The Shari’a Mandate and Yugoslav Nation-Building

What did it mean to have a Shari’a judiciary in a centralizing European state? How did it operate? This chapter explores early conflicts over the nature of the Shari’a judiciary and Islamic institutions and their place in Yugoslav nation-building. It illuminates how Muslims found spaces for agency within the new system to shape Muslim societies and concepts of political belonging while at the same time facing tremendous pressures from Yugoslav state authorities, who sought to seize on the Shari’a judiciary as a mechanism to intervene in and supervise Muslims’ lives. The chapter also illuminates rifts occurring among Muslim leaders over how to respond to the demands of modernization and nationalization.