MUSLIM MINORITIES
Muslims in East Europe: Challenge of Re-Islamization
George Lederer in Islamic Horizon, USA
The forebears of today's Balkan Muslims were either Turks, who settled there during the Ottoman rule, Albanians or Slavs who embraced Islam in the same period.
Turks and their religion were not separate notions in the minds of the Orthodox Christian Balkan peoples. They tended to hate both. Their 19th century nationalisms were markedly anti-Turkish, thus anti-Islamic. Their historians still blame the Ottomans for their countries" backwardness. At the turn of the century, even the predominantly Muslim Albanian intelligentsia distanced themselves from the Turks and any "non-European" tradition and ideology.
Ethnic and religious minorities, including Muslims, became the primary victims of the authoritarian nationalistic regimes of the region in the post-Ottoman era before and after First World War. The situation worsened considerably in the. Communist (regions) following the Second World War. Religious life and institutions were destroyed and banned in Albania. They were harshly repressed for their Turkish character in Bulgaria and also heavily controlled by the party-state's police as they also were in Romania. Ironically, Yugoslavia was the only socialist country where Muslims were more or less free to practice their creed and keep their mosques, schools and other religious institutions as well as their contacts with the Islamic world. Unlike their fellow-Muslims in the Soviet camp where material conditions were also much more difficult, they were allowed to travel, study and work abroad. The Serbian persecution of Kosovars, from the early 1980s, had an anti-Albanian rather than anti-Islamic motive. In 1983, the trial of Dr. Alija Izetbegovic (who was elected the President of Bosnia upon independence) showed nevertheless the limits of post-Titoist tolerance; appreciation and support for apolitical and subservient religious leaders; 14 years of jail for principled and consequent Islamic reasoning.
The U.S. Congress has been practically alone in the western world to oppose the arms embargo on Bosnia and to condemn, for other reasons, the U.N. bureaucracy which encouraged the Serbian genocide.
This is not at all to say that Balkan Muslims do not consider themselves "European". This term designates a peculiar civilization which is often hostile to Islam in the western part of the continent. It also means that religion is a private matter in a secular state. Very few East European Muslims question this basic principle. They, or at least many of their intellectuals and opinion-leaders are westernized, secular and deeply committed to their countries' integration into Western Europe. Due to their prolonged isolation from the mainstream Islamic world, their assimilation to their non-Islamic environment, and particularly Communist terror and education, these communities have lost most of their Muslim traditions and belief. It might be often more appropriate to call them people of Muslim origin.
Since the end of totalitarianism the Turks and Tatars of Bulgaria and Romania in quest of their Islamic and national identity and roots may receive assistance from religious foundations of increasingly Muslim Turkey as to millions in the former Soviet Union. Common ethnicity and heritage make this support affective and effective. International Islamic organizations are also able to help the impoverished new mosques and schools.
A number of young Muslims, mostly Arabs, have volunteered to teach Islam in Eastern Europe. These da'wah missions are often financed by Saudi-sponsored agencies which publish brochures and booklets by scholars like Abul Aala Maududi and Syed Qutb. Many of these publications are not always well-translated and often anti-secular and anti-western. The main problem is not whether this message is authentic (licentiousness, secularism, consumerism are often incompatible with Islam) but whether it is counterproductive. Such a message will hardly attract East Europeans who have been shaped by their own history, not that of the Middle East. No one reminisces the times when the Balkans were part of Dar ul-Islam.
Most Muslim "missionaries" seem to avoid the cumbersome task of studying the particularities of socialism and post-socialism in those countries. Their credibility is not increased by their sharp criticism of the West and the U.S. The anti-American arguments of a sizable part of the Islamic world sound irrelevant in East Europe which has been harmed neither by the U.S. nor by the (Israel). The latter was not an ally of the Soviet Union unlike yesterday's and today's "anti-imperialist". "revolutionary", "socialist" and nationalist Arab leaders whom many East Europeans identify with Islam, by ignorance.
The local Islamic teachers should explain to their fellow-Muslims and others what Islam can mean in that unstable part of the world but few are up to this difficult task.
(Source: The Islamic Horizons, March/April, 1996)
