BETWEEN „ASIATIC” ISLAM AND „ORTHODOX” SLAVISM: YUGOSLAV MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY SERBIAN ETHNOLOGY

Abstract

This paper examines the perceptions and the politics of representation of Muslims in Serbian ethnology during the period of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The analyzed textual data consists of three monographs published in the second decade of the 20th century. Three levels of analysis – discoursive, theoretical-methodological and conceptual – have been conducted for the purpose of attaining clearer insights into the meaning, content and procedures of scientific argumentation, along with the observation of potential significance and certain flaws of the examined texts. The criteria for selection of the analyzed publications were as follows: 1) that the topics, content, and forms of argumentation put forward in the examined texts correspond to the domain of national science, whose goals were to define the identity and defend the interests of the nation, while simultaneously paving the way of its moral, political and intellectual development under the banner of modernity; 2) that the publications were entirely, and not only partially, focused on the themes peculiar to the ethnology of Islam, i.e. on the cultural life of Muslims residents of the Yugoslav Kingdom; and 3) that they were published in Serbia. In as much as they reveal more about the observer than the observed, the here analyzed texts uncover some important features of historical conditions, the imperatives of the era, as well as some basic values which shaped the horizons of insight of the Serbian national science at this period.