Contributions to 20th Century Islamic Thought in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Balkan region has gone through a number of political and administrative changes in the past two hundred years. This area was shaped by two empires, the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian, two kingdoms, fascist puppet states, a communist regime and several wars. This unstable region has recently prompted authors to coin the word balkanization as an attribute for conflict development with a complex nature and catastrophic effects. The recent devastating war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the tragic conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia have resulted in an increased interest in Muslim minorities living in the Balkans. Scholarly works have been written not only about the immediate causes and consequences of these events, but also about the history of Balkan Muslims and their contributions to Islamic civilization.

One such endeavour has been a recent book by a prominent Bosnian scholar, Enes Karić, a former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo. His Contributions to 20th Century Islamic Thought in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the first of two volumes that attempt to present and evaluate a rich Muslim intellectual heritage of the past one hundred and fifty years. In his quest for the main themes characterizing this period, he has examined the works of major intellectuals who left a permanent imprint on the Bosnian and the Balkan intellectual scene through their writings in magazines, newspapers and journals including El-Hidaje, Behar, Narodna Uzdanica, Preporod and Takvim.