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The Islamic Community in Croatia: Between Ethnic Bosniak and Civic Croatian Identity

The Islamic Community in Croatia (ICC) is generally seen as an internally stable religious organization that enjoys very good relations with the state. However, its complex ethnic background and the historical context of its formation during the twentieth century have resulted in the emergence of different visions of the ICC, and since 2012 have led to internal tensions that are generally unknown to the public. The author points out two contemporary views of this organization: one seeing the ICC as part of an international Bosniak Islamic network led by the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ICBH), the other stressing that the ICC’s principal goal should be identification with the broader Croatian society. To explain the genesis of this division, the author analyzes the makeup of the ethnic identity of Croatian Muslims, the organizational development of Islamic life in modern Croatia, and, in particular, the historical and demographic relations of Croatian Muslims with Bosnia and other parts of former Yugoslavia. The division has emerged as a product of several additional sociopolitical factors, such as the specific historical connections between Croatian Muslims and modern Croatian nationalism, the appearance of a Muslim and later a Bosniak ethnic category, the disintegration of the formerly unified Islamic Community of Yugoslavia (ICY), and the 1991– 1995 wars in former Yugoslavia.

Croatia, Islam, Islamic Community in Croatia, identity, history

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