“Our Turks”, or “real Turks”? Czech perceptions of the Slavic Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina
“Our Turks”, or “real Turks”? Czech perceptions of the Slavic Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Summary/Abstract: The article examines Czech views of the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the late 19th andearly 20th centuries, and compares them to their opinions on the Ottoman Turks. It asks towhat extent Czech perceptions of these two groups correspond to the distinction between“good” and “bad” Muslims suggested by Andre Gingrich in his concept of “frontier Orientalism”.Special attention is devoted to images of Muslim women who, according to Gingrich,hardly figured in the frontier version of Orientalism. Czech experiences with the OttomanEmpire differed from those of other Central and South East Europeans, and Czechs’ viewsof the Ottoman Turks were influenced by Western Orientalist discourse. In Bosnia-Herzegovina,in contrast, the Czechs’ position was closer to the Austrians’ civilizing mission and theirfrontier Orientalism, but it was complicated by the fact that the local population was Slavic,like the Czechs themselves. Thus, Czech perceptions of the Slavic Muslims were ambivalentand oscillated between identifying the Muslims with the Ottoman Turks, and viewing themas Slavic brothers. The ambivalence concerned also Muslim women, who were portrayed asdifferent from (Ottoman) Turkish women, but at the same time often seen through Orientalistlenses.

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