Between emigration, de-Islamization and the nation-state: Muslim communities in the Balkans today

Abstract

Based on interviews and a series of fieldwork visits to Albania, Greece, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey, this paper provides a synopsis of the main Muslim communities in Southeast Europe, their ethno-linguistic differentiation and their community organisations. It argues that in the last decade, an often-exaggerated concern with Islamist terrorism in the region has obfuscated the much more important processes of de-Islamization and emigration within the context of ambivalent or unsympathetic nation-states. As this paper shows, Muslim communities in the Balkans are characterised by the tension between both fragmentation and stagnation on the one side and stabilisation on the other: Fragmentation in linguistic, ethnic and religious terms as well as demographic and cultural stagnation particularly in Bulgaria and Greece, countered by processes of stabilisation through the re-emergence of established Muslim administrations and communities, particularly in the Western Balkans. This stabilisation is partly supported by Turkish state and religious institutions, which have replaced the conservative missionaries from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. This ‘Turkish turn’, the paper argues, is likely to have a considerable impact on the future of Islam and Muslims in the Balkans.