Beyond Mosque, Church, and State. Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans

The Balkan peninsula, throughout its history, has been characterised by its plethora of nations, religions, and well-established stereotypes about the ‘other’. The mix of cultures that has imprinted daily life can be held at least partly responsible for the enhanced ambiguity in the definition of what a nation is. The collective volume under scrutiny here originates in a conference at Ohio State University in 2011, which addressed these issues of ambiguity and crossovers. Divided into two parts, Beyond Mosque, Church, and State. Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans consists of an introduction and eleven chapters, focusing on what the editors put forth as the volume’s aim: to define the nation through alternative narratives. The first part refers to ‘historic dilemmas’, and the second to ‘contemporary debates’. The result is a very valid volume that addresses a broad group of readers.

In the introduction, editors Theodora Dragostinova and Yana Hashamova, among other aspects emphasise the role of Muslim communities under the Ottoman domination, thereby heralding the topics of the following chapters. Nikolay Antov, in the subsequent chapter (‘Emergence and Historical Development of Muslim Communities in the Ottoman Balkans. Turcoman Colonization, Conversion to Islam, and the ‘Indigenization of Islam’ in the Balkan Peninsula (late 14^th-18^th centuries). Historiographical and Historical Remarks’), captures how these communities have gained a primary place in the imaginary of the Balkan societies, being the protagonists in what Antov calls the ‘martyrium myth cluster’ (34). In the second chapter, Ipek Yosmaoglu reiterates the relationship between Ottoman historiography and the history of nationalism in the Balkans (‘From Exorcism to Historicism. Ottoman Historiography and the History of Nationalism in the Balkans’).

The following three chapters engage in case studies of a somewhat smaller scale. In the third chapter, Edin Hajdarpacic looks at how nation and empire were defined by the press in Bosnia, during both the Ottoman and Habsburg periods (‘Patriotic Publics. Rethinking Empire, Nationality, and the Popular Press in Ottoman and Habsburg Bosnia’). The use of Bulgarian national identity for political purposes is at the heart of Theodora Dragostinova’s research (‘In Search of the Bulgarians: Mapping the Nation through National Classifications’). Brenna Miller covers the significance of national identity in the creation of the Bosnian Muslim nation in Tito’s Yugoslavia (‘From Religious Community to Nation: The Official Recognition of a Bosnian Muslim Nation in Tito’s Yugoslavia’). The first part of the volume ends with Irina Gigova’s study of cultural politics and the role of the intelligentsia during Todor Zhivkov’s last years of government in Bulgaria (‘Negotiating National and Cosmopolitan Impulses: Intellectuals and Cultural Politics in Zhivkov’s Bulgaria’).

The second part of the volume explores contemporary cultural and political aspects of identity building in the Balkans. Victor A. Friedman highlights the importance of religion and language in the construction of national identities in Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Bulgaria (‘E mos shikjoni kish e xhamija (And Look not to Church and Mosque). How Albania and Macedonia Illuminate Bosnia and Bulgaria’), illustrating what he found to be an inversely proportional relationship of religion with politics and national identity: the more critical religion’s place is in daily life, the more difficult it is for Muslim communities to build up a national identity. Yana Hashamova, in the next chapter, discusses the situation of women in the context of nation-building and religion, during the last two decades (‘Women between State and Mosque: Compliance or Agency?’). She focuses on Bulgarian and Bosnian Muslim women and how they were affected by the ethnic and religious clashes during the last period of Zhivkov’s regime in Bulgaria and during the Bosnian War of 1992 to 1995.

Gigova’s study of cultural politics during the Zhivkov era is taken into postsocialist Bulgaria by Donna A. Buchanan’s research on choreography and music (‘Beyond Nation? A Thrice-Told Tale from Bulgaria’s Postsocialist Soundstage’). She focuses on how a member state of the European Union, i. e. Bulgaria, has attempted reconstructing its national identity in the cultural realm by balancing its past and its future. Maria Popova’s chapter on the rise of the radical nationalist party ATAKA explains the party’s electoral support by previous counter-arguing interpretations (‘Who brought Ataka to the political scene? Analysis of the vote for Bulgaria’s radical nationalists’). According to Popova, anti-minority sentiments cannot explain the party’s electoral success. ATAKA has been bolstered by voters’ growing dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties, she concludes, rather than by a radicalisation of Bulgarian society ‘as such’. The volume concludes with an illustration of different ethnonational and local identities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The peculiarity of Paula M. Pickering’s chapter (‘Local governance in Bosnia: Addressing Ethno-nationally and Locally Defined Interests?’) lies in its hypothesis that ‘less powerful political institutions, those at the municipal level […], could encourage policies that improve the lives of all citizens’ (305), no matter to which ethnonational group they might belong. She pins her assessment against the background of the special nature of the Bosnian state, which has come to receive a kind of ‘automated support’ from the West in the 20 some years since its existence.

To sum up, the chapters in this volume vividly show how important intellectuals and other elites have always been, since the formative stages of nation-building and until today. The authors take the reader along the path that connects the Muslim and Christian communities in the Balkans since the late Ottoman Empire to their integration—or their desire to integrate—into the EU. What becomes obvious is how prejudices and stereotypes have always had a significant influence on the shape of a nation’s policies.

While focusing on the Balkans, the multiple methodological approaches applied in this volume beg for a continuation of research on a wider geographical scale. Also elsewhere, it is important to understand the mobility of elites inside society, and how they transform policies and, thereby, a nation’s identity. The elites described in this volume can very well be seen in parallel to the EU’s elites today, offering the reader a chance to understand the way these might work.

To be sure, as much as the volume enriches current research perspectives, its emphasis is on Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina, giving a thorough understanding of the national identity processes in these two countries only. So even with regard to what the book’s title has as ‘the Balkans’, its actual empirical base is much smaller than even this region.

In conclusion, this is a fascinating volume, which invites more research with regard to wider Southeastern Europe, and even further. Through an enhanced interaction of sociological approaches and the systematic study of the historical archives our understanding of the precommunist, communist, and postcommunist periods can be improved further. Only in this way, it seems, prejudices and other ‘ghosts’ of national(ist) strive can be finally defeated.