Islam in Europe

Batoota — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 04:38:13 +0000

The historical antagonism between the western and eastem parts of Europe is reflected, to this very day, in their diverging social, political, and religious traditions. This division has also put its mark on the historical vicissitudes of Islam in the European world. Growth and blossoming in one part of Europe were often concomitant to downfall and destruction in the other. During the late Middle Ages, Western Christian powers were reconquering the last Muslim territories in Spain and the Mediterranean. During the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, they extirpated the last vestiges of Islam from the West. Meanwhile, the Turks were preparing for the conquest of Constantinople (1453) and for expansion into areas of southeastern Europe, the modern Balkan states. However, when the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the dominance of communist rule, and the contemporary revival of nationalism caused the suppression of southeast European Islam and destroyed much of its ancient heritage and infrastructure, western Europe opened its doors to a stream of Muslim migrants and refugees. Significant Muslim communities are now present in all countries of western Europe.
Phases and Groups in the History of European Islam. The premodern history of Islam in western Europe consists of two parts. First, from the eighth century until the end of the fifteenth century there were territories under Muslim rule, where Islam acquired a majority position. Apart from Muslim Spain, this was the case during various periods in some islands in the Mediterranean and small enclaves in southern France and southern Italy. Second, there is the history of Islam as a minority religion in western Europe starting around the ninth century, when Christian rulers, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, decided to abandon their practice of executing Muslim captives and started selling and using them as slaves. From the end of the eleventh century the social phenomenon of Muslim slaves in Christian territories increased in importance, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, southern France, Sicily, and the Balearic islands. Theirs was a history of rapid christianization and assimilation under the combined pressure of society and church.
For some Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, the period from the twelfth to the sixteenth century formed an exception to this pattern. When large territories of Muslim Spain were reconquered by Christian kings, religious freedom and protection were granted to local Muslim communities, notwithstanding the ongoing protests by the Catholic church. But after the fall of Granada (1492), these communities were baptized by force, and finally, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the stigma of being labeled “incurable heretics,” they were expelled, mainly to North Africa. However, this did not end the social phenomenon of Muslim slaves. Their presence in European countries around the Mediterranean is documented, without interruption, until the nineteenth century. Only the period of the Enlightenment, followed by the French Revolution, the proclamation of religious freedom as a universal human right and the abolishment of slavery, created the essential conditions for the modern era in western European Islam.
In the late twentieth century, there are about 18 million Muslims in Europe, with approximately 9 million each in western and southeastern Europe. In addition, small communities of a few thousand Muslims live in Poland and Finland. The Muslims of Poland are the descendants of Tatar and Crimean immigrants who arrived respectively in the fourteenth and fifteenth and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Muslim community in Finland consists of people of Turko-Tatar origin from the Idel Ural and Volga regions who mainly arrived after the Communist Revolution of 1917.
Large numbers of Muslims of European origin are mainly found among the populations of the Balkan states. They are the descendants of various groups who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule, as well as Muslim groups of non-European origin, especially Turks. In view of their longstanding history, many of these groups consist of all social levels, including religious, intellectual, artistic, and commercial elites. In western Europe, however, Islam shows much less social diversity. In essence, it is still the religion of migrants, with a high percentage of unskilled laborers, small merchants, and white-collar people of the lower strata. It lacks a sufficiently trained religious and intellectual leadership. Another important factor determining their sociojuridical position is the fact that numbers of them have not yet obtained the nationality of the western European state in which they live. It seems likely that the process of naturalization will take a few more decades to be fully completed.
Autochthonous converts to Islam can be found in all western European countries, but their number is very limited indeed. Prominent among them are women married to Muslims, who actually play a pioneering role in the foundation of organizations of Muslim women, attracting members from all Muslim ethnic groups. Male converts are much fewer in number, yet play an important role in processes of negotiation and intercultural communication between Muslim groups, on the one hand, and western European governments and societies, on the other. Some of them enjoy fame as scholars and writers, both in the West and the Muslim world. Examples are the Austrian journalist Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad), who converted before World War II, and the French philosopher Roger Garaudy. The only region in Europe with numbers of male converts of some significance is Andalusia in Spain, where, under the influence of a specific form of regionalism, conversion to Islam could be experienced as the rediscovery of an identity that had been suppressed during many ages. (Some African-Americans in the United States similarly claim that their return to Islam is a reversion to their earlier religion.)
Muslim migrants in western Europe can be divided into three distinct categories. The first of these consists of inhabitants who came from former colonies. Among them one finds groups who cooperated closely with the European colonial armies and preferred to leave their countries at the time of decolonization. Examples are the former Algerian and Moluccan soldiers and their families in France and the Netherlands. Others in this category are people who had settled as migrants in former colonies, where they had created their own communities as ethnic minorities. Their settling in Europe was the result of a second migration, mainly for socioeconomic and political reasons. Among them are many skilled laborers, merchants, and white-collar people. Examples are the Hindustanis from East Africa and Suriname in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
The second category of Muslim migrants consists mainly of unskilled laborers and their families. They have come from countries around the Mediterranean, from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, as well as from other Muslim countries in the Near and Far East. In France and the United Kingdom, this migration process had an early start, before World War II, but in other countries it was mainly confined to the period between the late 1960s and 1970s. Especially from the late 1970s onward, the process of family reunion-the basis for the institutionalization of a religious infrastructure-had begun.
In some countries groups of a specific ethnic or geographic origin form the majority among the Muslim inhabitants. This is the case for migrants from the Maghrib and West Africa in France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium; for Turks in Germany and the Netherlands; and for Muslims from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent in the United Kingdom. In comparison with the societies in which they live, upward social mobility among the second and third generations of these groups has remained very limited. Percentages of unemployment among them are significantly higher than among the autochthonous groups.
The current stream of Muslim migrants consists of political refugees from various Muslim countries. There is an important percentage among them that has gone through various forms of (nonreligious) higher education, including universities. Many of these have a secular outlook, and they have, so far, not provided the existing Muslim communities with a specifically religious leadership. They do play important roles, however, in cultural and sociopolitical activities of a more general nature. Depending on the existing government policies, concentrations of refugees from specific countries can be found in certain states. Important Iranian communities, for instance, are found in Italy and Sweden.
Religious Infrastructure. Contrary to the established religious infrastructure of the Muslims in Southeastern Europe, the contemporary history of Islam in Western Europe shows many examples of local communities moving from the initial stage of meeting in a prayer hall toward the more advanced stage of establishing a mosque and appointing an imam. In the early days, loose groups of worshipers often rented accommodations on a temporary basis. Later, more permanent solutions were found. In the initial stage, non-Muslims nationals, especially church members, played a prominent role in the initiatives of religious institutionalization. In the second stage, initiatives were mainly taken by informal leaders of the communities concerned. Finally, one observes the establishment of mosques by groups affiliated with an Islamic organization at a national or international level.
Generally speaking, mosques have been founded in western Europe on a monoethnic and a monodenominational basis. With rare exceptions, multiethnic and multidenominational places of worship are to be found in smaller towns or villages with no more than one mosque or prayer hall. In towns with two mosques or prayer halls one usually finds a division of the Muslims along ethnic lines. In larger communities a further division according to confessional denominations within a single ethnic group becomes a possibility. This can generally be observed in towns with three or more mosques.
Parallel to the preceding developments runs an increase in the functional aspects of these local religious institutions. At the very beginning, the function of this form of institutionalization of Islam was to take care of the need for religious services. Quite logically, the foundation of these places of worship, where scattered Muslims would join in prayer, implied the creation of social spaces and networks on the basis of a common religious identity. To these religious and social functions the task to cater for elementary religious education of the communities’ children was added, especially within the context of official family reunion schedules. In many cases the initial religious instruction provided by the communities was given by qualified volunteers. However, the best way to provide for these needs was to appoint an imam who, apart from his tasks during the daily religious services, could function as a teacher to the children as well. The mosques have become the most important centers of Islamic education in western Europe, where an estimated 15 percent of all children with a Muslim background regularly receive religious instruction. A similar role was played by the mosques in southeastern Europe (with the exception of Greece), where during the communist period no room was left for staterecognized elementary Islamic schools.
The increase in community life stimulated by the mosques enhanced their central role. In the countries of origin many culturally defined institutions used to exist separately from the mosques. These institutions, however, did not exist in the host countries. Endowing the mosques in western Europe with some of the functions of this absent infrastructure was a constructive solution, because in doing so one was granting further material support to the maintenance of the mosques, and therefore of Muslim community life itself. This resulted in all kinds of activities in the fields of education, sports, and recreation, among others, and providing an alternative for youngsters to behavioral patterns rejected by Islam.
As a result, mosque buildings in western Europe were to be used for various kinds of religiously colored feasts and ceremonies not usually celebrated in or around mosque buildings in the Muslim world itself, such as wedding parties, circumcisions, and mourning ceremonies. In addition to this, attached to many mosques there are shops owned by the Muslim organization that sell religious objects (including books) and products from the countries of origin and that add to the social and financial basis of the community life centered around the mosque.
Most mosques are presided over by a board of governors. The members of the board usually take care of the financial interests of the mosque and its maintenance. Unless special arrangements have been made with the government of the country of origin, the imam of the mosque is appointed by the board. The board’s tasks are both external and internal. Those of the imam, however, are mainly internal, and they are specifically connected to the knowledge and application of the values of Islamic religion. Members of the board should be able to manage the mosque and to communicate and negotiate with the surrounding non-Muslim society. For these purposes fluency in the host country language and knowledge and understanding of its laws and social customs are required.
The imams, on the other hand, can hardly be expected to have the just-mentioned communicative bicultural abilities. Many of them-in the absence of a sufficient number of men in western Europe who are qualified for the post-have been recruited comparatively recently in the countries of origin. Also, the mainly internal and traditional coloring of their most important tasks runs counter to such characteristics. Entrusted with the daily prayer services in the mosque, the religious counseling of the individual members of their community, the elementary religious education of the community’s children, as well as with the performing of ceremonial tasks at various important occasions in the lives of individuals and families, the imams can be said to be the main custodians of the cultural, and especially the religious, values of the countries of origin.
In the absence of the social infrastructure of the countries of origin (family, acquaintances, etc.), the function of the imam of a mosque community has increased considerably in western Europe. The pastoral tasks of spiritual counseling and social care, including the visiting of community members in hospitals and prisons, are cases in point. There are many essential similarities between the tasks of an imam in western Europe and his Christian or Jewish colleagues, the pastor and the rabbi. As a logical outcome, governments and courts also tend to identify the imams as Muslim clerics to be dealt with in the same way as the Christian and Jewish clergy. Countries where Islam has been officially recognized by the state, such as Belgium and Spain, have legalized this view explicitly. In other countries, the same viewpoint is expressed implicitly, in jurisprudence and government policies. In the Netherlands, the juridical equalization of pastors, rabbis, imams, Hindu priests, and humanistic spiritual counselors was settled by an official verdict of the Supreme Court.
In all countries of western Europe Muslim communities become increasingly aware of the need to create their own educational centers for the training of imams. This process is stimulated by public discussions and government policies attaching much value to the founding of such provisions within western Europe itself. Apart from the strictly theological requirements, new educational challenges are posed by the unprecedented posts for imams which are being created in western European armies, hospitals, and prisons-on a par with the state-appointed ministers, pastors, and rabbis already working in those institutions. Obviously, this new category of imams indeed would need forms of additional training enabling them to cope with a whole series of nontraditional tasks. The creation of Islamic theological seminaries no doubt would form a step of great historical momentum in the history of western European Islam. However, several obstacles stand in the way of their realization. Most prominent among these is the heterogeneity and division of the Islamic organizations that hampers the successful coordination of various small-scale initiatives that already exist in various countries. The religious infrastructure of Islam in southeastern Europe for example, is already in place; in BosniaHerzegovina, imams and religious scholars can be trained in several madrasahs and in a theological faculty in Sarajevo.
At national and international levels, a great variety of Islamic organizations are in competition with each other to obtain influence over the local mosque-communities. Among the first attempts, during the 1970s, to create umbrella structures for local mosques were organizations representing confessional streams that are in opposition to the official doctrines of Islam promoted by governments in their countries of origin. These initiatives were counteracted by the activities of the non-European governments concerned, who started to build up their own networks of mosque-communities among their citizens in western European countries. A clear example of this pattern is found among Turkish Islamic organizations.
As a reaction to the mushrooming of independent and oppositional religious movements, such as the Suley-manlis, Milli Gorus, and Nursis, the Presidium of Religious Affairs of the Turkish government (usually referred to as the Diyanet) developed a policy to stimulate the foundation of a religious infrastructure for the Turkish Muslims in western Europe under its direct supervision. This policy was to include the foundation of mosques and the appointment of imams and religious teachers trained in one of the official Turkish colleges or faculties. These imams, who have the status of civil servants of the Turkish government, are working in western Europe on a temporary basis. The policy included also the appointment of religious attaches with the status of muftis to the Turkish embassies concerned. Mosque-communities attached to the organizations of the Diyanet have to comply with the transfer of the management of their mosque buildings to specially created foundations in each country, which are subjected to the direct supervision of the presidium itself.
Similar organizational divisions, the result of the transplanted competition between oppositional religiopolitical groups on the one hand, and the governments in their countries of origin on the other, can also be observed among Muslims of other origins, such as those from Morocco. Other governments, such as that of Tunisia, tend to abstain from a policy of direct interference in the religious life of their (former) subjects in western Europe. In fact, western Europe has become a haven for the free organization of Islamic oppositional movements. The writings of the Moroccan oppositional leader `Abd al-Salam Yasin, for example, forbidden in Morocco itself, are circulating among all Moroccan communities in western Europe.
In addition, international organizations, such as the Muslim World League, backed up by governments of Muslim states, have succeeded in establishing Islamic Centers in various western European capitals, including Brussels, Madrid, and Rome. These centers aim at controlling Islamic religious life in the respective western European states, and they are usually governed by diplomatic representatives of Muslim countries, under the predominant influence of Saudi Arabia. They add to the complexities of rivalry and conflict that continue to characterize the relations between the Islamic umbrella organizations at national levels.
Religion and State. In the present time, all European states claim to be democratic and to respect the fundamental principle of religious freedom, notwithstanding all the differences in the relations between religion and state, enshrined in their respective constitutions and applied in their actual policies. This principle applies to all citizens and inhabitants, including Muslims, both individually and in the form of their religious organizations. The constitutional principle of religious freedom is surrounded by various kinds of legal limits that are molding Islam, after the pattern to be observed in Europe’s churches and synagogues, into the shape of religious institutions which mainly focus on certain areas of social life. These areas comprise the preaching of faith and morals, the practicing of rituals and festivals, the organizing of religious education and learning, and the strengthening of various kinds of religiously based community life. In all other areas of social life, the public order and the monopoly of the states prevail. With the exception of Greece, where Islamic family law has been respected (to various degrees) since the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 and where the Greek Orthodox church still plays a dominant role, at present no European state knows a system of legal pluralism based on the religious denomination of the individual citizens.
This does not mean, of course, that the principles of Islamic family law have no value for Muslims in European countries. On the contrary, just like the adherents of other religions, Muslims are free to abide by them, voluntarily and with due respect to the existing juridical order. They may even create their own religious courts to which they may subject, out of their free choice, internal disputes concerning all kinds of matters affected by shai`ah, including matters concerning marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The creation of such informal shari `ah courts, which can be compared with the Jewish institution of the rabbinical courts, is on its way in several countries of western Europe. However, no public validity is attached to their decisions.
Interpretations of the principle of religious freedom, though shared by all, differ from one state to another. These differences are closely related to the complex political and cultural histories of each state. The slaughtering of animals according to Islamic (and Jewish) religious prescriptions, for instance, is allowed in many states (under specific conditions prescribed by law), but forbidden in some, including Switzerland and Sweden.
Disputes concerning the wearing of head-scarves by Muslim girls in public schools have, again, been differently concluded. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, this expression of Islamic religious behavior is respected, but in others, for example, Belgium and France, the decision about its permissibility was delegated to the governors of the individual schools. During the Rushdie Affair, existing laws on blasphemy appeared only to apply to established religions in the United Kingdom, but they were applicable to Islam also in the Netherlands. Attitudes toward the right to celebrate religious holidays still differ widely, though the existing jurisprudence in various countries tends to recognize the right of employees to take one or more unpaid days off for this purpose, provided that the employer was informed in advance and that no serious damage was thereby caused to the interests of the enterprise. A verdict of the European Commission on Human Rights stipulated that a Muslim employee with full employment should have the right to attend Friday services if he informs his employer at the moment of his employment that the observance of this religious duty could be in conflict with his duties as an employee. Research shows many variations within the actual policies of government authorities toward this problem also depends on the practical possibilities in each labor sector involved.
An important aspect of the relations between religion and state is the predominant attitude in each country toward the social value of religion. This differs not only between the states, but also within each state, and even from one period to another and among the various political parties. Some states officially ascribe great importance to religion in maintaining the norms and values of society at large. If certain legally prescribed conditions are fulfilled by religious organizations, these states are willing to cooperate with them and even to subsidize, again to varying degrees, their religious and sociocultural activities. Other states tend to underline the private nature of religion, the secular character of their society, and, consequently, are reluctant in financing religious organizations. They may, nevertheless, allow forms of indirect subsidies to religions, for instance, by making donations to them tax deductible, a practice existing in many European states.
These differences are also related to Europe’s divergent constitutional traditions regarding the relations between religion and state. With the exception of Vatican City, these traditions can be broadly classified according to the two models of union and separation.
The model of union involves some direct juridical relations between religion and state. This model can be subdivided into three types. First, some states practice the official recognition of religious communities. This implies that they take into account officially the existence of these religious communities in order to create relations between them and society at large (examples of this type are Spain, Belgium, and Germany). The second type is that of the existence of an official state religion with constitutionally guaranteed respect for religious freedom and the right of nondiscrimination of all other religions. This is the case, for instance, in Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The third type is that of the officially sanctioned preferential treatment of one religious community over all the others. This can be found in Greece, for instance, and is usually qualified as with the term “confessionalism.”
In addition, there is also the model of separation between religion and state, which underlines the neutrality of the state, the equality of all religions and philosophies of life, and, to varying degrees, the secular character of all public spaces of society. This model is found, for instance, in France and the Netherlands. However, in its application, these countries show many significant differences. For instance, on the basis of the wellknown Dutch “pillarization system,” which grants the right to all religious communities in the Netherlands, also at local levels, to develop with state subsidies all kinds of religiously colored institutions in the educational and sociocultural spheres, about thirty Islamic primary schools have been founded. This example illustrates the restricted significance of the various constitutional theories for a correct assessment of the real possibilities available to religious groups in each state. An adequate treatment of the complexities and variants involved in these models and types by far surpasses the scope of this article. Only some details will be provided of the realities that can be involved in this kind of recognition of Islam.
Spain’s constitution expresses the state’s readiness to cooperate with the churches and the religious confessions insofar as is necessary to make the right of its citizens to enjoy religious liberty “real and active.” In order to obtain the recognition which is necessary to reach an agreement to cooperate, parties involved have to prove, on the basis of inscription in the official Register of Religious Entities, at least the existence of a certain number of believers. Apart from the established arrangements with the Roman Catholic church, Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic confessions have in fact been awarded this
statute, and official agreements between the state and these confessions were signed in 1992.
The Comision Islamica de Espafia (CIE) was recognized as the official representative of the Muslims of Spain. It was chosen by the two federations inscribed in the official Register of Religious Entities, to which other federations or communities can be added in the future. The agreement has settled a long list of relevant subjects, like the statutes of mosques and prayerhalls, of Islamic cemeteries, of the Islamic rules concerning inhumation, graves, and funerary rites, and of the imams and other religious leaders. It also regulated the religious rights of Muslim soldiers and Muslim personnel of the army and of Muslim prisoners and patients in hospitals. Muslim parents and their children were guaranteed the right to receive Islamic religious education in schools at primary and secondary levels. The Islamic Committee of Spain, as well as the communities pertaining to it, may establish and manage teaching centers of primary and secondary levels, as well as universities and centers of Islamic formation, in accordance with the general legislation regarding these matters. The agreement also grants a number of tax privileges to the CIE and the attached communities. It defines the rights of Muslim students and employees to celebrate religious holidays, to heed to the prescriptions of Ramadan, and to attend weekly Friday services. Finally, it stipulates that the CIE will be the sole authority in Spain to assign the mark “halal” to food products in order to designate that they have been prepared in accordance with the religious law of Islam. The dietary rules of Islam will be respected in prisons, army dependencies, hospitals, and schools for those Muslims who request this. This holds true also for the timetable of Ramadan.
The government of Spain has assumed an active role in the constitution of a representative organ on behalf of the Muslims in Spain. In Belgium, where the state recognized Islam officially in 1974, this has, however, not been the case. In order to effectuate the financial aid that the Belgian state in principle is ready to convey to a great variety of Islamic religious activities (including the salaries of imams, the expenses of mosques, the foundation of Islamic schools, the religious education in public schools, etc.), committees with corporate capacity have to be established by law. These committees are in charge of the properties used for the cults and function at the same time as intermediaries with the national government. They have to be elected at provincial levels, in accordance with legally prescribed rules. The organization of the elections was put into the hands of the Islamic Cultural Center in Brussels (financed by the Muslim World League) with which the Belgians had been dealing on a temporary basis as the sole representative of the Muslims of its state since the official recognition of Islam. However, the elections that took place were not recognized, with the result that many potential measures that could considerably have improved the religious infrastructure of Belgian Islam were not taken at all. Nevertheless, teachers of Islamic religious education have been appointed in many Belgian public schools at the recommendation of the center in Brussels or the “Provisional Council of Wise Persons for the Organization of the Islamic Cult in Belgium,” created, again on a temporary basis, in 1990.
From a general point of view, one must conclude that Muslims have not made full use of the opportunities offered to them by the widely divergent legal systems of the European states. Their discord and lack of qualified leadership are certainly important factors to explain this. However, of equal importance is the outspokenly negative attitude of large sectors of European societies toward the ethnic minorities living among them and the adherents of the religion of Islam in particular. Extremist political movements with bluntly racist ideologies have appeared on the European scene over the past few years and have been able to attract significant percentages of voters in local and national elections. Their influence is clearly reflected in the changing attitudes of some of the established political parties. Acts of violence against the life and property of Muslims and other minority groups have become the sad reality. Hardly any mosque or prayer hall is now opened without accompanying protests by non-Muslims. And a politician defending the constitutional rights of minority groups runs the risk of losing the favor of many voters. The dramatic events in southeastern Europe have created fears about the survival of freedom, democracy, and equality in regard to Europe’s Islam.
[See also Albania; Balkan States; France; Germany; Great Britain; and Popular Religion, article on Popular Religion in Europe and the Americas.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Western Europe
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Koningsveld, P. S. van. Islamitische slaven en gevangenen in WestEuropa tijdens de late Meddeleeuwen. Leiden, 1994. Inaugural lecture in the Chair of the Religious History of Islam in Western Europe, delivered at Leiden University on 4 February 1994. An English version, entitled “Muslim Slaves and Captives in Western Europe during the Late Middle Ages,” will appear in a future issue of the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.
Nielsen, jorgen N. “Migrant Muslims in Western Europe.” Portion of entry “Muslimun” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 7, pp. 699-702. Leiden, 196o-.
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Shadid, W. A. R., and P. S. van Koningsveld. Religious Freedom and the Position of Islam in Western Europe: Opportunities and Obstacles in the Acquisition of Equal Rights. Kampen, Neth., 1994. Contains an extensive bibliography of studies on Islam in all countries of the European Community published from 1987 through 1993
Southeastern and Northern Europe Kettani, M. A. “Islam in Post-Ottoman Balkans.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 9 (1988): 381-403. Review essay of Popovic 1986 (see below), with important additional data.
Popovic, Alexandre. “The Old Established Muslim Communities of Eastern Europe.” Portion of entry “Muslimun” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 7, pp. 695-699. Leiden, 196o-. Also treats the Muslim communities in Finland and Poland.
Popovic, Alexandre. L’Islam balkanique: Les musulmans du sud-est europien dans la peirode post-ottomane. Berlin, 1986. Encyclopedic survey of the history and sociology of Islam in the Balkan states.
P. S. VAN KoNINGSVELD

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