Wahhabis and Salafis, daije and alimi: Bosnian neo-Salafis between contestation and integration

ABSTRACT

Is there ‘a Salafi community’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and is it a threat to moderate and tolerant Islam in Bosnia? This article intends to critically question the category of Salafism and explore the broader phenomenon of Islamic militancy in the religious and political context of postwar Bosnia. The aim is to depart from a securitizing framework by avoiding defining it in ideological terms and by choosing to look at Salafism as a relational and social phenomenon. The argument starts with a revision of the problem and of the terms used to describe it and proceeds by proposing a genealogy of the various militant Islamic groups and an analysis of Salafi relations to the religious establishment.

KEYWORDS:

• Salafism
• neo-Salafism
• Bosnia-Herzegovina
• radicalization
• Islamic community
• security framework

Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina has made headlines on several occasions since the end of the 1992–1995 war. In 2006 and 2007, Bosnia was depicted as ‘fertile soil for extremism’¹ and for ‘fundamentalist Islam’.² More recently, from 2017–2019, the Croatian, Czech, and French presidents publicly warned against jihadi bases, returning jihadis, and a Bosnian ‘ticking time bomb,’ respectively.³ In the 1990s, the threats were associated with foreign volunteers – the mujahideen – coming to support Bosnians in the war. After 2001, several remaining ‘Wahhabi’ volunteers have been linked to global jihad. Since the mid-2000s, the talk has been about the ‘radicalisation’ of Salafism⁴ and, after 2013, about returning Bosnian foreign fighters. Since the outbreak of the Syrian and Iraqi jihads, the number of policy papers dealing with the dangers of the radicalization of Muslims in Bosnia has surged. Their focus is invariably local Salafis, their links to global jihad, and their potential for radicalization (Babić 2017; Bečirević 2016b; Turčalo and Veljan 2018, etc.).

Virtually all accounts of Salafism in Bosnia share the same underlying narrative: the radical Islamic ideology of Salafism was imported into the Balkans through the mujahideen in the early 1990s; dozens of Wahhabi proselytizers stayed after the war and ‘contaminated’ Bosnian Muslims until Saudi funding was withdrawn after 2001. The threat to traditionally moderate and secular Bosnian Islam culminated again after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and after the jihadi attacks in Europe. State institutions and the Islamic community eventually responded through repressive measures and religious activism, respectively. Deeper reasons for radicalization are poverty and the lack of socio-economical perspectives.

While this narrative is factually correct, it is conceptually and narratively flawed. First, it constructs Salafism using a vague doctrinal distinction – one that has, in fact, rarely mattered in Bosnia itself. The term itself was not used in Bosnia before 2010. Only after Salafism became an object of global interest after its rise to prominence in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the term Salafis has replaced the more common terms of mujahideen (mudžahedini) and Wahhabis (vehabije) in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Salafism has since stood in for any kind of foreign, radical, or extremist Islamic activist tendency.

Secondly, the narrative is a narrow, incomplete, and superficial rendering of a more complex phenomenon. Salafism is usually portrayed as an intolerant type of Islamic practice that is foreign to Bosnia’s usually tolerant and accommodating form of Islam (Bečirević 2016b) as if a strict distinction between ‘imported’ and ‘Bosnian Islam’ could be made. The security framing further operates with the assumptions that Salafism a) is an ideology prone to radicalization; b) Salafism is a concrete, distinct phenomenon, or a single ideological grouping (‘a community’); c) there is an ideological and historical continuity between foreign volunteers and today’s phenomenon; and that d) Salafism can be opposed to the Bosnian traditionally ‘moderate’ Islam and that it can and should be ‘countered’ as such.

If the assumption of Salafism as an imported phenomenon and of a distinct Salafi community with historical roots in the 1992–1995 war can be useful for countering and marginalizing its proponents, it overlooks the discontinuities within Islamic militancy, the continuities with Bosnian Muslim institutions, and the role of Bosniak leaders in the Salafi militancy. Above all, it does not render justice to its complex dynamics and even to an important degree of interdependency between ‘Salafism’ and ‘Islam in Bosnia’ – on both a discursive and an institutional level. This article aims to correct these assumptions.

The fact that the coverage of Balkan Islam has perpetuated a narrow security framing has been noticed recently: F. Püttman has analysed foreign political actor’s construction of Kosovo Muslims identities (Püttmann 2019), and S. Kursani has suggested a more nuanced typology of radical Salafi militantism in the Albanoshpere (Kursani 2018). This contribution aims to complete these efforts of correcting external framings of Balkan Islam both geographically, by looking at Bosnia, and conceptually, by adapting Kursani’s typology to the Bosnian case, and by providing a historical overview to bring a more nuanced analysis of the Salafi phenomenon.

In order to depart from the narrow security perspective, the assumptions about Salafism need to be critically questioned, and the phenomenon of Islamic militancy needs to be closely analysed in the concrete religious and social context of postwar Bosnia. This analysis will do this by successively developing three distinct perspectives: first a terminological perspective (questioning and defining the terms used to describe Islamic militancy), secondly a diachronic perspective (reconstructing the development of Muslim militancy since 1995), and finally a synchronic perspective (an analysis of current forms of Salafi militancy).

The article will so attempt to reconstruct Bosnian neo-Salafism as a discursive, historical, and social phenomenon, using mostly texts (specifically Bosnian periodicals, Islamic and otherwise), official documents by the Islamic community, Bosnian Salafi literature, and interviews with members of the Islamic community conducted in Bosnia in May 2019 and in September 2019. After introducing the problem of Salafism (chapter 1) and defining the terms (chapter 2), chapter 3 will suggest a genealogy of the various forms of militant Islamic groups, and chapter 4 will outline a more nuanced typology of its current forms and analyse them in relation to the religious establishment in Bosnia.

1. Introduction: perspectives on Salafism

a. Beyond the security framing

The security perspective was decisive in structuring the perception of Islamic militancy in general and Salafism in particular. Almost all literature dealing with Salafism in the Balkans are texts focused on security. They deal with Balkan links to global jihad (Deliso 2007; Bardos 2014), Balkan foreign fighters (Azinović and Jusić 2016), Salafi recruitment (Bečirević 2016a), and with religious extremism (Džihić 2016; Turčalo and Veljan 2018). They are usually addressed to the ‘international community’ and aim to contribute to countering and preventing violent extremism.

The obvious reason for the sizable security literature on the issue is that Islamist militants were linked with violent acts in several instances. Some wartime volunteers have been suspected of several crimes committed in Bosnia (while at least one account was the object of a court judgment)⁵ and of being part of global jihadi networks (Kohlman 2004). Then, from 2002–2016, there were three instances of Wahhabi/Salafi-related violence in Bosnia: a deadly attack on a returnee family in Konjic in 2002 and on a police station in Bugojno in 2010; and a shooting at the US embassy in 2011. Several other attacks may have been prevented in the mid-2010s (Alic 2009). Two more recent murders of police and military personnel in 2015 (one at a police station in Zvornik, the other at a betting site in Rajlovac) could be related to Islamist militancy only indirectly. Most importantly, several Salafi leaders are held responsible for some of the two hundred departures to the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields, and one of them was sentenced for recruitment in 2015. Finally, Bosniak-speaking jihadis called for violence and threatened the Bosnian reis ul-ulema (elected religious leader) from Syria in 2015 and 2016.

The dominant security perspective comes with several assumptions. Almost invariably, a clear trajectory is drawn from the mujahideen of the 1990s to Bosnian Wahhabism settlements, then to the jihadi fighters, and finally to today’s Salafis. Two nuanced analyses in local publications have recognized internal pluralism and dynamism and have subdivided the Salafi community into moderate, mainstream, and radical/extremist (jihadi or takfiri) and studied the ‘radicalisation’ of the tekfiris (Jusić 2015; Alibašić 2015). Most often, though, Salafism is construed as imported and foreign (Bečirević 2018, 43).

This framework, in turn, legitimizes the question of whether – and the extent to which – the ‘Salafi community’ is a threat to security. In the securitized discourse, a ‘Salafi community,’ an object of inquiry and of security concern, has been framed as a potential threat to the constitutional order of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was construed as a channel for ‘radicalisation’ (Babić 2017, 185) and contrasted with the ‘moderate and tolerant’ Islam in Bosnia (Bečirević 2016b, 20). This second assumption of Wahhabi/Salafi religious extremism and potential radicalization has not been accepted without reservation. Several books on Bosnia’s jihadi connections of the 1990s have been criticized for serious inaccuracies and bias (Hoare 2008; Li 2019).

Four recent empirical studies offer a more nuanced or critical view respectively of the purported extremism of Salafis. Based on several dozen qualitative interviews, two inquiries by the Sarajevo think tank Atlantic Initiative offer a rare insight into Salafi adherents’ views (Bečirević 2016; Turčalo and Veljan 2018). The Salafis in question are socially conservative, often closed in upon themselves, yet not radical or even overtly political. There are also two very critical studies by publicist and psychologist Srdjan Puhalo. Based on more than a hundred unstructured interviews with Bosnian Salafis, he emphatically rejects the radicalization perspective altogether and intends to prove a strong anti-Salafi bias in the Bosnian media (Puhalo 2016, 2018). Finally, several TV reports from 2017 have opened Salafi villages and prayer rooms to public scrutiny, revealing secluded, conservative, yet quietist communities.

Thus, there is a palpable discrepancy between the radicalization framework and the few available empirical insights, that is, between the assumption that Salafism is a breeding ground for extremism, and the picture of a closed, socially conservative, ultra-observant, but quietist rural community. The explanation may be situational: the Salafi-Wahhabi community has had radical episodes, such as during the war, then from 2007–2011, and again from 2013–2014. Foreign pressure had put an end to direct Saudi financing of Islamic groups in 2001, and police interventions from 2010–2014 got isolated settlements under control, while war misfortunes in Syria have ended jihadist recruitment. Finally, in 2016 the Islamic community of Bosnia and Herzegovina (IC) intervened and officially integrated several dozen ex-Wahhabi communities willing to do so.

This situational explanation allows us to keep framing Salafism as a security issue and an object of prevention policies. Yet apart from research conducted as an empirical supplement to the CVE projects, precious little continues to be known about local ‘Salafism’: there are numerous articles of wartime volunteers (Hečimović 2006), only several newspaper articles from the end of 1990s on Bosnian Wahhabis, and a few recent analyses of Salafi theological reasoning by the Bosnian Islamic community (IC) (Duranović and Ljevaković-Subašić 2018; Subašić 2019). The striking lack of knowledge may be imputed either to an unwillingness to publicly deal with the subject on the part of Bosnian Muslims or, possibly, to an absence of real-world reference to the terminology used. What does Salafism mean, and what does it refer to? Can it be defined only as an ideological issue?

In fact, the abovementioned discrepancies, and the lack of scrutiny, are caused by the fact that ‘Salafism’ is a much broader and more universal phenomenon than assumed in the security framing. Under various names – Wahhabism, Salafism, neo-kharijism, takfirism – militant Islamic activism has been a feature of Bosnia’s politics of Islam since the early 1990s. It encompassed a whole range of heterogenous phenomena: the initial foreign volunteers in the 1992–1995 war, postwar youth Islamic activism, confrontational Salafi leaders and followers, sect-like secluded communities, and Bosnian jihadi volunteers in Syria, but also conservative but respected Islamic scholars, and a proselytizing but quietist Salafi organizations.

Those phenomena share two aspects: they are organized, publicly active, and either belong to proselytizing communities or have a vision of transforming Islamic practice in Bosnia. Proselytism – that is, Islamic mission, the da’wa – is, in fact, the defining feature of the phenomenon in question: a will to transform Bosnian Muslims. Unlike neo-Sufi Muslim activists coming to Bosnia en masse in the 1990s (Solberg 2007), Salafi da’wa did not just intend to bring lukewarm Bosniaks back to faith but to change them altogether.

This article will base its argument on an analysis of religious and social strategiesn (that is, on evolving forms of da’wa and social organization) rather than on an ideological or doctrinal specificity, to redefine ‘Salafism’ and trace its presence on Bosnia. Proselytizing Islamic militancy presents, of course, a threat, but of a specific kind. Whereas for foreign observers, Islamic mission invites mostly security concerns, it represents a challenge and a competition for local communities – at least to the degree to which the da’wa confronts local Islamic institutions, discourses, and practices. Ever since 1993, the Bosnian IC has defended itself from the proselytizing Islamic militancy.⁶ Many saw it as a foreign practice that may deserve respect for its form of religious zeal, but that is out of place when attempting to proselytize in a land that was already Muslim. Hence the problem of Islamic militancy cannot be viewed solely in terms of ideological or doctrinal difference but by looking at the dynamics of a concrete Islamic field.

b. Elusive terms: Wahhabism, Salafism, or neo-Salafism?

Salafism is an elusive term: it refers to complex religious doctrines but also to social organizations operating in specific contexts. Salafism is usually defined only in doctrinal terms in political and security literature: Salafis are Muslims who wish to anchor their beliefs and views in the practice of the first generations of Muslims (al-salaf al-salih) as captured in the Qur’an and the Hadith (Duderija 2011, 36). Because Muslims generally emulate the example of the prophet and of righteous forefathers, many could claim to be Salafis in this sense – a fact that makes it harder to deal with ‘Salafism’. In modern times, Salafism has become a contested term endowed with very different meanings: there is the ‘modernist’ Salafism of Islamic reformers of the early 20^th century concerned with social and political change as much as with religious reform, and the ‘purist’ Salafism of the Sheiks of the second half of 20^th century concerned more with the purity of belief and ritual practice than with national politics (Lauzière 2016, 4–7; Griffel 2015).

Two developments were formative for the most recent transformations of Salafism: the Saudi mission and transnational doctrinal development. The Saudi Kingdom developed a Salafi state doctrine which is sometimes called ‘Wahhabism’ due to the al-Saud family’s historical alliance with the Wahhabi reformist movement. Saudi pan-Islam rejects innovations in doctrine (bid’a), is loyal to one of the Sunni law schools (madhhab), and tends to literalism and isolation from other faiths and sects. Since the 1960s, Saudi Arabia has massively exported this purist Islamic perspective and has helped spread one type of Salafi theology and practice.

By the 1980s, Salafism developed into a comprehensive manhaj: a transnational religious ‘method’ guiding all facets of a Muslim’s existence: creed, worship, behaviour, education, social relations, politics, and so forth (Lauzière 2016, 217). For its separation from local practice and Islamic tradition in general, this ‘ex-culturated’ form of religious practice (sometimes called neo-Salafism) has been indifferent to national politics and averse to local Islamic institutions (Roy 2013; Meijer 2014). It is hardly a community or a movement, though, but rather a complex web of independent groups organized around Salafi sheikhs who engage in a specific type of religious discourse and endeavour. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, parts of the complex web of Islamic scholars, sheikhs, and communities have entered politics in the form of Salafi political parties, endowments, and solidarity networks. Radical groups have proliferated in relation to various jihadi calls. The most radical groups who did not shun from takfir – declaring some Muslims ‘apostates’ – have been labelled takfiris by their opponents.

Salafism is a complex and dynamic feature of Islam’s modern transformations; most overarching concepts are contested external descriptions. Salafism itself, as much as ‘Salafi jihad’, is ‘a constructed category, perpetuated in the discourse of academics, think tank consultants, politicians, policymakers, terror experts, and journalists’ (Al-Rasheed 2008, 8). It is not an actors’ concept: ‘Salafis’ would not typically identify themselves as such, preferring instead to speak of themselves as Muslims or Sunnis. The terms ‘Salafi’ and ‘Wahhabi’ are rarely used by Islamic institutions in Bosnia too, and when they get used, they are employed in a qualified way.

Ahmet Alibašić, professor at the Sarajevo Faculty of Islamic Studies, argued that calling Muslim extremists ‘Wahhabis’ or ‘Salafis’ would be unprecise. He spoke of ‘militants’ defined by their ‘controversial’ (sporni) features, which he listed: ‘religious zeal and puritanism, literalism and disrespect for the madhhab, propensity to self-initiative … and exclusivity towards different opinions’ (Alibašić 2015). Yet he deemed problematic only those extremist militant groups who declare other Muslims apostates (engage in ‘tekfir’) and who justify violence as a means to achieve their goals (Alibašić 2010). Alibašić called them ‘neo-kharijites’, referring to an early rejectionist sect. Muhamed Jusić, a Bosnian theologian, did use the terms ‘Salafis’ or ‘Islamic traditionalists’, but he pointed to the distinctions within the larger family and also to Salafi internal evolution: ‘Although the Salafis are perceived as a single and monolithic community, today they are one of the Islamist movements with the largest number of conflicting factions, most of which have their own vision of the Islamization of the world and of the societies in which they operate. One thing they all have in common is that they consider themselves the only consistent followers of the Sunna and their interpretation of the Islamic tradition to be the only valid one’ (Jusić 2015, 24).

What makes some aspects of Salafism problematic is not necessarily their doctrinal and ritual orientation but the exclusive and aggressive stance of certain Salafis towards local Islamic practice and institutions. This highlights the greater validity of the relational definition of Salafism over the ideological or doctrinal one: what sets Salafis apart is their relations to other local Muslims, rather than their beliefs and references. The Bosnian IC has indeed recently used the following terms to refer to ‘Salafis’: ‘extra-institutional interpretations of Islam’, ‘Salafi movement’ (selefijski pokret), and ‘members of Salafi orientation’ (Subašić 2019).

Hence, in order not to perpetuate generalizing descriptors when speaking about Islamic militants, it is advisable to avoid simple doctrinal markers and define the object of study as a social phenomenon or a social movement. If Salafism in the Balkans is related to the large Salafi family by many aspects of doctrine and method, yet its social and religious reality is in fact very specific: Balkan Salafis are small but growing proselytizing communities with little intellectual capacity (as shown below) but with a strong community appeal.

As a social phenomenon, the communities are better described by the term neo-Salafism – which will be used throughout this text in the following sense, borrowing from J. Abdelhalim’s conceptualization of Egyptian neo-Salafis (Abdelhalim 2017). She refers to a contemporary social movement of lower classes gathered around lay preachers and lesser thinkers who are scriptural in doctrine and reject modernity and rationality, which fits most Bosnian neo-Salafis. Like the British Salafis in S. Hamid’s description (Hamid 2016, 50–52), Balkan neo-Salafis are concerned with ‘purity of belief, body, and interactions’. Their lives revolve around pure ritual praxis and religious education, and knowledge of the hadith literature. They also ‘defer to and constantly reference the senior scholars of Saudi Arabia’ (Hamid 2016, 54). In terms of the social movement typology of Q. Wiktorowicz, Bosnian neo-Salafis would be activist Salafis, with no presence of purist or intellectual Salafism and with a mere shadow of jihadi Salafism (Wiktorowicz 2006). But like other neo-Salafis, they are ‘able to empower individuals by providing a universal alternative model of truth and social action’ (Meijer 2014, 13)

The following chapters attempt to present Bosnian neo-Salafism outside of the security framing. Chapter 2 will address the assumption of ‘Salafi continuity’ with the wartime volunteers by reconstructing the development of various neo-Salafi communities from 1993–2016. Chapter 3 will question the assumption of a ‘Salafi community’ opposed to local, moderate Islam by offering a typology of contemporary neo-Salafi actors based on their relationship with the Bosnian Islamic establishment.

2. Four phases of organized neo-Salafism

If proselytizing Islamic militancy has retained some doctrinal core, its social organization, authority structure, funding, and social strategies have changed considerably over the past 20 years. The following four categories – mujahideen, Wahhabis, Salafis, and daije – will help structure the evolution of Bosnian neo-Salafis according to the way the various organizational forms were perceived and named, and eventually, according to the way neo-Salafis later presented themselves.

a. ‘Mudžahedini’ (1992–1995)

Both Bosnian and foreign narratives on Wahhabism/Salafism in Bosnia usually start in 1992 with the arrival of foreign war volunteers, the mujahideen (Jusić 2010, 38) – even if, as will be shown in the next chapter, neo-Salafism as a doctrinal orientation could be traced back also to Bosnians returning from their studies in the Arab world in the 1980s (Bougarel 2018, 101–102).

Several thousand Muslim volunteers have joined the Bosnian army to lend a hand to the defence of Bosnian Muslims against Serb and Croat nationalist aggression throughout the four years of war (Li 2019, 2). They included Arabs, South Asians, Western converts, etc. Most have joined a religious unit, el-Mudžahid, in which several hundred volunteers served at a time alongside Bosnians under the secular command of the Bosnian army.⁷ If the significance of volunteer mujahideen was minor in military terms, their presence was consequential in religious terms because of the proselytist tendencies of some of them. The proselytists have imposed a religious order: five daily prayers, a ban on alcohol and smoking, and hostility to Sufi practices, frequent in other Bosnian religious units. Because they considered Bosnians Muslims in need of a mission, they set up field madrasas and taught Bosnian unit members Islam in a crash course (Li 2019, 60; Hečimović 2001, 2006).

Several missionaries have stayed over after 1995; among them was Imad el-Misri, ‘the main ideological authority of the el-Mudžahid battalion’ (Azinovic et al. 2012, 90). The latter’s booklet, ‘Notions That We Need to Correct’, became emblematic of the proselytizing intentions of the ‘Wahhabis’. In the introduction to the text, the author listed several features of Bosnian Muslim practice that he considered un-Islamic and in need of rectification, such as collective outdoor prayers, religious songs (mevluds), praying at tombs, the beginning of Ramadan, etc.⁸ The booklet has become a symbol of Wahhabi proselytism in retrospect, as it was mentioned and profusely quoted by most writers on Bosnian Salafism (Kohlmann 2004, 118; Bečirević 2016b, 40–44). In an ethnographic reconstruction of various Arab volunteers’ lives, Darryl Li has shown that other books, a prophet’s biography and miraculous war stories, served as handbooks at the time and that Imad Misri’s text was, in fact, an introduction to a practical compendium of short prayers for the battlefield (Li 2019, 53–56). The unit’s proselytism was otherwise kept under control by the fact that they fought within a multi-ethnic army for a secular national state (Jusić 2010, 30) and by the IC’s early insistence on the official Hanafi madhhab in Bosnia.⁹

b. ‘Vehabije’ (1995–2006)

After the end of the war, demobilized Bosnian members of the el-Mudžahid unit funded several Islamic youth centres, such as the Active Islamic Youth (AIO) and Furkan, and religious journals, such as Saff. At the time, many Islamic non-governmental organizations were settling down in Bosnia: charities, sects, and various international networks. AIO and Furkan were notable for their Islamic activism. In a nominally Muslim land, they were devoted to da’wa: to an Islamic mission with the explicit aim to draw people to the faith, to the ‘original Islam’ (izvorni islam) and to transform their adherents. One of the AIO leaders said in 1998: ‘The Islamic mission needs to be organised … We want to change people.’¹⁰

The groups have opened chapters in several cities and held regular Islamic lectures, sharia courses, sports activities and tribunes for local and international speakers – including Imad el-Masri, the Saudi Salafi Salman el-Awda, and professors from the Islamic Pedagogical Academy in Zenica. According to Mohamed Jusić, Islamic militants gradually ceased to see themselves as mujahideen but became activists working towards a peaceful Islamization of society by Islamic mission (da’wa). Their main outlet, the magazine Saff, started to publish reformist Salafi ideas of Saudi Sahwa. Hence internal and external factors progressively led to a little-noticed liberalization and ‘dejihadisation’ of the ‘Wahhabis’ (Jusić 2010,15).

When the War on Terror broke out after 2001, the public and the state began to suspect the ‘Wahhabi’ activists of extremist leanings. Due to the anti-terrorist policies of Bosnia and its international supervisors, Arab charities that supported the organizations had to close operations in Bosnia, and Furkan and AIO eventually ceased working (Merdjanova 2013, 157). Many former mujahideen were taken their Bosnian passports and/or were handed over to countries where they were prosecuted. As Wahhabism was becoming a matter of public concern and the term vehabije (Wahhabis) started to be widely used, the proselytizing movement linked to after-war militancy was, in fact, moderating its views.

c. ‘Selefije’: a parallel Salafi community (2007–2014)

The change after 2001 gradually brought most of the Islamic youth activism linked to war veterans to an end. New neo-Salafi communities with a different organizational and leadership structure appeared by the mid-2000s. The suspicion against vehabije pushed some to withdraw to smaller communities. In 2001, the first veteran settlement in the central Bosnian village of Bočinja had to move camp. Several remote settlements were started as independent Salafi communities, such as Gornja Maoča. Also, new leaders appeared. Some were rogue Salafis who did not accept the ‘dejihadisation’ (Jusić 2010, 15), but others were students who started coming back from studies in the Arab world, mainly from Saudi Arabia. The new neo-Salafi leadership was exclusively Bosnian. The two principal leaders, Jusuf Barčić (a graduate of the University of Medina) and Nusret Imamović (a graduate from the UAE) were charismatic figures who set off an open revolt against the Islamic order of Bosnia.

This new generation of neo-Salafi militants has in fact left the bond of war solidarity with the Bosnian state behind and was ready to enter into intra-Muslim conflict (Hečimović 2001). They criticized the Bosnian practice of Islam, rejected democracy on openly pro-jihadi websites,¹¹ and in public speeches, led public campaigns of conversion to the ‘original Islam’ and mounted a direct challenge to the authority of the IC. In various places, neo-Salafis attempted to preach in the mosques, promote or impose their way of praying, or even take over mosques or dependencies in Mostar, Kojnic, Kalesija, etc. After an altercation with Jusuf Barčić, the main mosque in Sarajevo had to be locked in fear of being occupied by his followers. A vehement public reaction against the vehabije ensued.¹² The IC withstood the challenge to local imams all over Bosnia, often with the help of lay faithful who literally pushed the young challengers out of the mosques. The IC then adopted explicit ‘house rules’ in mosques, claiming authority by force of legal ownership of the premises. The militants went on to build independent religious communities. By 2013, there were at least a dozen small segregated conservative neo-Salafi communities operating in rural areas and outside of the IC.

When talking about the radicalization of Bosnian neo-Salafis, the reference is the period from 2009–2015, during which several radical preachers, rejected by the IC, built a parallel neo-Salafi network or community (džemat) that was linked to neo-Salafi groups in Austria, and that aired an explicitly political, anti-democratic stance. They have also acted aggressively and even violently in public (e.g., against a queer festival in 2008). Most violent episodes fall within those years, culminating with departures to Syria.

The Syrian war has precipitated the demise of the parallel Salafi community (džemat). Dozens left for Syria, along with their families. The Salafi džemat lost its leaders one by one: the religiously well-educated Jusuf Barčić died in a car accident in 2007; his successor, a former medresa student, Nusret Imamović, was arrested and released in 2010. He eventually left for Syria, taking with him many radical adherents. The last charismatic yet uneducated leader, Bilal Bosnić, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2014 for recruiting fighters for Syria. By 2014, a split occurred between supporters of ISIL and supporters of al-Nusra to the point of both groups proclaiming takfir on each other. Those radical takfiri positions were ended up discredited by the Syrian intra-Salafi infighting and open threats to Balkan Muslims in 2015 and to the reis himself in 2016.¹³ Eventually, the state intervened: Bosnia criminalized foreign fighting in 2014 and arrested the remaining recruiters and dozens of returnees from Syria.

The period of direct neo-Salafi challenge to Bosnia’s religious and political order lasted from 2006 and to around 2016. Salafi settlements have attracted public attention ever since the police intervention in 2010. Journalists and TV reporters started to enter the communities once their most radical members left. At this point, selefije became synonymous with secluded Muslim fundamentalists.

d. ‘Daije’: urban Islamic activism (2013–2020)

During the gradual demise of parallel Salafi structures, neo-Salafism has transformed in Bosnia for the third time. In 2010, the online activities of minber.ba, the central neo-Salafi website, have started activism on social media. A dozen other Bosnian websites and profiles with over 10 thousand likes appeared in the following five years. They were the online presence of a new neo-Salafi preacher scene that had developed without outside scrutiny.

The preachers call themselves daije (from du’ā: those engaging in da’wa) or teachers (predavači). They are all graduates from Arabian faculties of sharia, mostly from Medina, al-Qasim, and Riyad universities, and some from Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. There are two generations among the publicly lecturing preachers¹⁴ whose number is estimated to be three dozen (Bečirević 2016b, 44). Those born in the 1970s have mostly fought in the Bosnian army and left to study abroad after the war. Those are today’s leading neo-Salafi personalities. A younger generation, born in the 1980s and later, has not known Bosnia before the war and has studied in Saudi Arabia on scholarships.

Saudi graduates share a common professional destiny. Most were not formed in the Bosnian religious educational system (medresa or faculty) and have gained diplomas in specialized faculties abroad (mostly studying faculties of Islamic law, shari’a and fiqh, Qur’anic exegesis, tefsir, hadith science, or Islamic mission, da’wa, as mentioned in their biographies throughout webpages such as minber.ba). The Bosnian IC made an early decision to exclusively employ graduates from its own medresas¹⁵ as imams, and after 2004, only graduates of theology at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo. In the meantime, hundreds of Bosnians have graduated from Arabian universities. They keep coming back with a good command of Arabic, a religious self-assurance, and with contacts to charities, embassies, and investors who were willing to continue working with them in Europe.

Today, there are a dozen prominent Salafi preachers and several dozen minor ones. The most popular ones (Elvedin Pezić, Safet Kuduzović) regularly amass hundreds of listeners for ‘Islamic teachings’ take place in large municipal halls rented by neo-Salafi organizations. Apart from public spaces, the preaching circuit of minor daije takes place in the private rooms of Islamic NGOs. The lectures are advertised on special Facebook accounts, and hundreds of recordings are posted on neo-Salafi YouTube channels.

Besides the preachers and their online channels, a network of several dozen Islamic NGOs is the third pillar of a new urban neo-Salafi scene. There are around forty Islamic centres of a new kind,¹⁶ covering virtually all middle-sized to larger Bosnian towns. They no longer carry the title ‘Islamic’, as the first Islamic centres did. The IC has asserted its monopoly on Islamic education and has asked state authorities to deregister such non-official Islamic education centres.¹⁷ So neo-Salafi organizations carry neutral, local, or positive names instead: Oaza, Pozitiva, Fokus, Ponos (pride). They have neither transparent organizational structures nor religious leaders. The centres are led by laypeople, sometimes former ‘Wahhabi’ activists, and function as close-knit proselytizing communities. They invite preachers to give lectures once to four times a month. Apart from continuous adult education events, the bigger groups include female groups, youth groups, charity initiatives (active especially during Ramadan), websites, and social media accounts. Some are more closely related to a specific daija, but most regularly invite various preachers.

There is no available information about the inner workings and the funding of the urban neo-Salafi scene. Yet, there is clearly a symbiosis between the daije who provide the content and the NGOs who take care of the public, the locations, and the logistics. The daije – who are not known to be employed anywhere – are most likely financed by Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Bosnia. Although there is no public evidence, this type of financing is taken for granted by security analysts (Bečirević 2016b, 45). It also seems to be a common praxis for Saudi Arabia to offer stipends to graduates of Saudi sharia faculties worldwide for missionary projects in their home countries.¹⁸

Today, urban neo-Salafism is the most influential and most dynamic form of organized Islamic militancy. Urban neo-Salafis have visibly evolved: they have mastered public communication, online presence, and proselytism to mostly young people. In some respects, they follow the path of the earlier militants: they expand the Islamic mission and build a parallel Islamic network in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Neo-Salafi preachers do not lecture in mosques and are usually not known to belong to an official džemat, but they do attend IC Friday prayers, especially in the few large Saudi-financed mosques. They also maintain links with the Serbian and Montenegrin Sandjak and with the European diaspora. What distinguishes the newer neo-Salafi scene from the former activists and parallel communities is that they also seek to reach a broader, non-Salafi public, and notably, their opposition to the IC has gradually weakened. Instead, the neo-Salafis are in the process of integrating, in indirect ways, Bosnia’s Islamic institutions. They so represent an inner challenge rather than an exterior threat.

Table

Timeline	Bosnian titles	Type of actors	Type of activism	Strategy
1980s – now	profesori	IPF professors in Zenica and Bihać	religious authority institutional education	alternative institutional authority
1993–1995	mudžahedini	foreign war volunteers	war medresas	indoctrination
1995–2003	vehabije	Islamic activists	Islamic centres: lectures, media, youth work	proselytism
2001–2013	selefije, selefijska zajednica, paradžemati	segregarionist neo-Salafis	isolated settlements, parallel community; international networks; media activism	opposition to the IC; segregation; radicalization; jihad
2010–2016	daije + alimi prevavači islamske NVO	neo-salafi preachers neo-Salafi mainstream vs. radical fringe urban neo-Salafi communities and NGOs	lecture circuit; religious authority; adult education; community building; charity; empowerment; media activism	integrationist neo-Salafis: competition and cooperation

3. From conflict to competition

The transformations of organized Wahhabi/Salafi/neo-Salafi groups seem to reflect a gradual normalization of globalized Islamic activism within the Bosnian Islamic order. The recent attempt to reaffirm the authority of the Bosnian Islamic community over the remnants of parallel communities has shown both the depth of this normalization process and its limits. Looking at the positions that various neo-Salafi groups adopt in relation to the Islamic community allows us to elaborate a typology of neo-Salafi groups and analyse in detail the nature of competition between the Islamic establishment and various neo-Salafis.

a. Differentiation of the neo-Salafi scene

In 2016, there was a moment in which neo-Salafi segregated communities were especially debated in the public discourse. In early 2016, after the violent episodes in 2015 (murders in Zvornik and Rajlovac) and the Paris attacks, the IC has moved to publicly summon so-called ‘paradžemats’ to reintegrate the IC or face treatment by security agencies. Such an unprecedented assertion of power by the IC has shed some light on the relations between the neo-Salafi scene and the IC and has also brought out the contours of the inner structuring of the neo-Salafi scene. According to their role in this 2916 integration process, three types of neo-Salafi organizations could be distinguished: the paradžemati, urban neo-Salafi mainstream, and the neo-Salafi fringe.

Paradžemats

The term paradžemats (parallel communities) refers to all groups that carry out the Islamic ritual, especially the Friday prayer and religious education, outside of IC sanctioned mosques. They include some small sects such as the ahmadis, independent Sufi communities and the proper ‘paradžemats’ – the segregationist neo-Salafis. In 2016, those were the remainders of the parallel communities established in the early 2000s, still operating in seclusion, albeit now without leadership and without radical militancy. The IC has identified 64 of them. Around half of them have agreed to recognize the IC’s religious monopoly and accept an IC imam to lead their Friday prayer and weekend religion classes. A dozen have refused the ultimatum, have asked to be treated as equals, and have organized themselves into a coordination of independent džemats.¹⁹ Those groups had been part of the radical Nusret Imamović network before 2013. Now their religiously uneducated leaders publicly reject violence but continue to criticize the IC for sharia shortcomings.

In 2016, these paradžemats were publicly called selefijske zajednice – Salafi communities. For all the media attention they caused in 2016, those segregationist džemats represent a very slim margin of the neo-Salafi scene. The urban activists – preachers and NGOs – were passed over in silence. The reason is that groups with a history of radicalization better fit the figure of the public enemy. The urban neo-Salafis, on the other hand, are increasingly non-confrontational and patriotic.

Urban neo-Salafi activist groups

Unlike the defiant paradžemats, the urban scene has refrained from publicly challenging the state, the constitution, or the IC and has not intervened on behalf of the segregationist paradžemats. The activist groups have sought recognition and partnership from local administrations, political parties, and other Islamic organizations – if not by the IC itself. In recent years, they have achieved a broad degree of acceptance. Tuzla’s Oaza has taken pride in inviting local Bosniak politicians to its VIP iftar that was presented in a promotional video²⁰; other groups receive punctual funding from municipalities.²¹ They often legitimize themselves by moderate language and humanitarian activities.

Major urban neo-Salafis groups have established themselves the civic Islamic scene. Several are members of the Coordination of Bosniak NGOs (BNVO). Established in 2013, the Coordination gathers various Muslim NGOs²² – from citizen groups (e.g., Mothers of Srebrenica) to former Wahhabis (Saff), former Muslim brothers (Mladi Muslimani) to neo-Salafi groups (Oaza, Put znanja, OKC etc.), and neo-Salafi personalities of a ‘religious-national-patriotic character’ (Karčić, Subašić 2018, 147).

Two personalities stand out among the BNVO leadership by their biography of Islamic militancy and role in the Islamic establishment: Nezim Halilović Muderris and Abdusamed Bušatlić. Nezim Halilović is a general and a war hero, a prominent member of the IC who used to be charged with the hajj. He is also the Friday preacher of a Saudi-built mosque known to be one of the rare mosques attracting neo-Salafis in Sarajevo. A. Bušatlić, an editor of Saff, is a former el-Mudžahid fighter and AIO preacher. He is part of the first generation of Islamic militants who have since ‘matured’ (in his words) away from radicalism and towards paying public respect to the IC.²³ Like Bušatlić, many former Islamic militants have moderated their wishes to Islamize the society or have left the neo-Salafi scene altogether. Another former AIO activist, Sanin Musa, has become an independent daija with political ambitions, professing respect for the IC and a patriotic conservative outlook.²⁴

Hence urban neo-Salafis have become a part of local urban communities and a segment of the patriotic or nationalist civil society. Their public presence is at times problematized and even ridiculed. Several neo-Salafi NGOs have, for example, organized a largely peaceful protest march ahead of Sarajevo’s first gay pride in 2019. Their half-witted slogans have caused widespread mockery on social media.²⁵ But they are broadly accepted as part of the Islamic scene.

If there is hardly any opposition between neo-Salafi and Bosniak patriotic civil society, until recently there was a rigid distance between the neo-Salafis and the IC. But these relations have entered a period of thaw as well. During the paradžemat ultimatum, the most senior neo-Salafi preacher, Safet Kuduzović, has appeared in IC’s Radio BIR radio station and has publicly supported the IC. In a lengthy interview, he also stated that he welcomed ‘the opened dialogue and cooperation between the IC and Bosniak CSOs’ and that ‘the preachers neither wish, nor can destroy the Islamic community’.²⁶ Even the most popular preacher, Elvedin Pezić, had expressed cautious support for the IC’s monopolistic move (Pezić 2017, 134–136). Both have called upon the IC to integrate the paradžemats and to open up to the neo-Salafi NGOs.

Neo-Salafi fringe

Kuduzović’s and Pezić’s support for the IC stirred the preachers’ scene. For his gesture towards the authorities, Kuduzović was criticized by more political neo-Salafis who gather around the preacher Zijad Ljakić (and on the radical website putvjernika.com) for doing a ‘Salafi da’wa to the liking of the IC.’²⁷ The relation to the institutional Islam had caused a deep split among the preachers already in 2015. When reis Husein Kavazović decided to honour the Paris Bataclan victims of jihadi terrorism in November 2015 by postponing the Friday prayer by five minutes, Zijad Ljakić published a text in which he implied that this was kufr (apostasy).²⁸ According to Ljakić’s account, other preachers from minber.ba and related NGOs then disinvited and boycotted him in reaction to his exaggerated act of takfir.²⁹ He felt marginalized and founded a separate group with his followers. This event has shown that the neo-Salafi scene is coordinated (by the Minber preachers) and that a neo-Salafi apolitical mainstream has consolidated against a political fringe.

The IC shuns a direct acknowledgement of the neo-Salafi scene for fear of giving it recognition,³⁰ and acts to maintain its interpretive and administrative monopoly (Hesova forthcoming). Yet, the IC has since differentiated between the various kinds of challengers. In a public conference that the IC had organized in 2017 to debate religious challenges, a distinction was made between groups that reject the ‘Islamic tradition of the Bosniaks’ altogether and those who accept it (along with a recognition of the IC) with reservations. The latter were called integrationists (‘integrativni’, Karčić, Subašić 2019, 162). Since 2016, public debates have shown that almost all neo-Salafis are integrationist, except for a handful of segregationist groups around istina.ba, Zijad Ljakić and putvjernika.com.

The appearance of an apolitical mainstream is possibly related to the radicalization of the fringe around 2013 and to the more proactive stance of the Bosnian state and the IC. Their ultraconservative practice of Islam now appears acceptable provided they acknowledge the role of the IC in organizing religious life in Bosnia and refrain from challenging the religious and political order. Several leading daija, especially S. Kuduzović, have a history of condoning violence and partnership with the takfiris.³¹ He is said to have publicly admitted to having toned down his discourse. But there is another reason for the gradual acceptance of neo-Salafism: their sheer success. Non-confrontational urban proselytism proved to be a better growth strategy than the earlier ideological opposition. If the last mutation of the neo-Salafi movement has ceased to openly challenge to the Islamic establishment, it has come to represent an even more serious competition.

b. Neo-Salafi competition to the establishment

According to the above typology, neo-Salafi groups have evolved from ‘challengers’ to ‘segregationist’ and eventually to ‘integrationists.’ The current absence of an open challenge to the Islamic establishment does not mean that neo-Salafis vow an unreserved acceptance of Bosnia’s religious order. In fact, the preachers and urban Islamic activists build an alternative Islamic scene that they consider more legitimate than the official establishment. They openly compete with the IC in terms of popularity, adult education, and religious authority. Only recently has the IC openly acknowledged this competition and attempted to respond to it using similar means.

‘Daije’: responding to religious demand

The preachers are highly popular due to an early professionalized and prolific handling of the internet. In the usage of social media and internet platforms, they outperform – by far – any other Islamic actor or organization. Star preachers have prevalent personal Facebook accounts and YouTube channels,³² to the point of being prime Bosniak influencers.³³ The neo-Salafi scene disposes of dozens of well-maintained websites and profiles with a substantial production of articles on religion, everyday life, and psychological counselling, with translated texts, news, and – last but not least – advertisement of events. Postings get profusely reposted on websites and profiles of local NGOs.

If neo-Salafis thrive in the virtual world, they are equally popular offline. Regular public lectures quickly fill the largest municipal cultural venues, such as the secular Bosnian cultural centres in Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Zenica.³⁴ Even in smaller cities, neo-Salafi lectures draw crowds. Star preachers command respect and sympathy beyond their followers. Elvedin Pezić, for example, regularly preaches outside the neo-Salafi lecture circuit – that is, on the invitation of local youth organizations. In one such event in Vitez, local student organizers welcomed Pezić as a representative of ‘traditional Islam.’³⁵

Neo-Salafis have come to fill a gap in adult religious education, adult counselling, and community building. The official Islamic community holds weekend children’s religion classes (mektebs) and trains religion teachers for schools (muallims). But there is little religious activity for young adults. For Bosniaks, whose nationality is linked to religion, questions relating to identity, daily practice, social norms, personal models, and global issues involve religion. According to a Sarajevo imam, today’s demand for religious services vastly exceeded the usual imam’s role, the provision of Friday prayers, children’s education, and funeral services.³⁶ While the demands on imams increase, they still need to take care of a whole džemat, including the elders, children, administrative issues, etc. Various other Islamic actors offer answers and community life: there are dozens of Sufi lodges, various activist groups, women circles, social networks around charismatic personalities, etc.

Unlike the ‘generalist’ mission of the imams, neo-Salafis have apparently specialized in youth activization and adult counselling. They have made use of their financial, communicational, and ideological resources and succeeded in massively filling the gap (Alibašić 2015), especially in the periphery (Turčalo, Veljan 2018). Having to cater to a largely homogenous ‘target group’ – mostly young urban adults, they had free hands to offer adjusted services. They have offered responses to contemporary Islamic identity and social norms from a perspective informed by the Saudi-exported pan-Islam. Above all, they offered youth activities, such as psychological support, marriage counselling, and sometimes sports, computer literacy, and Arabic, but above all, religious lectures. Neo-Salafis also provide close community ties, a social identity expressed in a specific dress code, solidarity acts, social and verbal behaviour, and (masculine) role models – all channels of personal empowerment. The IC has recently established a vast network of youth coordinators (Mreža mladih) who organize activities and invite popular IC preachers – in an apparent attempt to catch up with the neo-Salafi competition.

‘Alimi’: claiming religious authority

Recently, Bosnian neo-Salafi preachers have extended their religious role from adult education and community organizing to claim religious authority. Three leading preachers have published compendia of their legal opinions (Zijad Ljakić already in 2010, Elvedin Pezić in 2017; Safet Kuduzović in 2018).³⁷ Recognizing each other’s authority, the three have called themselves alimi or scholars (from Ar. ‘alim, pl. ‘ulama) and have set up a virtual Islamic academy: Minber.ba. They have thus presented themselves as independent sources of religious discourse, especially in doctrine (akida) or sharia interpretation (fikh). Based mainly on the official Saudi sources (like sheikh Bin Baz and the Saudi fatwa authority) and global neo-Salafi authorities (Sheikh Qaradawi), they have been very productive in publishing legal opinions (fatwas) on issues ranging from theology to dating on Facebook on dedicated websites. By publishing their internet fatwas, they single-handedly claim a religious authority that was denied to them by the IC. Their fatwa output exceeded by far that of the IC (Begović 2018).

In terms of method, they seem to largely translate Saudi sources and use simple reasoning based on extensive quoting of hadiths – thus spreading literalism and the centrality of the Hadith, instead of independent rational reasoning (ijtihad) in Bosnian theological debates. In terms of social norms, they have promoted strict Saudi norms, such as total segregation of the sexes, an explicit ban on any type of dating before marriage (even virtual or virtuous), the wife’s full submission to the husband, and polygamy. Recent fatwas mostly avoid political issues, but they nevertheless create a reality of mental segregation. In their fatwas, there is no mention of the multicultural, modern, and European Bosnia. Other religions, sects, or nationalities, are at best marginalized, rejected (Shia), avoided, or proselytized to (Christians). At worst, these groups are treated as ‘infidels’ – as is the case of the radical maverick preacher, Zijad Ljakić.

The IC does not see the preachers as a theological competition just yet – they are considered minor or too narrowly educated in Saudi disciplines to produce complex reasoning. Some have been subject to ridicule – e.g., Safet Kuduzović, for his position on women’s shariatic incompetence to travel as far as Zenica.³⁸ But their claim on religious authority meets with their popular appeal, and also with reservations that some faithful may have regarding the centralized and bureaucratic Islamic community that has recently acknowledged high-reaching corruption within its ranks.³⁹ Judging from visits in peripheral mosques, where religious books are commonly held on display, Salafi literature circulates, as much as free books by Fethullah Gülen circulated some 10 years ago. Literature on practical issues such as marriage, family conduct, vices, and sins is almost invariably of neo-Salafi provenience – but not from neo-Salafi preachers.

c. Revivalist neo-Salafism

The most widespread literature is books on sharia rules for marriage and family life, and practical praying booklets by professors from Islamic Pedagogical Faculties (IPF) in Zenica and Bihać. Both were founded during and right after the war as pedagogical academies to form teachers for the newly introduced religion classes in schools. They were started by a broad range of local imams, several of whom returned from studying in the Arab world in the 1980s. This older generation of foreign graduates who returned with a conservative and activist orientation was also called neo-Salafi by Xavier Bougarel (Bougarel 2018, 101), well before the appearance of neo-Salafism in Bosnia in the 2000s. For several Bosnian observers, those Yugoslav-era students represented an early channel through which globalized, conservative forms of Islamic revivalism entered Bosnia, even before the war volunteers (Hečimović 2010). Prominent IPF professors such as Zuhdija Adilović and Šukrija Ramić have preached for the Islamic activist scene in the 1990s.⁴⁰ Some had come into conflict with the IC hierarchy when the IC was controlled by politicized nationalist clerics. Hence the IPF in Zenica and later the IPF in Bihać were developed as independent projects that were subsequently incorporated into the IC and state educational system. But unlike activist neo-Salafis, the IPF professors are firmly established within the IC structures.

Zenica, in particular, has developed into an alternative centre of Islamic publishing and education, which institutionalized a revivalist form of conservativism. Zenica professors have maintained a conservative, practical, and Hadith-oriented approach to Islam intended to distinguish their ‘religious’ education from the (in critical words of a leading professor) ‘orientalist’ Faculty of Islamic theology in Sarajevo.⁴¹ The IPF professors have widely published on fiqh and on matters of Islamic practice (e.g., family, marriage, black magic, and vices). It is to them that the neo-Salafis often refer to, by mentioning them as an authority, by distributing their books or leaflets or by inviting them for lectures.

In terms of social norms and religious conservativism, there is not much difference between some IPF professors and the neo-Salafis. Both are revivalists in the sense of putting a strict Islamic practice at the centre of personal and social life.⁴² The difference is sectarian and ‘political.’ Unlike the neo-Salafi movement, the IPF professors do not actively reject Shias or Sufis. Unlike the preachers, the IPF professors have never attacked or challenged the IC, even if they publish fatwas that ‘contradicted those issued in Preporod [the IC’s biweekly]’ (Alibašić 2003, 18). Some sit on the IC’s advisory committees, some developed an international carrier, others have moved on to teach in Sarajevo. Hence there is an authoritative revivalist, neo-Salafi current within the Islamic establishment, not just outside of it. Overlooking this fact creates a wrong impression that neo-Salafism is a special, foreign phenomenon. In fact, it is a general feature of modern Islam.

4. Conclusion: towards an integrated Salafism

The analysis of neo-Salafi transformation and the suggested typology of the various forms of Bosnian neo-Salafism have shown the following: First, contrary to the implicit assumptions in the security framing, there is no single ‘Salafi community’ in Bosnia, but evolving forms of a neo-Salafi organization with changing authority structures and discursive and social strategies. Secondly, personal and even doctrinal continuity with foreign fighters of the 1990s is fading, if existent at all; today’s neo-Salafis preachers are mostly recent Bosniak graduates from Saudi universities, intent on building a parallel Islamic scene in a non-confrontational way and whose place in the Bosnian Islamic landscape has gradually normalized.

Thirdly, current neo-Salafis do not represent an ideological threat (except for marginal takfiris, who were active roughly from 2005–2015) and are not treated as ideological opponents. Instead, they have become competitors to the IC when it comes to attracting youth and claiming interpretative authority. Earlier neo-Salafi communities have indeed presented a threat: they opposed (sometimes violently) the IC’s monopoly on centrally organizing religious life in Bosnia. But they lost, were marginalized, and have ‘radicalised’ in seclusion.

Fourthly, the dividing line between the Islamic mainstream and neo-Salafism is not primarily ideological, but political. One reason is that the IC has always included conservative revivalist neo-Salafis who accepted its religious authority. Recently, the Bosnian Islamic establishment (media, NGOs scene, conservative current in the IC) has offered a measure of recognition to mainstream neo-Salafis in exchange for tacit respect of the IC’s national, if not religious, role. This has gradually marginalized segregationist neo-Salafis. Today, there is more competition than conflict between the IC and the neo-Salafis, as a result of changing patterns of religiosity. By offering an ex-cultured, empowering form of religious organization and practice, neo-Salafis cater to the needs of the young especially. The IC has responded by trying to fill the gap with its own activism.

Finally, an opposition between tolerant and moderate Bosnian Islam and imported radical Salafism does not reflect the complex dynamics between neo-Salafi challengers and the IC establishment. Neo-Salafism has, in various forms, been or has become (at least tacitly) part of the plural Bosnian establishment. The distinction between moderate and radical is, in fact, a tool in the broader competition. The idea of a moderate, tolerant, European Islam (Šuško 2017) has been developed in part in response to the challenges of neo-Salafism, as in the recently coined phrase ‘Islamic tradition of the Bosniaks’ (Hesova 2019). The idea of a local Islamic practice that reflects normative religious sources and the national historical experience has served as a discursive platform that has included certain elements (Sufis, mainstream neo-Salafis) and excluded others (tekfiris).

In conclusion, the securitized perspective reflects neither the normalization of Bosnian neo-Salafism nor its real risks: By becoming part of the Islamic order, neo-Salafis will possibly inflect Bosnian interpretive and social practices towards their conservative, literalist, and ex-cultured ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research has been supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ [No.CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734].

Notes on contributors

Zora Hesová

Zora Hesová is assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. Zora works on religion in contemporary politics and on Islamic intellectual tradition. She has published on various aspects of the Islam in the Balkans, on culture wars in Central European politics and on the philosophy of al-Ghazali.

Notes

1. Radio Free Europe, 18. 12. 2006, rferl.org/a/1073513.html

2. Spiegel: ‘Fundamentalist Islam Finds Fertile Ground in Bosnia’, 09.11.2007, spiegel.de/international/europe/balkan-mujahedeens-fundamentalist-islam-finds-fertile-ground-in-bosnia-a-516214.html.

3. See Expres.cz, expres.cz/zpravy/zeman-je-evropsky-byrokrat-a-islamofob.A171007_222421_dx-zpravy_neos, Aljazeera, 18. 11. 2019, aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/french-president-calls-bosnia-ticking-time-bomb-191108053518237.html.

4. Concepts used by Sebastian Kurz in 2019, see Austrian government’s website: bmeia.gv.at/en/the-ministry/news/minister-for-foreign-affairs-sebastian-kurz-met-with-state-leaders-in-bosnia-herzegovina-and-montenegro/.

5. Rasim Delić, a Bosnian army chief of staff, was sentenced to three years in prison by ICTY for failure to prevent the killing of captured soldiers in 1995 at the hands of the mujahideen in 2008.

6. The second fatwa by the new Bosnian reis has affirmed the need to follow the Hanafi madhhab – and not Hanbali prayer rites common among foreign volunteers, in 1993.

7. As there are no reliable numbers, reasonable estimates range from 600–700 (Karčić 2010) to „several „thousands“ (Li 2019), although there we probably just “hundreds“ volunteers at a time.

8. ‘Shvatanja koje trebamo ispraviti’ was originally published in Bosnian 1993 by a Kuwaiti organization (Organizacija preporoda islamske tradicije Kuvajt), and a later republished by the Salafi group Švedska davetska organizacija, the text of which is still available at: https://www.scribd.com/doc/179027450/Shvatanja-Koja-Trebamo-Ispraviti)

9. A further radicalization did not occur, according to Jusić (2010): an actual radical Jihadi, Abu Hamza el Misri, was rejected from the unit.

10. Dženana Karup, ‘Kur’an je nas ustav [Quran is out constitution],’ Dani, 30.3.1998.

11. Most radical websites, such as putvjernika.com, kelimetulhaqq.net, appeared at this time and were usually hosted abroad.

12. Rešid Hafizović, Oslobodjenje 16.11.2006: ‘Oni dolaze po našu djecu’.

13. Maja Nikolić, ‘Long distance IS Threat Roils Bosnia, Top Islamic Cleric,’ RFE/RL, February 24, 2016.

14. Their CVs are available on neo-Salafi websites. There are a dozen CVs on minber.ba and some 50 on mumin.ba.

15. IC’s secondary schools combining state curriculum and Islamic studies.

16. See Detektor.ba, 16. 12. 2019: detektor.ba/politicka-i-finansijska-podrska-za-organiziranje-predavanja-selefijskih-daija/.

17. As happened with a neo-Salafi led Dar ul-quran in Mostar in 2013. The group, under the leadership of the daija Dževad Gološ, had to change its name and reregister under ‘Centar za Edukaciju Emanet’.

18. Lecture of prof. R. Lohlker in Prague on 15 November 2019, dealing with the Saudi cables.

19. The coordination gathers half a dozen independent džemats (Kula Tuzla, Gornja Maoča, Rahić, Ošve, Zavidoviči, Gračanica, Deliči) and published its reports on the dealings with the IC on https://istina.ba/saopstenje-koordinacije-nezavisnih-dzemata/.

20. Viewed by the author in 2018 during a lecture.

21. See Detektor.ba, 16. 12. 2019: http://detektor.ba/politicka-i-finansijska-podrska-za-organiziranje-predavanja-selefijskih-daija/.

22. For the list of members: http://bosnjaci.net/prilog.php?pid=51541

23. Saff.ba, 28. 3. 204: saff.ba/islamska-tradicija-bosnjaka-izmedu-pristrasnosti-fanatizma-slijepog-slijedenja-nekritickog-stava-i-konstruktivnog-naucno-akademskog-dijaloga/.

24. Interview on N1 Pressing with Šacir Filandra, 29.2.2016, youtube.com/watch?v = UioytcrASms.

25. In 2014, Safet Kuduzović’s videos have become viral outside of neo-Salafi community for a similar reason – their topic was ‘Can a man sleep with two women at the same time?’ (172,000 views) and ‘May a women travel alone to Zenica’? (48,000 views). See: youtube.com/watch?v = fANbIaAWPXs.

26. Radio Bir, 15. 2. 2016: http://bir.ba/index.php/vijesti/bih/item/2655-dr-safet-kuduzovic-omladina-ne-smije-provocirati-nase-starije-dzematlije-niko-nema-pravo-remetiti-javni-red-ni-u-dzamiji-ni–izvan-nje.

27. Put vjernika, 5. 1. 2017: http://putvjernika.com/selefijska-dava-po-okusu-islamske-zajednice/.

28. Preporod, 3. 2. 2017: http://preporod.com/index.php/sve-vijesti/drustvo/aktuelno/item/6280-ofanziva-na-islam-u-bosni.

29. The original text on zijadljakic.com has disappeared but excerpts are still posted on: https://putvjernika.com/selefijska-dava-po-okusu-islamske-zajednice/.

30. Hence the refusal to meet with the coordination of the independent džemats in 2016 and to use the term Salafis.

31. e.g. On the issue of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. See Bečirević.

32. Elvedin Pezić’s profile had 222,000 likes and 297,000 followers in June 2021, while the most popular IC imam Muhamed Velić has 76,000 followers and reis Kavazović has 18,000 followers.

33. Detektor.ba, 8. 11. 2019: http://detektor.ba/baza-pratilaca-selefijskih-predavaca-izmedju-ljudskih-prava-i-iskljucivosti/.

34. In central Sarajevo and Zenica, the BKC have been closed to the preachers since 2016, and they had to look for alternative venues. In Sarajevo they now hold meetings in the Skenderija omladinski centre: a symbolic centre of secular culture.

35. Observation from fall 2018. Vitez is an ethnically divided town. Pezić held the lecture in a Croatian cultural hall for attendees from a nearby Muslim part of the town.

36. Interview from September 2018.

37. Dževad Gološ, who presents himself as a teacher of the Qur’an recitation, published a book on this topic in 2012: ‘Historijat kiraeta u Bosni i Hercegovini’; Semir Imamović, editor of Saff, has also published a book ‘Savremena pitanja – islamski odgovori’. Other preachers are active in translating Salafi literature into Bosnian.

38. See e.g. the Aura FB post: http://facebook.com/MagazinAura/posts/796163580449783/.

39. Former Banja Luka mufti was dismissed in 2020 for selling endowed property of the IC.

40. Dženana Karup, Kur’an je naš ustav, DANI 72, 30.3.1998

41. Interview with IPF professor, September 2019.

42. For example, Šukrija Ramić writes that a husband beating his wife is allowed in Sharia if there is no other way to make her obey. An analysis of neo-Salafi literature is an on-going project.