Rigas Velestinlis was a
Greek revolutionary of the late 18th century,
when most of the Balkans were under Ottoman rule.
In 1797, under the influence
of European Enlightenment and the French Revolution
he called for a generalized revolt of the Balkan peoples that would
overthrow the Ottoman regime and establish a Republican state.
Rigas prepared a constitution for this republic where he stated
that the sovereign people would consist of all inhabitants
without any exclusion in terms of language or religion.
That is, Christians and Muslims would be good
citizens with equal rights.
Now, under the centuries long Ottoman rule, Muslims,
Christians, that is predominantly orthodox,
but also Catholics and Gregorian Armenians
and Jews lived together as subjects of the Sultans.
Even if the status of the non-Muslims was inferior
to that of the Muslims. Non-Muslims were free to practice
their religion in the Islamic Empire, but were, as a rule,
excluded from high office and positions of power.
They were also more heavily taxed.
Now, this combination of religious toleration
and sociopolitical inequality was unique in early modern Europe,
with the exception of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The ideal in Christian states
from the expulsion or forced conversion of Muslims
and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula to the religious wars
between Protestants and Catholics
in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Was a religious homogeneity and not plurality.
So the effort of Rigas to adopt
the ideals of the Enlightenment and the revolution
in the religious diversity
and the ethnic diversity of the Balkans was in fact,
the creation of a new political theory.
The vision of
Rigas did not come to realization.
The national movements and the national states
that emerged in the Balkans
had a very strong religious component
that is Greek or Serbian or Bulgarian or Romanian,
they imagined their respective nations on the basis of culture,
language and orthodox Christian religion.
The construction of national identities
and the toppling of the Ottoman regime went together
with the unmaking of its religious political foundations.
The Muslim inhabitants of the territories
of the new nation states had either to leave
or to accept a sort of
cultural, political marginalization,
and Islam was identified with the Ottoman past that was demonized
as a long period of oppression. That is become
became a crucial factor of national identities
in the Balkans as a marker of otherness.
There are two divergent cases.
One was Albania, where the high density of religious diversity
contributed to the formation of an Albanian nation
on the basis of language, not on the basis of religion.
Another case was Yugoslavia, where coexistence between
Catholics and Christians and Muslims
was maintained until it was shattered
brutally in the civil war of the 1990s and the war
and the states that emerged after the dissolution of Yugoslavia
displayed, to a large extent the same pattern of coupling
national identities with religious
and confessional affiliation.
Now, this incorporation of religious difference into national identities
transposed religion squarely into the secular around. That is
it politicized religion.
Of course, the politicization of religion was not a novel phenomenon
because throughout the
I'm sorry here, throughout the Middle Ages
and the early modern period, religion had a very pronounced
political aspect.
That is an aspect that had to do with power relations
in this earthly world.
But at the same time, religion retained a dominant importance
in providing a meaning and an explanation
for the universe, for the world, for existence.
From the 18th century onwards
religion
lost its prevalence in giving meaning to the world.
Science and secular ideology emerged as the most powerful factors
in explaining the world and sustaining collective identities.
Religion was transformed from its
position
in providing an explanation for the world into a transcendental truth
that legitimized the political order into a matter of private belief
that is in secularized European societies,
but also as a trate of whole civilizations.
And the Balkan pattern of national formation
in which Islam functioned as a marker
of otherness and oppression,
coupled with European Orientalism,
which branded the world of Islam
as one of primitive and backwardness
in the words of Edward said.
Here's an example from a book that was published
in 1806 by a Greek anonymous author.
Now, according to this anonymous author,
Islam is a religion full of superstitions and ridiculous
beliefs, hostile to science and associated with
barbarian morals and political tyranny.
And this is what the American writer Mark Twain wrote
about the arrival of the French Emperor Napoleon III
together with the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Aziz
at the International Exhibition of Paris in 1867.
Napoleon III,
the representative of the highest modern civilization
progress and refinement, and Abdul-Aziz,
the representative of the people by nature and training
filthy, brutish, ignorant and progressive, superstitious
and a government whose Three Graces are tyranny, rapacity and blood.
So you see that among the legacies
of what is often termed Western civilization
is not only liberal democracy, but also racism.
Apart from the
Balkans, European encounters with Islam in the 19th
and 20th century took place mostly outside Europe.
That is, either in the colonies of European states in Asia and Africa,
or in the course of the competition in imposing control over large
regions of the world through war, diplomacy of power
and trade.
It is in the second half of the 20th century
when large groups of Muslims
settle in the richest countries of Europe
in search of work and a better fortune.
This migratory movement has only intensified in the 21st
century, and it opened a new phase
of Islam's presence in Europe.
The presence of Islamic
migrants in Europe has made issues of cultural difference
and social inequality, and integration and recognition
very important, not to say dominant.
More than ever, they do not concern so much religious beliefs,
but rather performances of identity.
That is not so much what we believe
in, but rather how we dress, what we eat and drink, how we behave
in terms of gender identity or sexual orientation, even
which football team we support during the World Cup
and coexistence is often marked
by fear and mistrust.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq, together with the occupation
that followed, rekindled memories of European
colonialism and contributed in
in supporting indirectly
Islamist radicalism and sometimes terrorist attacks.
This, in its turned fueled Islamophobia,
reignited racism and contributed to attacks against Muslims.
But identities are not monolithic qualities.
They are dynamic social categories which are formed and transformed
by interaction and negotiation and are open
to diversity and plurality.
And the study of Europe's Islamic legacies
of their historical background and of their reinterpretations
through time, can make us understand that Europe's past
does not consist of one, but of many histories.