Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina has a rich and longstanding history in the country, having been introduced in the 15th and 16th centuries as a result of the Ottoman conquests of the Balkans. There are today around 3.5 million Muslim Bosniaks (commonly known as Bosnian Muslims) around the world, taking into account the large diaspora that had left the country during the Bosnian war. Well over two million Bosnian Muslims reside in their native Bosnia and Herzegovina and they constitute 45-48 percent of the country's population, therefore the largest homogenous ethnic group. The Bosniaks are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims.
Read more about Islam In Bosnia And Herzegovina: The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Era, Bosnian War, Increased Religious Identification, Secularism, Status of Religious Freedom
Famous quotes containing the words islam in and/or islam:
“The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)