It's About Bosniakness!

By: Senadin Lavić and Slaven Kovačević

The discourse on Bosniakness is the topic of all topics in Bosnia. This discourse is about Bosnia and what the existence of Bosnia entails. It is a discourse that epochally defines and separates Bosnia's past from its future. The discourse concerns politics, specifically state policy, and should not be reduced to the cultural-psychological level of ethnic and religious identity of individuals and groups! It operates with the concept of a nation as a community of equal citizens who belong to their state, and where the name of the state, as is the practice in the democratic world, actually defines the name of the nation. This nation does not speak of peoples or ethnic groups whose cultural markers constitute their identity in history, as these are, after all, completely different concepts.

In fact, modern political practice, that in democratic countries, clearly shows that a nation as a community of equal citizens, within its domain, includes various ethnic and religious identities, as an expression of the fundamental freedoms of precisely those equal citizens who constitute their nation. As an example, we can take Australia or America, where more than a hundred different ethnic groups (peoples) exist, but they are all part of the Australian or American nation.

Why is the discourse on Bosniakness being obstructed?

Ethnic and religious narratives are injected into this discourse, either out of ignorance or deliberate obstruction of everything Bosnian, with the aim of the total and definitive ethnic division of this country. Politicians, priests, academics, professors, known and unknown, experts and ignoramuses, various opportunists, speculators, anti-Bosnian forces, memorandum parrots... all get entangled in the discourse. They all pretend to care about the people and their well-being, but in reality, that same people are the subject of their manipulation and unlimited exploitation.

Some participants in the discussion about Bosniakness equate ethnicity and nationality, completely erasing the difference, which is very wrong in theoretical and practical terms. For them, Islam is the main determinant of Bosniaks, Catholicism for Croats, and Orthodoxy for Serbs, meaning their religious dimension is pushed to the forefront, while a multitude of other identity characteristics that are equally important are suppressed. For example, how they build houses, describe the world in linguistic forms, organize institutions, raise families, participate in scientific and cultural creativity, care for property or the environment, or how they relate to male and female persons within themselves, then how they relate to other ethnic groups (peoples), and so on. In a feudal worldview, religious consciousness and the position of man as a subject of some lord are constantly emphasized. This medieval order of consciousness prevents a leap into Modernity and its adoption.

Many speakers have a reductionist basis. They try to reduce a people to one all-encompassing dimension. Some, in the name of Bosniak, unite the religious, ethnic, and national, while others, in the name of Bosnian, try to unite the ethnic and national without emphasizing, but also without excluding, the religious.

Why do priests get involved in the discussion about the nation? Why do semi-literate politicians, identity traders, suspicious journalists, self-taught leaders, self-proclaimed leaders of "peoples," and similar demagogues talk about the nation without understanding the European idea of a nation based on Western democratic values? Why can't an awareness of the free citizen be developed? Is ethnicity so hypnotically and even opiate-like powerful for people, even though hypnosis and opiates render a person unconscious?

Anti-Bosnian militarists and instigators have used the opportunity to attack the reis-ul-ulema regarding his address to the faithful in Sapna at the ceremony of opening a mosque. Very aggressively and arrogantly, they recall old stories about "Serbian land" and belittle Bosnia. On the other hand, the reis-ul-ulema of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina fears that someone might confuse the Bosniak people. The media report his statement: "We are Bosniaks, not Bosnians." That statement is not precise! It is not accurate and does not relate to the structure of the historical situation. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a sovereign and independent state! But what the reis told us is much more serious. Is he implying between the lines that professors, doctors of science, or academics are not up to par with "the people," our "grandmothers and grandfathers"?

So, is the message that Bosniaks should not discuss everything and that there are established truths that everyone must adhere to? However, it should be emphasized that within religion, there can be established and unquestionable truths of faith, while in everyday life and social sciences, there can only be valid argumentation and a love for explaining phenomena. And nothing more! It is interesting for socio-scientific rationality how someone encourages Bosniaks to refuse to confront Modernity at the level of contemporary knowledge and thus engage with the world of life, rather than fleeing from it.

Finally, one must ask. Why shouldn't Bosniaks listen to professors and the academic community? Why should Bosniaks blindly listen to "priestly voices" in the Balkan night? Why shouldn't they admit that Bosniakness must follow a courageous BOSNIAN policy – and not just religious "declarations"? Where does this dangerous disregard for Bosnian intelligence in the 21st century come from? Who would try to "train" Bosnian and Bosniak intelligence again and remove it from the historical scene? The era of defeatism and passivity of the BOSNIAN mind and its suppression must end. The prerequisite for Bosnian identity is the development of humanistic and social scientific thought in Bosnia and Herzegovina!

So, here, it is about Bosniakness! Therefore, it must be emphasized, for clarity, that no one can take a name away from a people. Absolutely no one! Of course, it can be banned, just as the Austro-Hungarian authorities abolished and banned the Bosnian language by decree, introducing Serbo-Croatian in 1907. However, a state can be taken, occupied, divided, stolen. Bosniakness is a concrete issue concerning the Bosnian state, and it exposes the dangerous and "naive" Bosniak policy that has agreed to ethnic-religious negotiations and bargaining over the division of state territory into "tribal ghettos." No one in this world has the right to negotiate the division of Bosnia!

When the Bosnian-Herzegovinian nation is rejected or its existence is called into question, it is actually ignorance or a conscious refusal to accept a sovereign state. If it is about the conscious denial of the Bosnian state-nation, then the matter is quite clear, and it is a scenario of hegemonic rejection of Bosnia's existence. At the core of the imposed dispute over Bosniakness, therefore, it is about the rejection and non-recognition of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state or the sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Furthermore, if in the modern, Western-democratic world, to which we aspire by wanting to become a member of the European Union and NATO, citizens are the bearers of sovereignty in all countries, which is a lasting and unavoidable value, then in the case of the Bosnian nation, does someone want to reverse this into a narrative that ethnic groups (peoples) are the bearers of sovereignty, which would be very dangerous for the existence of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The following situation is noticeable. On the one hand, it is repetitively stated that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a "state of three peoples," which of course leaves room for manipulation that reveals a hidden agenda for ethno-territorialization and ethnic separation after all war crimes, horrors, and population expulsions. The idea of a civic society and state, which clearly states – Bosnia is the state of its citizens – stands superior to this position.

On the other hand, there are heralds of the ethno-religious conception of "nation" for whom "nation" is an extended biological (blood) community, a kinship group, a grown homogeneous tribe, who follow ethnic fundamentalism and thereby pretend to be "internationalists," social democrats, revolutionaries, post-communists, "socialist soviets," critics of nationalism (while being hidden national ridiculers), the European avant-garde, and similar deceptive forms. They, in addition to not knowing, present themselves as something they are not!

Of course, one can also speak of a third line of repetition that understands "nation" as a religious group and apriori defines the nation from religious differentiation. National identities have developed from religious communities and have become almost "sacred" and supernatural. In these regions, this process has been ongoing since the 19th century with the help of religious institutions and "epic-tribal" historians. The fraudsters of ethnopolitics and the lackeys of ethnocracy who profit very powerfully from ethnicism spread the rumor that someone wants to abolish these national identities and force them to accept some other identity. This is simply not true, because the multi-layered nature of everyone's identity has a part in which the nation encompasses all citizens of their country, who then, within their fundamental freedoms, as free citizens, have the opportunity to form, correct, or retain any other layer of their identity, be it religious, linguistic, or cultural, which no one can take away from them!

The most perfidious deception of ethnicism is the one that frightens citizens with the false claim that Bosniakness wants to abolish Bosniakness, Serbness, and Croatness. But that is not the meaning of Bosniakness as a national idea. Bosniakness does not want to abolish or devalue the national/ethnic identities of individuals and groups, because Bosniakness is not a national or ethnic ideology (a fourth ethnic group). No, not at all! Bosniakness is our civic relationship towards our own state and respect for the rule of law within it and the building of its institutional content. Bosniakness does not ask a citizen to renounce their cultural-psychological determinants and identities in which they are situated.

All of them – both Bosniak, Serbian, and Croatian ethno-experts – deliberately deny the distinction between people and nation as different forms of sociality. Their deviant form of consciousness lies in this.

But – there already exists a Bosnian-Herzegovinian nation, and it does not need to prove itself to anyone! The existence of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the world order of the United Nations clearly indicates the existence of a Bosnian-Herzegovinian nation. The idea of Bosniakness emphasizes and preserves this.

Someone would want us to be reduced to mere Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, or some other national/ethnic group, and thus remain frozen in our ghettoized identity structure that does not recognize the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign and independent nation. A closed society within ethno-religious dogmas represents the pinnacle of neglect, anachronism, ahistorical worldview, tribalism, ethnocentrism, and religious fundamentalism. This is what destructive anti-Bosnian politics is based on. In contrast, there must be a clear and visible Bosnian policy (not pro-Bosnian, but Bosnian), based on the existence of the Bosnian nation that desires membership in the European Union and NATO.

In the end, I am Bosnian by nationality or by the state-nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I am Bosniak, Croat, Serb, Montenegrin, Jew, Roma, Albanian (and so on for all 20-odd ethnic communities) by ethnicity, ethnic affiliation, or a set of characteristics historically associated with the ethnic group into which I was born. Who should be confused by this? Or – to whom can this be unclear?

*Senadin Lavić is a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences of UNSA, and Slaven Kovačević is an advisor in the Cabinet of the Member of the Presidency Željko Komšić