Islam in Macedonia: The Origins, Evolution and Role of the Islamic Religious Community From the Ottoman Period to the Present

In Macedonia, faiths and religions, along with their followers, are typically represented by specific state agencies. Thus Islam has always been represented by a state organ since the days of the Ottomans in the region until the dissolution of the Communist rule of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Since then, the institution that has played a mediating role between the government of Macedonia and the followers of the religion of Islam in the country has been recognised to be the Islamic Religious Community. This paper will analyse the role of this institutions as a synergy between the government of Macedonia and the believers of Islam as well as its relations with various other Muslim institutions. After a brief illustration of the history of Muslim religious representative institutions in Macedonia, the focus of the discussion will be on the core issues of the Islamic Religious Community as the highest Muslim religious institution in the country. As a case study, it will deal with the institution’s active role in protecting the rights of Muslims at all levels.

Anabaptist Sixteenth-Century Baptism as Exponent of Christian Spirituality in a Time of Cultural, Social, and Political Breaches

The Reformation was the religious representative of an encompassing breach in European history. In this transition Anabaptism combats infant baptism as being a symbol of the social-religious unity of the corpus christianum that was passing by. Hence it introduces believer’s baptism as being a major symbol of a new epoch, of which persecution by church and state was the sad and existential consequence. Baptism of itself pertains to a sacrament of transition from old to new, achieved by the death and resurrection of Jesus.