Muslims by nationality
Muslims by nationality was a term used in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to describe people who spoke Serbo-Croatian language and professed Islam that weren't identified as one of the other nations. Albanians and other non-Slavic Muslims were not part of this group.
The Constitution of SFRY recognized narodi (nations—native peoples which were explicitely named in the Constitution, giving them special privileges) and narodnosti (nationalities—minorities, with similar legal status to that of immigrants). In a debate led during 1960s, many Muslim Communist intellectuals argued that Muslims of SFRY are infact a native Slavic people. As a compromise, the Constitution was ammended in 1968 to list Muslims by nationality. Sometimes other terms, such as Muslim with capital M were used (that is, "musliman" was a practicing Muslim while "Musliman" was a member of this nation; Serbo-Croatian uses capital letters for names of peoples but small for names of adherents).
After the 1990s, most of these people, around two million, mostly located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, declare as ethnic Bosniaks (Bošnjaci, sing. Bošnjak), which is a word which was used to mean "Bosnians".
On the other hand, many still use the old name Muslimani (Muslims), especially outside Bosnia and Herzegovina:
- In Serbia and Montenegro:
- In the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the census of 2002 registered some 17,000 Bosniaks and the number of Muslims by nationality was much less than that. It is also important to note that most members of Pomaks and Torbesh ethnicities also declared as Muslims by nationality prior to 1990.
- The Croatian Slavic Muslim community, per census 2001, is divided between around 20,000 people who still declare themselves as Muslims by nationality, around 20,000 who accepted the Bosniak designation, and around 10,000 who declare themselves Croats of Islamic faith.
- Muslims of Slovenia, around 20,000 of them, no longer declare as Muslims by nationality but as Bosniaks.
See also
