still not every Christian remained as such and some europeans converted bosnia is a perfect example of this curious circumstance this video is sponsored by kamikoto a japanese steel knife brand steel making has been at the beating heart of honshu japan’s largest island for more than eight centuries from traditional techniques with its distinctive layered patterns to iron processing sword.

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around the world kamikoto is currently having their black friday offer and on top of this they are offering our viewers an extra fifty dollars off with the discount code in elegia so use my link in the description or go to kamikoto.com for the extra fifty dollars on top of their black friday sale bosnia and herzegovina is a country in the balkans tucked neatly between croatia serbia and montenegro and essentially surrounded by roman catholics and eastern orthodox christians within bosnian borders.

roughly half of the population is muslim orthodox christianity makes up around 31 percent of the population followed by roman catholics at 15 percent but with so much christian influence from all around why does bosnia still have so many muslims the islamization of bosnia can actually be traced back to before the first entry of the ottoman empire although islam was yet to be introduced to the area bosnia was not quite as Christian.

as any of its neighbors had been and this made it much more open to welcoming a new faith back when the christians began to send missions throughout the balkans in the 9th century bosnia appears to have been a bit neglected during the process at first the sea of rome and the sea of constantinople tried to divide the balkans between each side’s sphere of influence but once the great schism occurred.

in 1054 the presence of catholicism and orthodoxy became more clear-cut and split with the catholics dominating croatia and the orthodox doing the same in serbia the intention was to nominally leave bosnia to the roman catholics but the faith never really had strong enough roots to make the bosnians loyal to the western church and since the eastern church hadn’t tried much either the region ended up being a weird echo of the neighboring faith.

the orthodox church did eventually get a bit of a foothold but the catholics were no longer their only competition by now an unofficial bosnian church had been established that would eventually become fully independent of both east and west and for now began to encroach upon the catholic influence in the center north and west of bosnia this quickly became a problem for rome.

in 1199 the neighboring ruler vukon wrote a letter to pope innocent iii expressing his concerns for what he viewed as a heretical church and people including the bosnian leader kulin himself accusations began to mount against the ruler over the next couple of years as multiple authoritarian figures including the king of hungary himself.

joined the wave of critics kulin soon tried to quell the brewing tensions by reaffirming his loyalty to the catholic faith and practice but not much was done back in the bosnian church to prove that after kulin’s death in 1216 romans sent a new mission into bosnia to try and reconvert the locals but their preaching fell on deaf ears angered by this and backed by the Hungarians.

who were eager to expand their own authority into bosnia the new pope pope pinourius iii called for a hungarian crusade into bosnia as a punishment for what the west still deemed as heresy between 1225 and 1250 multiple crusades would be attempted and shut down by the bosnians while pope gregory ix ousted the catholic bishop of bosnia.

in 1234 for being a supposed heretic in 1252 now under pope innocent iv rome tried to place the bishop of bosnia under the hand of the hungarians which swiftly prompted angered refusal from the locals many bosnians now denounced catholicism and solidified the existence of the independent bosnian church this predictably created even more conflict between rome and bosnia.

which would continue on and off for some time during this era the bosnians became targets of both the western and eastern churches and many were persecuted by the surrounding faiths which viewed them as heretical this created a situation unlike what could be found in the rest of the balkans in bosnia neither rome nor constantinople could be trusted and that meant that for many neither could the faiths this left the bosnian church.

as the only reliable option but the church was still young and with a stained reputation the ottoman turks began their conquest of bosnia in the 1380s and took the first step in introducing islam to the region still just as they had done when the hungarians launched their crusade the bosnians fought valiantly against their invaders their disloyalty to the authority.

The Bosnia become 50% Muslim

in rome and constantinople may have affected the religious life of bosnia but it surely didn’t mean that the locals were open to being conquered subsequently the ottoman campaign lasted for decades as the bosnians simply refused to give in by 1451 the turks were able to set up a military administrative unit but it wouldn’t be until 1460.

that the kingdom of bosnia would really fall into ottoman hands at first this successful conquest was not an automatic trigger for bosnians converting to islam one of the reasons why the ottoman empire had been able to expand as much as it did was because of its ethnic and religious tolerance which would therefore be put into place in capture bosnia as well there was not a mass conversion executed by force or anything of the like but nonetheless.

there would quickly be incentives established for those bosnians who wish to do so as was typical in ottoman vassal states christians were allowed to remain christian but they faced restrictions and risks that muslims did not there were some extreme examples such as with the janissaries but in general these instances could be found in policies relating to taxation and privileges that typically demoted christians to second class citizens trading rights the ability to participate.

in politics and other freedoms were stripped from non-muslims under ottoman rule which worked well to incentivize their subjects to convert this tactic was successful to an even higher degree in bosnia as well likely due to the pre existing circumstances surrounding bosnian christians as the ottomans continued to consolidate their power in the former kingdom more and more bosnians began to stray away from not only the catholic and orthodox churches.

but even the bosnian church the lack of any strong loyalty to one specific faith made it a lot easier for the bosnians to be convinced while some made the change more for the environmental benefits others actually found more appeal in this new faith than they had seen in that of the deceitful rome or overbearing constantinople and even their own local church.

as a result there was a gradual shift towards islam throughout bosnia over the next few centuries as the ottomans remained in control it’s estimated that roughly two-thirds of bosnia were muslim by the start of the 17th century and the influence of islam would remain until the bosnian uprising in 1831 ousted their ottoman conquerors while the exact percentage of muslims in bosnia may have shifted after the turks departed a peculiar thing happened no one tried to re-christianize the bosnians even when the austro-hungarians annexed bosnia.

in the early 20th century everyone had more or less given up on the whole mission and conversion ordeal and when the december constitution solidified bosnian freedom of religion that was essentially the end of that bosnia’s muslim population was there to stay to recap the reason why bosnia is seen as a muslim nation and does in fact have a large muslim population is mostly due to the ottoman era but also connected to the relationship that the nation shared with the christian east and west being labeled.

as heretics by both sides of your faith would be greatly dissuading and it’s not easy to start your own church the people of bosnia learned these lessons first hand throughout history this left the nation much more open to the concept of considering or even converting to a new religion and when you add to that the option of gaining back your rights and freedoms as a class citizen it doesn’t seem surprising at all that islam became the leading influence in ottoman bosnia.

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the presence of division and discord between the different ethnic groups within the borders of yugoslavia had existed for a long while this was not by any means a new development within the years before the collapse of the federation but the matter did worsen following world war ii previously yugoslavia had actually been the kingdom of yugoslavia this kingdom was then transformed temporarily into the democratic federal yugoslavia and shortly after the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia before the expansion of republics and particular ethnic groups within yugoslavia.

there was already significant disunity between the serbs and other ethnic categories which served as a shaky foundation from the start while nationalism was a raging problem within the federation from day one there was a short stint of partial harmony thanks to president joseph rose tito tito was a wonderful promoter of unity and brotherhood and his efforts to curb the dangerous nationalism within his federation was impressively effective for some time moreover during tito’s term.

as president yugoslavia became a regionally powerful nation industrially and had a well economy it appeared that the troubles of yugoslavia were a thing of the past until yosep tito died leading up to the president’s death the growing economy had begun to show favor to only some regions within the federation and though tito supported brotherhood it appeared he may have gone too far to support the individual republic’s right to national self-determination the end of tito’s administration also came around.

the time of economic trouble for the federation as a whole yugoslavia was now heavily in debt after the 1973 oil crisis and trade barrier complications with the west which quickly reversed the success that the federation’s economy had originally achieved this also exacerbated the ethnic divisions most notably between the south of the federation which was viewed as vastly unproductive and undeveloped and the entities of slovenia and croatia with these new challenges and the death of the president who had worked hard to create unity within the federation the ethnic divide was now the center point of yugoslavia.

one of the main causes of this was the fact that each republic failed to split along ethnic lines meaning that there were different groups within each border and oftentimes each ethnic group was quite nationalistic furthermore there was also the creation of two autonomous provinces within serbia itself known as kosovo and voy vedina that complicated matters even more when protests broke out in the late 1980s as ethnic serbs throughout serbia and the autonomous provinces tried to fight back against particularly.

the albanian majority of kosovo the thought was that serbia’s communist leader slobodan milosevic would react by creating some type of unity instead he justified the serb’s outrage directed at the albanians and began to push for reduced autonomy of both kosovo and voivodina eventually after a series of protests known as the rallies of truth supporters of milosevic managed to oust the governments in both autonomous provinces which then cleared the way for the allies of milosevic to be put into their places.

the leadership of montenegro was also deposed in 1989 after a second coup d’etat and there too was placed a supporter of the former ruler this was only the beginning of the conflict between the serbs and the albanians croatia and slovenia were now joining the kosovo dispute coming to the support of the albanian majority which greatly angered the serbs protests continued to be held and both police and military forces were called in to deal with what the serbs viewed.

The Yugoslavia Collapse

as an attack against serbia and yugoslavia as a whole mostly in reaction to kosovo’s calls to become the seventh republic within the federation one bosnian politician and current president of yugoslavia reif dysdarovich tried to calm the tensions in 1989 with a heartfelt speech to the serbian protesters our fathers died to create yugoslavia we will not go down the road to national conflict we will take the path of brotherhood and unity he said though the protesters reacted to his speech positively it failed to end the protests likely given the facts that the serbs saw the actions of the kosovo albanians as the root of this national conflict.

the lines were now clear it was the serbs against the albanians croats slovenes and even the leaders of bosnia and herzegovina the conflict was nowhere near over as the bickering republics aimed to resolve the disputes politically the divide only seemed to widen and yugoslavia was forced into a multi-party system across all six republics this was a major blow to the communists in the federation as most of them were beaten by the end of the 1990 elections the fall of communism coincided with the same decline throughout.

the soviet union and its other allies and pushed the nationalistic identity within the yugoslav federation even further this sparked even more ethnic tension because there were minorities within each republic such as the 12.2 percent of serbs in croatia that were suddenly being threatened by their homes oppositions to their ethnic identity in this specific instance the new croatian leader franjo tudman claimed that he would protect the croatian people from milosevic and the serbian threat which created backlash from the ethnic serbs.

in croatia these serbs established a new separatist organization in which they demanded to be reunified with serbia in the case of croatian secession from the federation this soon triggered what was nicknamed the log revolution where serbs in croatia attempted to take control of the serbian majority town of kin and appealed to the federal military for support when croatian helicopters filled with the armed special forces were sent in to quell the revolt the yugoslav air force decided to intervene and ordered.

the croatian helicopters to turn back and stay away from kin or else they would be shot down the croatians followed the command and returned to their base in zagreb as tensions continued to boil over a period known as the yugoslav wars broke out in 1991 throughout the federation yugoslavia was now doomed and the efforts that had been made by dominant serbia and any other supporters of the union were now appearing to be completely in vain in june of that same year croatia officially declared their independence despite disapproval from other republics.

this independence was delayed by three months through the brie juni agreement but was nonetheless imminent macedonia declared independence in september of the same year on january 9 1992 the republic of serbian people of bosnia and herzegovina was founded and bosnia and herzegovina as a whole declared independence on march the 3rd the serbian republic within was to follow after which points they laid siege to the bosnian capital of sarajevo sparking a new stretch of the yugoslav wars.

all that was now left of the once six republic strong federation was serbia and montenegro yugoslavia was rapidly dissolving and there was no hope for recovery in addition to the ethnic disputes and now full-blown wars the effects of communism collapsing and the struggling yugoslav economy had also contributed to the decay of the federation still no factor seemed quite as obvious nor relevant as the ethnic divide this is what led to the utter chaos within the dying union and what would eventually cause the official dissolution of yugoslavia.

now only made up of serbia and montenegro on february 4th 2003 the federation transformed into the state union of serbia and montenegro which was no more successful or stable than its predecessor and itself broke up on june 3rd 2006. as far as the conflict with kosovo its autonomy and status as an independent nation continues to be debated throughout the world many countries.

such as the united states do recognize kosovo as its own nation but serbia and its close allies beg to differ a sign that the ethnic conflict sadly did not disappear with the dissolution of yugoslavia itself each individual nation had its own strong national identity and the inability to properly place border lines to separate each ethnic groups proved to be an untameable issue for all of yugoslavia in the former yugoslavia croatian and serbian were considered one language also called serbo-croatian and serbo-croat today.

largely because of the connection between language and national identity there has been an effort to have serbian and croatian recognized as separate languages there are certain differences between the two languages in vocabulary grammar and pronunciation moreover they have separate writing systems serbian uses both the cyrillic and the roman alphabets while croatian uses the roman alphabet exclusively.

the two languages remain mutually intelligible with only minor dialectal variation for that reason some linguists refer to the two languages together with bosnian under the single name of bosnian croatian serbian while the economic and political challenges that the federation faced were clear exacerbating forces pushing towards a final collapse it was truly the ethnic division and the lack of brotherhood that destroyed yugoslavia from the inside out you.

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