ABSTRACT: Islam in the Balkans represents the most important imperial legacy of the Ottoman Empire. Among Muslims, unlike Christians, there is a noticeable delay in building a national identity. The first significant forms of the formation of common ethnic consciousness and nationalization followed in contact with the administration of Christian countries. The aforementioned logic was also followed by the small Muslim community in southwestern Serbia. At the very beginning, that identity was characterized by the practice of the religion and religious principles of Islam, as well as the protection of its heritage, so that in a later period of time, due to secularization, that identity took on the character of emphasizing cultural heritage, customs and patterns of behavior created in the previous period. The paper presents and analyzes the process of development and formation of the ethno-national consciousness of the Muslims of southwestern Serbia through a longue durée.

KEYWORDS: modernity, ethnicity, nationality, Muslims, Bosniaks, Sandžak, Raška area

SUMMARY: The paper presents and analyzes the process of development and formation of the ethno-national consciousness of the Muslims of southwestern Serbia through a longue durée. Islam in the Balkans represents the most significant imperial legacy of the Ottoman Empire. The emergence of Islam in southwestern Serbia started the process of ethnic differentiation. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslims of southwestern Serbia found themselves under the rule of Christian Serbia, and then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia). The institutional framework of the kingdom enabled the preservation, further strengthening, and development of the specific identity of local Muslims. In this sense, awareness was built of the need to preserve Islam, attachment to these areas, and “Serbs as Other” in their of identity. This created the initial outlines of a collective identity that, due to a common destiny and historical experience, was strengthened during World War II. The institutional framework of socialist Yugoslavia enabled the further maturation of identity. Secularization, as a consequence of Marxist ideology, played a significant role in the identity growing from a religious to a national group. The fluidity present in national identity until the early 1980s was overcome. The key transformation in ethno-national identity occurred in the 1990s. National consciousness was built on the premise of denying one’s Serbian origin, emphasizing and exaggerating one’s disenfranchisement, both from the state and the communist party, and suffering in previous wars. The connection with Bosnian and Herzegovinian Muslims was expressed in the change of the national name to Bosniak. By the 2002 census, the national name Bosniak was almost completely accepted. Today, Bosniaks are integrated into the state institutions of the Republic of Serbia. They express their identity freely, emphasized, and without problems.