Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Between 1880 and 1912 Austrian Empire issued several legal Acts regarding the terms by which the Muslims of the newly adjunct territories in Bosnia and Herzegovina were to settle their religious and community-related affairs within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These Acts laid fundaments for the establishment of the first autonomous Islamic religious institutions in the Austrian Empire. The present article argues that institutions established during that time remained the most conspicuous legacy of the Austrian juristic regulation of Islamic affairs, not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina but in all successor states of the former Yugoslavia as well as in present time Austria itself.

The disintegration of the former Yugoslavia posed challenges for the universal concept of the Yugoslav Muslim nation for which several development paths were imaginable under the new circumstances. The concept of Bosniakdom, which was initially developed to address the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina, gradually grew to become a new and coherent national program to include all the Muslims of former Yugoslavia, primarily due to its new pan-Bosniak orientation. The present article traces the conceptual history of the national ideas of Muslimdom versus Bosniakdom within the former Yugoslav states, as well as the conceptual and institutional history of the pan-Bosniak idea and movement during the 1990s and 2000s. It does this by emphasizing the decisive role the Official Muslim Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina played in their development and divulgence. This article claims that, contrary to some expectations, the strategy of internationalization and universalization of the hitherto territorial concept of Bosniakdom toward Muslims in neighboring countries during the second half of 1990s and 2000s was closely linked to the idea of the construction of the Bosniak national state. It also proposes that the evolution of Bosniakdom into pan-Bosniakdom during that time primarily followed concerns related to that goal.

In the last ten years political Islam, as well as its aims and strategies, has developed into one of the most discussed political issues in Europe. Nevertheless scant attention has been paid to the concrete theoretical concepts lying behind the different political strategies of Islamist groups in Europe. This article intends to offer an insight into the different concepts of state and society defined by the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most influential organizations of political Islam in Europe. The focus of the analysis is on those concepts that have been developed in and for Europe, as well as their relationship to different European discourses concerning the ideas of accommodation of religious practices and identities within the framework of the European secular states. In short, it offers an analysis of state-theoretical concepts of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe as developed in the last ten years and their relationship with the dominant European discourses over state, civil society and democracy.

Belief in market economy has shown particular strength in post-socialist countries as being accompanied by great expectations regarding economic improvements at the individual level. Twenty years after the fall of the, so-called, real existing socialism these hopes have been fawned for the great majority of the citizens of these countries. The equation offered to explain the tendential low of individual living standard despite of increasing GDP, the access to European integrations and the implementation of structural reforms in the first decade of 2000s has been that the transition towards market economy has not yet been completed and that the problems with the wider prosperity of the citizens are due to inadequate or too slow course of the reform enforcement. This article proposes the exact opposite view by arguing that the wide economic deprivation of the citizens as well as the current economic crisis in which they are caught, are the effects of the neoliberal re-structuration and concomitant "democratization", and not the result of the lack of compliance to it. This article holds that the economic prosperity for the great majority is not compatible with the project of neoliberal economy cum conservative liberal democracy and that it can not be achieved within this frame. In post-socialist countries this simple conclusion has been obscured by the eschatological discourse about "transition towards democracy". Adapted from the source document.