Suchergebnisse

The paper presents a sociological research of key characteristics, theoretical assumptions and strategic interests of Bosniak politics, which, in a diachronically very limited time, faced complex challenges of preserving its own ethnic identity and simultaneous efforts to strengthen the state role and its political prerogatives. Such challenges generate existential dilemmas about the possible loss of one's own ethnic substance through a process of interference with the identity of the state and its interests. The research is largely focused on the contingent issue of the nation, which is very sensitive in the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina and has the potential to ideologically divide the political spectrum into two completely different concepts (civic and ethnic). The Bosniak connection with Bosnia and the tendency towards a modern Bosnian nation-state that will overcome ethnic differences, divisions and conflicts is becoming a vital political context in which Bosniaks fill the empty space between the state and the nation. Sociological analysis critically investigates the whole process, objectively pointing out some of the mistakes that Bosniak politics has made or can make. The research showed that the Bosnian nation as a political fact does not exist in full capacity because it is burdened by the conflict of Bosniak insistence and, consequently, Serbo-Croat rejection. This fact has its functional repercussions on political perceptions of the status and future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which for Bosniaks is not just an administrative space or a political agreement of ethnic groups, but above all a homeland. With the intention of more precise analytical research, the paper is based on a qualitative methodological approach and in addition to the usual research methods such as content analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction, generalization and comparison, the research-based interview method was also employed.

This paper puts forward the question of the correlation between the religiosity of Bosniaks and their identity, which has gone through numerous phases through the centuries-long process of evolution of ethnonational collective consciousness and very often reflexively influenced the content and manifestation of the phenomenon of religiosity. From a contemporary sociological perspective, through methodologically based research, it was necessary to redefine the phenomenon of the religiosity of Bosniaks and determine its real impact on identity construction. During the research, it was determined that Islam is not a key and dominant identity basis for Bosniaks, but is selectively accepted through the traditional aspect, subjected to the process of adaptation, and used (instrumentalized) only as a cohesive and identifying tool, provided Bosniaks with the substratum of collectivity and crucial specificity of their identity.

The focal point of this paper stands on the polyvalent nature of secularity which is detected through its various forms and practical application as well as through ideological instrumentalization resulting in extreme derivatives. There is the specific influence of secular ideas and practices on the Bosniak social context, which has been marked during historical development by different phases of the relationship between religion and the state, dating back from the middle of the 20th century consequently leading to highly difficult and complex changes within the Bosniak existence. These changes were primarily aimed at a completely new perception of the notion itself and a considerably decreased application of religious standards. Those standards have been sustained under the pressure of secular moralities hence transformed into the pattern that has transitioned to antidotes briefly described by the phrase "fluctuating religiosity".It was these compromise solutions that enabled the "soft" transformation of Islamic legal norms into religious-moral norms (as a milder and more acceptable form of normative determination). This conversion of the Islamic spirit, practice, and worldviews of Bosniaks retain the amassing consequences on a significant contingent of identity categories. The whole process is being critically assessed through sociological analysis in this paper. Taking into account the Bosniak path through modernity, which begins in the late 19th century; secularization represented a serious Rubicon that needed to be bridged, and within the framework of new understandings of religiosity to build a necessary and adequate frame for the preservation of religious and ethnonational identity. On the example of Bosniak practice, which has found a middle ground between nominally irreconcilable secular laws and religious imperatives, a general conclusion can be drawn about the existence of a probable sociological model of harmonization of different antagonisms in the relationship between the state and religion that affirm ideas such as separation with cooperation, overlapping consensus or neutrality with respect, guaranteeing fundamental freedoms and human rights and within them; inter alia, the preservation of religious sovereignty, identity and practice, which opens the door to convergent perspectives in a global context.