Muslims and Jews Used to Get Along? Do Tell...

Religious/Ethnic Breakdown in the Balkans

Jews
• Sephardic Jews (AKA ‘Spanish-speaking’ Jews)
o these were some of the first Jews who ended up in the Balkans after being driven out of Spain when Isabelle/Ferdinand defeated and expelled the Moors
o They actually emigrated from Spain to the Ottoman Empire because of the relatively high degree of religious freedom enjoyed by its inhabitants, as well as the fact that the ruling Muslims respected the Jewish immigrants' monotheism and piety—the Jews were even granted a degree of independence in the form of self-government
• Ashkenazi Jews:
o This sect came to the region after being expelled from various parts of Western Europe
o Some of the Ashkenazi settled in areas known today as Lithuania and Poland (and were later persecuted by the Russians); others moved into Austria-Hungary
o Enlightenment ideals and toleration decrees under the Hapsburg Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries ensured that the Balkans remained a generally peaceful place for Jews

BREAKDOWN BY BALKAN
• Yugoslav: very small Jewish population
• Greece: large Sephardic population
• Bulgaria: small Jewish population that enjoyed measure of autonomy

• Lasting Impressions:
o Balkan Jews had hand in creating the Israeli state in 1948
o The Balkan Jews were generally thought to be anti-secular and somewhat in opposition to more progressive Jews from Western Europe

Muslims
• The root of Islam in the Balkans is from the long reign of the Ottoman Empire
• Bosnia:
o became a part of the Ottoman Empire in 1463
o When Bosnia was handed back over to the Austral-Hungarian Empire in 1878, they were no longer under Muslim rule and so started the persecution
o Until WWII, when Bosnia became a part of the Kingdom of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia and, later, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia—eventually Yugoslavia came under control of Orthodox Christian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims were subject to harassment and arbitrary persecution
o During WWII, the region was occupied by Germans, but it was the ultra-nationalist Serbs (who spearheaded a strong insurgency against the Nazis and eventually established communist rule) who oversaw to it that 100,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed during that time
o Many of the Bosnians persecuted during WWII ended up migrating to Turkey
o After the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (basically the Communist answer to NATO), Bosnia declared its independence, but the Serbs remained in power and oversaw the slaughter of over 200,000 Muslims
TO BE CONTINUED....