these political visions. Moreover, the Muslim political elite were able to
secure their independent space within the national quota system only through institutiona-
lizing the category “Muslim.” Yet, the name “Bosnian” alluded to the territory of Bosnia
and Herzegovina and suggested a social cohesion along territorial rather than ethno-reli-
gious boundaries. Therefore, it was unsuitable for the political project of the Muslim elite.
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Ceric was endowed with the mission to reformulate this issue in academic discourse, in
order to empower the Muslims with a history and obliterate the Bosnian variant. Accord-
ing to his argumentation, “Bosnian” nationality had the same assimilatory connotation as
Yugoslav identity (Ceric, “Smisao” 8). Additionally, the Bosnian national concept would
have been a novelty, without any historical roots, while the roots of the Muslim collective
identity had already been found in history (Ceric, “Nacelno” 8). Interestingly, the implied
logic was almost identical to the ideological frame of self-management: unity and cohe-
sion was to be achieved through the affirmation of the particular as an equal part of the
whole (Jovic 171). Analogically, Ceric was arguing that Bosnian cohesion could be rea-
lized only through the political and cultural development of all three national groups
(Ceric, “Nacelno” 8). Any differing positions were therefore banned from the public
sphere. By supporting Ceric’s view, the party-controlled media clearly dismissed any
alternative interpretations.
A nation without national institutions: Ceric’s break up with the CentralCommittee
As already shown, the cultural forms of articulation of national identity were rarely dis-
cussed in the political sphere. The main topic was the issue of a national quota and the
assertion of political power on the republican level. It was the task of intellectuals to
create a cultural heritage and symbols within the politically constructed frame. After
the census in 1971, Ceric intensified his efforts in articulating a Muslim national identity.
In the introduction, I argued for an actor-oriented approach in the analysis, which
would concentrate on the agency of the individual person. Only then is it possible to
trace the complexity not only of the intellectuals’ but also the politicians’ roles and
their relationship to “cultural politics” (Boyer 109). This helps to draw a more dynamic
picture of the power relationships and varying degrees of commitment to politically con-
structed national images. That personal convictions sometimes overrode the externally or
politically defined frame is shown in the case of Salim Ceric.
On 26 April 1971, Ceric made a presentation under the title “Some Problems Regard-
ing the Protection of the Nations’ Future, which Live in their National State or the Forth-
coming National Policy in SR Bosnia and Herzegovina” (ABH, Kabinet predjednika
Branko Mikulic “Neki problemi zastite” (The Cabinet of the President Branko Mikulic),
material without signature.3
On the basis of the socialist ideological paradigm of national equality, Ceric first diag-
nosed a national suppression of Bosnian Muslims and campaigned for equal rights by rea-
lizing “internal cultural communication” (ABH, Neki problemi zastite 3), which would
have ensured the existence of their national status. The objectives that Ceric put
forward were as follows:
Usage of the language and script, which they perceive as their own [. . .];
The right to be publicly addressed in their language and script [. . .];
The right to cultural manifestations [. . .];
The right to an education in their own language and script with their own schoolbooks in lit-erature, history, ethnology. The nations need their own institutions [. . .] especially their ownMatica [publishing house and cultural institution that existed for Croats and Serbs] (ABH,“Neki problemi zastite” 4)
Following Ceric’s argument, even though the political act of recognizing the Bosnian
Muslims as a nation was a very important progressive step, Muslims were still not equal
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with their co-nationals since they lacked the instruments for sustaining their national char-
acter (ABH, Neki problemi zastite (Some Problems of Security) 16). Only through those
instruments, according to Ceric, would it be possible to create a cultural community in
national terms. The primary tasks would be to valorize the Muslim national heritage, to
focus on Muslim history as part of the history of the nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
to re-conceptualize schoolbooks literature and to create a flag (ABH, Neki problemi zastite
19).
These claims amounted to what contemporary literature and authors like Lofgren have
characterized as national culture building. According to Ceric, political recognition was
just a frame that needed to be filled with cultural content. The main task would be to estab-
lish communication networks through which the concept of a national culture could be
communicated and proliferate on a nation-wide level. In acknowledging the crucial impor-
tance of institutional communication, Ceric’s demands departed from the premise that “it
is only through the process of collective action, though the expansion of social networks to
meet the requirement of modern institutions, that national identity is created in the first
place” (Giesen 9).
The Commission for inter-ethnic relations on the republican level assembled on 12
July 1971, to discuss the topic “The Relation between Republic-Nation-Culture” (ABH,
Komisija za medunacionalne odnose (Commission for inter-ethnic relations)/Ceric), at
which Ahmet Catic summarized Ceric’s position as follows:
Some opinions have emerged lately, according to which Muslims are only politically recog-nized as a nation, but are deprived of any social components of this national character. Thoseopinions also state that Muslims are left only to the Islamic community and that they experi-ence their national character but are not allowed to express it in an appropriate manner. It isthereby forgotten that political recognition is the precondition for any further emancipation(ABH, Kosmija za medunacioalne odnose/Ceric, tape 2, p. 2)
Ahmet Catic argued that all institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina were national, since
they consisted of all three national groups. It would therefore be absurd to create separate
Muslim national institutions (ABH, Kosmija za medunacioalne odnose/Ceric 4).
Central Committee member Hasan Grabcanovic accused Ceric’s campaign of being “a
banal variant of Austro-Marxist ideology on the national question” (ABH, Kosmija za
medunacioalne odnose/Ceric 8). In addition, Branko Mikulic concluded that the policy
proposed by Ceric would result in a total partition of the nations. Even if it were true
that the schoolbooks are not the best, this would be the case not only for Bosnian
Muslims but for all three nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Neither history, nor
culture, nor customs of the three nations had been properly explored, but this, according
to Mikulic, did not mean that the republic would break up.
In contrast to those positions, Ceric did not recognize any political separatism in his
proposal and argued that without cultural institutions Muslims would remain mainly reli-
giously associated. Atif Purivatra and his colleague Kasim Suljevic were also present at
the meeting. Though they were themselves proponents of a national identity of Bosnian
Muslims, they did not exceed the politically set limits, and thus left Ceric without any
support.
Instead, they continued to be effective not just as nation-builders, but above all as acti-
vists of the communist party. Ceric soon after turned against the party, which resulted in
his switch from a progressive propagator of national identity to the politically framed role
of a nationalist.
As for Bosnian Muslim nation-building, it still remained without the institutional
context for the creation of a national culture. Consequently, what some anonymous
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documents of that time diagnosed in terms of marginalization of the Muslims was actually
the lack of nation-building (Lucic 110–14).
Thus, the Bosnian Muslims were provided with little of what contemporary literature
labels the key determinants of a nation (Lofgren 9). In other words, the political and ideo-
logical project of the communist party was left without any cultural symbols serving as the
embodiment of the “nation.” Consequently, the Islamic Community remained the only
“national” institution, and despite its solely religious character, was the only institution
to assemble the nationally-oriented Muslims. The atheist nationally-oriented Muslims,
on the other hand, were left without any institutions of their own. This ambiguity would
remain unsolved until the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Leaving the acknowledged national identity without an institutional basis in the cul-
tural sphere confirms the assumption that the recognition of the Muslim national category
mainly served the purpose of achieving a political integration of the Muslim political elite.
In other words, the nationalist project was a top-down process, in which the elite were
directing the dynamics of the nation-becoming discourse. The reason for the absence of
separate Muslim cultural institutions that would have enabled the constitution of a national
culture merits further analysis. For some politicians it might have been an unnecessary
task. A second explanation would be that in Bosnia and Herzegovina cultural institutions
were supposed to be common for all three nations. However, Serbs and Croats could at
least indirectly rely on the matice in Zagreb and Belgrade, while the Islamic Community
was the only Muslim cultural institution. It was not until the 1990s, when Bosnian Muslims
adopted the national denomination Bosniaks, that a range of national institutions were
established.
Long-distance nationalism: concepts from the diaspora
Recent research on American nation-state building has shown that in order to grasp a
nation-building process, scholars call for the extension of the analytical scope beyond
the limits of the nation’s state, conceiving nation-building as a result of an inter-national
project (see Tyrell 2007). Within the historiography’s paradigm of global dimensions, it is
possible to trace a whole trans-national agency and a level of interrelatedness beyond state
borders. By broadening the geographical horizon of the analysis, a very similar phenom-
enon was also present in our case study. Until now, the proposed concept of long-distance
nationalism has not been given enough attention for the period of the national(ist) projects.
Although in-depth analysis is lacking, it is necessary to integrate the concept as a part of
the narrative’s pluralism and the embodiment of the nation-ness even if limited to the set
borders.
On the political periphery and distanced from Central Committee’s control, alternative
national narratives emerged with alternative constituencies of the Muslim peoples from
Bosnia. Interestingly, at approximately the same time as the Communist political ration-
ality started to explore the national(ist) concept, a “Bosniak” articulation of national
culture appeared in the gatherings of emigres. The forms in which this alternative
concept publicly emerged included short declarative articles, texts published in academic
journals and elaborate monographs.
Politically, the Bosniak national idea was organized around the so-called Liberal
Democratic Alliance of Bosniaks Muslims, headed by Adil Zulfikarpasic. Tracing its
roots to the political party JMO, the Liberal Democratic Alliance identified the political
representation of the Bosnian Muslim population as their main task. Despite its ethnically
inspired representative body, its political orientation was associated with the liberal and
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democratic trend. Its main task was to affirm the Bosniak national identity (Dervisevic 1–
2). The proliferation of its national ideas was mediated by the journal Bosanski pogledi
(Bosnian views), which was published between 1960 and 1968 under the direction of
Adil Zulfikarpasic. To its audience, it described itself as the “The independent journal
of emigre Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina” in its subtitle.
Bosanski pogledi was mainly a political magazine that informed its readers of the
association’s activities. Its content was chiefly political in nature (Imamovic, Bosnjaci u
emigraciji), and explicitly anti-communist, while at the same time the thematic scope
was clearly inspired by the communist policy in Yugoslavia. The magazine served
several functions: apologetically self-portraying its founder Adil Zulfikarpasic; informing
on the emigres’ activities, which often were in reaction to the inner Yugoslav policy
making; depicting topics related to Islam around the world (not restricted to Bosnia and
Herzegovina); and considering the national identity of the Muslim population in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. Ironically, what the Bosnian Muslims were missing in Bosnia– that
is, a medium of communication and a synthesis on cultural content – was provided
outside of its borders. A nation-building process was taking place on the margins
outside the space of the national recognition policy.
The simultaneous appearance of national perspectives on Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks
was certainly not an accidental case of parallel mindsets. A closer look shows that the tem-
poral dimension was probably the only commonality between the communist national
policy and the externally elaborated national concept. Thus, in the same year that the
Yugoslav constitution accredited Muslims as an ethnic group, the following statement
was published in Bosanski pogledi:
For us Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosniak identity is more than a feeling ofregional belonging, more than just a geographical term, more than a historical-cultural subjec-tivity, although it entail all those elements. The Bosniak identity is our only and true nationalidentification. (Bosanski pogledi 28–29 (September–October 1963): 1)
As opposed to the identification of “Muslims from Bosnia” as the group was officially
acknowledged in Yugoslavia, the external text proposed an alternative national identifi-
cation of Bosniak.
Thus, the borders of the imagined community spanned even to the point margins,
clearly across the border of the nationalist project (in Yugoslavia). What this case attested
to was not only a pluralism of national narratives, but also of national places (Bhabha 295).
Obviously, there was a disjunction between the politically inspired national narration and
the representative forms appearing on the margins of the political dictum (Bhabha 291).
Thus, at the same time the Communist policy was institutionalizing a Muslim ethnic
(and later also national) category, the emigres proposed an alternative concept of a
Bosniak nation.
The differing nomenclature was not random. The alterity of the national narration
revealed also the alterity of the political rationality in regard to the same national category.
As we have seen, in the case of Yugoslavia the radius of the Muslim category was ima-
gined on a Yugoslav-wide level. Despite the fact that in 1968 the Bosnian Communists
were proposing a republic-wide national status for the Muslims, under the premise of
national equality with Croats and Serbs in Bosnia, the census in 1971 kept the Yugo-
slav-wide variant. As previously demonstrated, the nebulosity of the definition of the
nation’s space (or territory) was permanently present even in the intellectual disputes in
Yugoslavia. In contrast to Ceric’s book, in which the historical content of Bosnian
Muslims only emerged as a subliminal discursive practice, while at the same time
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keeping in the title the openness for all Serbo-Croatian speaking Muslims, the Bosniak
nationalist thought was presented and based on an explicit Bosnian political solidarity.
Consequently, the aspect of territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged as the main
locus of the group’s subjectivity. The narration was similar to that of Ceric. Historically,
it rooted the dawn of the nation in the medieval period, with the Bosniak identity linked to
Bogumils as their ancestors. However, according to the narrative logic the homogenizing
criterion of the groups’ experience under the name “Bosniak” was not so much the dog-
matic relatedness with Islam (as was claimed in the narrative on Muslims) but the continu-
ous struggle for Bosnia’s political freedom and autonomy. As Adil Zulfikarpasic eagerly
stated:
[. . .] This struggle for Bosnia’s autonomy, the struggle for freedom of mind, freedom of reli-gion was going on for centuries and formed the character and attitude of the Bogumil-Bos-niaks to that extent that it became their main characteristic. (Zulfikarpasic 1–2)
The only patriots in this tale were the Bogumils and Bosniaks, and only they were
endowed with the conscientiousness to defend their patria. Croats and Serbs, in contrast,
were devoid of this feeling of connectedness to their country. As they were associated with
the Vatican and the Byzantine “powers,” the assaulters of Bosnia, this country could not be
theirs.
In this narrative, history did not provide Serbs and Croats with the legitimacy to assure
any national claims. In their image as a colony of the Vatican and Byzantium, they embo-
died a foreign and negative element. Moreover, they lacked any brave qualities, like auton-
omy and fortitude, which was reserved exclusively for the Bosniaks. Their cultural
heritage was conceived as external to Bosnia’s history. Analogically, Bosnia was the
state of the Bosniaks.
[. . .] The Bogumils were the only constitutive element and the defenders of the state, while thereligious minorities were just a kind of a colony of Vatican and the Byzantine, or Hungary.(Zulfikarpasic 2)
Muhamed Hadzijahic provided a more academically elaborated history using this model of
the nation in an article published in Sudost-Forschungen in 1962 (Hadzijahic, ,,Die
Anfange” 168–193). Resembling the reasoning of Zulfikarpasic, Hadzijahic’s writing
was marked by two national identity foci of the Bosniaks: language and the territory
(the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina). By tracing the name Bosniak back to the medieval
period, meant to be the classical age of the Bosniak nation, the Bosniak national idea was
no longer associated with Kallay and the Austro-Hungarian regime of the nineteenth
century, but with Bosnia itself as its center. In addition, Hadzijahic applied the compara-
tive method, setting the nation-formation process in Bosnia next to those in Croatia and
Serbia. Given the fact that Croatia and Serbia were politically identified with one consti-
tutive nation, his attempt of equating the Bosnian past with that of Serbia and Croatia pre-
sented a de facto proposal that the nation-state model also be used in the case of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Not surprisingly, Hadzijahic’s article was soon given attention in Bosanski pogledi,
where his piece of work was praised as an outstanding intellectual achievement (Bosanski
pogledi (Jan–Feb 1964), 5–6).
For Hadzijahic, however, these international connections with the Diaspora did not
prevent the author from pursuing a solid academic career in socialist Yugoslavia.
Twelve years later, he emerged as one creators of the main national narrative of Yugosla-
via. His work Od tradicije do identiteta (From Tradition to Identity), in this case focusing
on Bosnian Muslims rather than Bosniaks, was soon to be seen, in the Yugoslav context, as
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the intellectual confirmation of the constitution 1974 (Hadzijahic, Od tradicije do
identiteta).
The missing component of a cultural national phenomenology in the communist his-
toriography was once again created in the diaspora outside Yugoslav borders only one
year prior to the Yugoslav constitution of 1974. This time, the author, Smail Balic, was
a Muslim/Bosniak intellectual living in Vienna. In his work entitled “The Culture of Bos-
niaks: The Muslim component,” Balic focused on the linguistic aspect of the Bosniak
national culture. Balic argued that the language of the Bosniaks was the Bosniak language
and underscored the argument with the traditional naming that was preserved among the
Bosniak population. Although Balic adopted Hadzijahic’s historical dating, which started
with the Bogumils in medieval Bosnia, his analysis of the national culture began with the
Ottoman period. The cultural components were subdivided into two main sections: the
spiritual and the material. Within the first, Balic analysed the lyrics, prose, oral traditions
and the so-called alhamijado literature, which was in the Bosnian language but written in
Arabic script. The material component involved mainly architecture and plastic arts.
Not surprisingly, it was Adil Zulfikarpasic, whose name had a central position in the
foreword as one of the main donors, who enabled the publishing of this book.
Conclusion
With a focus on individual agency, I have tried to show the role of intellectuals in the cre-
ation, circulation and contestation of national culture, and capture the variety of intellec-
tual work involved in nation-building.
The analysis suggests that a wide range of conflicting tendencies within the discipline
resulted in a pluralism of national narratives. As the results suggest, there was no central
authority in Bosnia and Herzegovina that guided the production of national narratives
(apart from the pre-census period, when efforts with various degrees of success were
made by the party to provide the wider audience with a uniform understanding of
Muslim nationality). Instead, there were several competing practices, resulting in a plur-
alism of thought, although all of them served the ideological purpose of producing a
Muslim national identity. Consequently, one cannot explain the discourse by referencing
the dictatorial powers of the party (Bokovoy 16). Many scholars agree that not only was
Yugoslavia much less repressive of intellectuals than other communist states, but the party
was, itself, dependent on the intellectuals and therefore tolerated “dependent monopolies”
of history production.
Even though it was not examined here, another important factor that determined the
dynamics of national history and culture production was the personal alliances between
political and intellectual elites. This relationship was never the result of a simple top-
down dictate by the politicians, but far more, a function of an ambivalent and complex
network of accrediting, neglecting, and tolerating different interpretations of the history
of the nation (Giesen 41). In addition to this, it seems that personal conviction and biogra-
phical background played a crucial role in the production of historiography.
Regarding the narrative framing of the Muslim national identity, its distinctiveness
was strongly related to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to a history of non-Serbian and
non-Croatian identification. The fact that the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzego-
vina did not assimilate with the Serbs or Croats was a crucial argument behind the proposal
for Muslim national recognition. Moreover, given the socialist environment, it was necess-
ary to find continuity in the ruling Communist Party’s position on Muslims. This was done
by Atif Purivatra, who focused mainly on the CPY’s attitudes towards the Muslims during
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World War II and tried to depict a uniform image of the Party’s policy. I have tried to show
that parallel to the writing of a Muslim national history, a history of Bosnia and Herzego-
vina also had to be conceptualized. By constructing a continuous territorial integrity for
Bosnia and Herzegovina and by relating Bosnia’s autonomy to the political efforts of
Muslim political leaders, the republican affirmation was strongly associated with the
Muslim nation.
The case of Salim Ceric has been very illuminating for various reasons. Firstly, it
shows that the institutionalization of the Muslim national category was, in fact, a political
act without any nation-building that was informed by the Muslim institutions in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. For various reasons, the national proclamation was not followed by
the creation of separate secular Muslim institutions that might have supported the
process of nation-building. While Serbs and Croats had “their” academies of sciences
and cultural foundations in Belgrade and Zagreb, the only thing analogous in the
Muslim community was, in fact, the Islamic Religious Community, which after 1968
changed its name to the Islamic Community.
In addition to this, Ceric’s case illuminates how degrees of personal commitment to the
party could vary over time.
By looking at the international dimension of the national narrative construction, a
picture of an interruptive interiority of the national narrative emerges. At the same time
two differing forms of “national” history emerged in different places and under different
ideological dictates. In their discrepancy in naming the nation and in the divergence of
their trajectories and rhythms, they also contained the possibility of different imaginings
of nationhood. With the writing of two different histories of the “nation,” two different
state forms were actually at stake. Both histories were working under the premise of his-
torical origin as a criterion for inclusion or exclusion. Nonetheless, although in the com-
munist historiography the (Bosnian) Muslim entity was essentialized though the myth of
medieval Bogumils, by locating their distinctiveness in the religious/confessional rather
than territorial Bosnian aspect, they were meant to constitute one part of the multi-confes-
sional history of Bosnia, giving space to national perspectives of Serbs and Croats, as well.
The medieval Bogumils differed only in religion with the Bosnian Serbs and Croats, while
all three possessed a common link to Bosnia.
In contrast, the Bosniak concept considered the state as the center of its national being.
By identifying the Bogumils only with Bosnia, they were marked as the distinctive
element from the Croats and Serbs, which, according to this logic, could only identify
with Croatia and Serbia (in this case they were identified with the Vatican and Byzantium).
Bosniaks were delineated as the majority and the only constitutive part of the country. At
stake was the claim for a majority-base nation-state, as was characteristic in the capitalist
and western part of Europe, and which, in fact, gave this thought its geographical frame
and enabled it to be publicly proclaimed. Moreover, the application of terms like minority
versus majority, or of making language and territory as the nation’s main characteristic,
pressed analogically the pervasive Western model to the Bosnian case.
Interestingly, the communist prognosis of Bosniak national identity as the embodiment
of the Muslim dominance over Serbs and Croats, proved to be correct. Thus, while the
Muslim category, and its proposed past as a source of national legitimacy, was simul-
taneously internalizing the ideological thinking of a history of common ground with
Serbs and Croats from Bosnia, thus balancing between particularity and commonality,
the Bosniak historical discourse was producing the ideology of a nation-state model. In
other words, at stake was a symbolically and culturally informed negotiation of political
power through the turning of boundaries and limits.
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The other point of difference was concerning the cultural content. In the restricted
nation-building policy of the Central Committee, the institutionalized Muslim category
remained, after all, an empty costume lacking its cultural ingredients. This deficiency
was then compensated for in the Bosniak variant.
Although the diaspora provided a national concept that also included the articulation of
national cultural signs that were, as Ceric diagnosed, missing in the communist-proposed
Bosnian Muslim variant, the Bosniak concept did not gain much support among the
Muslim population living within Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time. Of course, the
Bosniak concept, as the Communists condemned it, was also abandoned in any public rep-
resentation. However, if we take into consideration the opening of Yugoslavia’s borders
for the emigration of guest workers to Western countries already ongoing in the late
1960s and 70s, the idea definitely could not have remained hidden from the people.
Still, in the party’s documents no such underground organizations in the name of the
Bosniak nation were registered, and neither did the Central Committee ever consider
any danger coming from the Diaspora. No interventions were made, which made it poss-
ible for the two narrative movements to exist next to each other, each meant to represent
the same group of the Bosnian population, but with two opposing concepts of nation-hood.
This persisted until the 1990s, when the idea of the border of Yugoslavia became the centre
of the already independent Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Notes
1. The first draft of this article is a chapter of my M.A. thesis “From Religion to Nation. AmbiguousNation-building Process of Bosnian Muslims 1967–1972”, which I successfully defended at theDepartment of History at Uppsala University in Sept. 2008. In addition, it served as a workingpaper in the project “New and Ambiguous Nation-building Process in South-eastern Europe: Col-lective Identities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldova and Montenegro in Comparison(1944–2005), which was financed by the Volkswagen Stiftung and the Austrian Science FundFWF as well as the project “Nacionalni identitet Bosnjaka 1945–2008”, which was financedby the Ministry of Kanton Sarajevo.
2. After the official recognition of its Muslim population in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the CentralCommittee introduced the new writing of the name “Muslim” with a capital M, which was theonly symbolic resource to announce the new political status as a nation.
3. This material has been presented also by Sacir Filandra (see Filandra 316–20). In the followingsection, however, I quote the original archival material.
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