Attitudes to Islam and Muslims in the Christian Balkans

Anscombe, Frederick F.

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-16266-4_3

Frederick F. Anscombe⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism ((PCSAR))

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Abstract

Southeastern Europe has a reputation for hostility to Islam and Muslims that periodically gains confirmation from events such as the wars of Yugoslavia’s disintegration and more recent rejection of refugees from Middle Eastern conflicts. Antagonism to Islam is usually assumed to be a legacy of oppression suffered by Christian peoples while the region formed part of the Ottoman Empire, but that belief has become little more than a truism repeated without consideration. It is grounded in a national or regional perspective that offers little meaningful insight into the Ottoman past, because throughout the Ottoman period the local context determined lived experience. Ottoman records attest to local communities built upon cross-confessional social and cultural ties. Non-Ottoman Europe, however, believed in the impossibility of cross-confessional coexistence, and this belief guided nation-building efforts in the early post-Ottoman period. The countries of the modern Balkans were created by the Great Powers of Europe, and their influence continued as their protégés assumed positions of political and cultural leadership. Nation-builders hoped to assert that their new countries, once part of Turkey-in-Europe, must be accepted as part of Europe. A mythic belief in the impossibility of coexistence harks back to anti-Muslim images of western Europe’s Romantic age that were woven into the nation-building historiography of countries such as Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria. Hostility to Islam and Muslims originated in a political program whose effects still reverberate today.

I thank David Feldman, Marc Volovici and Molly Greene for comments on drafts of this chapter.

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Notes

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12.
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13.
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17.
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19.
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20.
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38.
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39.
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45.
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46.
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48.
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Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
Frederick F. Anscombe

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Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
David Feldman
Department of Jewish History, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Marc Volovici

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Anscombe, F.F. (2023). Attitudes to Islam and Muslims in the Christian Balkans. In: Feldman, D., Volovici, M. (eds) Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16266-4_3

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