The Bosnian Muslims have only fairly recently become internationally identified as a national group. As a matter of fact, Bosnia and Herzegovina itself has had until lately a low recognition value to most people not living in southeastern Europe. Indeed, to many it has become a shock to discover that a fairly large group of Muslims resides in the middle of Europe, not to mention that they have become the object of ethnonationalistic violence at the end of the twentieth century. A further seeming incongruity in the international arena is the claim by many Bosnian Muslims that they should not be confused with Muslims of the Arab-speaking world, since Bosnian Muslims are indigenous Serbo-Croatian-speaking (now Bosnian-speaking) Slavic people, just like the Serbs or Croats who have committed the recent acts of violence against them in the name of ethnic purity. The Bosnian Muslim claim that the designation “Muslim” is more a national than a religious identification is confusing to the world at large. This article will trace the formation of the Bosnian Muslim national identification and set forth the issues faced by the Bosnian Muslims in their attempts to claim and defend it.
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Francine Friedman (2000) studied this question.