Islamic Revival in Post-Socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina: International Actors and Activities.

The collapse of the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia and the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 saw Islam in Bosnia and the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) go through some enormous changes and difficult times. The Serbian aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina started a war which was to last four years and which caused the destruction of hundreds of mosques and the loss of more than 100,000 lives, a vast majority of them being Muslims. Although having started in the late 1970s in Yugoslavia, a trend of returning to Islam, often referred to as Islamic revival or Islamic renaissance, intensified during the war. Humanitarian agencies and volunteers from the Middle East brought with them not only food and medicine, but also new Islamic teachings which they considered necessary to 're-Islamize' the deeply secularized Bosnian Muslims. This paper aims to look at Islamic revival starting from the 1970s through the war and the post-war period. The activities of Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran will be analyzed and their methods of spreading Islam will be examined and compared. The picture gained from Bosnia is a small-scale version of the activities of major sponsors of global Islamic revival and hence a good insight into the activities, methods and possible outcomes worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]