The revival of Islam in the post-communist Balkans : coercive nationalisms and new pathways to God

Resource Information

The work The revival of Islam in the post-communist Balkans : coercive nationalisms and new pathways to God represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in European University Institute. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The revival of Islam in the post-communist Balkans : coercive nationalisms and new pathways to God

Title remainder

coercive nationalisms and new pathways to God

Statement of responsibility

Arolda Elbasani

Creator

• Elbasani, Arolda

Subject

• Balkan Peninsula -- Civilization | Islamic influences
• Muslims -- Balkan Peninsula
• Islam -- Balkan Peninsula

Language

eng

Summary

The Islamic 'revival' in the Balkans has raised many questions among mainstream politicians and academics, who tend to look at religion as a repository of ethno-national identities, and hence a risky 'depot', furthering divisions between and among national entities. How believers themselves discover, articulate and experience their faith, is often lost in the grand narratives of nations' assumed uniformity and the related criteria of inclusion and exclusion. This article shifts the analytical focus from nation-centric debates on the revival of Islam to believers' personalized discovery, practice and pursuit of faith since the fall of Communism. The analysis suggests a bifurcation between state authorities and centralized Islamic hierarchies that view Islam as an important marker of identity on the one hand, and emerging faith communities that rely upon alternative sources of knowledge and authority on the other. All the while, the Islamic phenomenon is no longer only the bearer of ethno-national alternatives, but also the symptom of new spaces that blend a variety of new actors as well as overlapping national, regional and global processes

Member of

• EUI working papers, RSC, 2015/28

Cataloging source

IT-FiEUI

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Series statement

• EUI working papers. RSC
• EUI papers
• RELIGIOWEST

Series volume

2015/28