Religion and Nationhood in the Balkans

Abstract

In the Balkans, religion seems to have played a much more important role in the process of nation building than language. Speakers of Serbo-Croat fell apart in three national communities on the basis of religion. Thus emerged the Bosniak nation, which identifies itself with Islam and clearly distinguishes itself from the Catholic Croats and the Orthodox Serbs. The establishment of the national states in the Balkans was accompanied, from the beginning of the 19th century, by attempts to restore the pre-Ottoman Christian states. The population was ethnically homogenized by expelling ethnic and religious minorities or by forcibly assimilating them. In particular the Muslims in the Balkans, and especially the Muslim Turks, fell victim to this policy.