NATIONALISM AND THE BOSNIAK DILEMMA
NATIONALISM AND THE BOSNIAK DILEMMA

Summary/Abstract: Nationalism is an ideology that seeks to advance the interests of a particular nation in opposition to real or perceived opponents outside the nation. As such, it has both an emancipatory dimension for its own nation and an oppressive dimension vis-à-vis other nations. The Bosniak nation’s political and intellectual leaders have traditionally supported both the affirmation of their own national sovereignty and identity within a Bosnian-Hercegovinian framework, and the maintenance of Bosnia-Hercegovina as the common homeland of Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats, Jews and others. Today, as in the past, they are in the position of needing to navigate between a national policy that promotes their own national emancipation and one that maintains coexistence with the other peoples of Bosnia-Hercegovina, whose leaders have national ideologies that conflict with that of the Bosniaks. This paper will examine this dilemma in its historical context and in terms of the future.

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