Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires by Bougarel Xavier (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 787 Hollywood productions, which maintained their influence throughout and, despite the banning of imports in 1943, up to the Nazi invasion of March 1944. Frey’sbookisanindustrial-politicalhistoryratherthananaestheticone(here one has to return to Nemeskürty), although there are perceptive discussions of theme and subject matter. Its great strength lies in the extraordinary amount of original research conducted in archives in Budapest, Berlin and elsewhere and the ways in which often disparate material has been assembled into a compelling narrative and precise argument. While its contribution to the history of the production and distribution of European sound cinema breaks significant new ground, its study of the political and ideological cross currents within Hungarian society in the post-Trianon context takes it beyond the traditional confines of film scholarship. Its contribution to both cinema and political history is both original and invaluable. Staffordshire University Peter Hames Bougarel, Xavier. Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires. Translated by Christopher Mobley. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2018. xii + 280 pp. Acronyms. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £85.00. While it may not be the last word on the subject, Bougarel’s book is the most authoritative and comprehensive work to date on the political history of the Bosniaks/Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bloomsbury Academic is thus to be praised for making available this seminal work (translated from the 2015 French original by Christopher Mobley) to an English-language audience. With a profound knowledge of its subject and impressive erudition, Bougarel normalizes what he calls the haphazard, uncertain nature of Bosniak/Muslim nation-building,extricatingitfromitsnarrowSouthSlavcontexttothatofpostimperial national- and state-building, and theoretical notions of loyalty and political allegiance. Against the dominant trope of Bosnian Muslims’ belated nation-building and the divergence to models proposed by key nationalism scholars, Bougarel instead explores the notion of national indifference, or nondetermination , addressing the place of religion in South Slav nation-building, as well as connections between national and religious identity in general. In particular, he tackles its interplay with currents of Islamist thought. Bougarel’s claim is that Bosniak/Muslim identity was decisively influenced by the attitudes of Muslim elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina which, from the end of the Ottoman era to the end of Yugoslavia, expressed a constant loyalty to the central authority as a way of safeguarding their privileged position. After the Austro-Hungarian occupation, according to Bougarel, Muslim political SEER, 97, 4, OCTOBER 2019 788 elites’ reliance on imperial centres of power was reducing Bosnian Muslims to a non-sovereign religious minority and few if any efforts were made to build a national identity. This loyalty to the Empire was accompanied by demands for the autonomy of religious institutions, which led Muslims to national nondetermination , enclosing them within their religious community and giving them a safety net. Muslim elites continued to apply this strategy in the period between the two World Wars, similarly promoting Yugoslavism as loyalty to the state, while seeking autonomy for the Islamic Community and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina in return, but not building a separate ethnic identity. Highlighting imperial legacies in forming and maintaining communities based on religious boundaries (and conflicts over these boundaries) versus the dominant paradigm of modern-day nationalism as the cause of all the trouble in Bosnia might be Bougarel’s greatest contribution in this dense volume full of revelations. Bougarel thus reinterprets the period of Austro-Hungary’s rule and some of the long-held assumptions established by the American historian Robert Donya. Similarly, he is critical of Marko Hoare’s interpretation of the Bosnian Muslims’ Second World War political choices, and the nature of Alija Izetbegović’s Islamic Declaration argued by Noel Malcolm. There was nothing linear in the process, as many Bosniak nationalists would like to present it, and many foreign observers trying to make sense of it would accept as an easy explanation. Similarly, frequently shifting national allegiances by Bosniak/Muslim leaders, according to Bougarel, did not occur out of opportunism but can be explained within his framework of national indifference and religious identity. Similarly, demands for the autonomy of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not testament to proto-nationalism but a search for a direct...