Islam in the Sandžak of Novi Pazar was originally posted to The Agonist on May 23, 2007.

NOVI PAZAR. Novi Pazar stands out from other cities in Serbia immediately when you arrive. Mosques instead of Serbian Orthodox churches dot its skyline. Unlike anywhere else I have visited in Serbia, some women cover themselves in Islamic fashion. The degree of covering varies markedly—I haven’t seen one woman with an Arabian-style chador and many women don’t even wear a headscarf.

Novi Pazar contrasts with Sarajevo where (I am told) Muslim women do not wear headscarves. Headscaves and other forms of Islamic covering are a growing trend. I even heard concern expressed about the growth of the number of women adopting Islamic covering at the overwhelmingly Muslim university where the rector (president) is the Mufti of Novi Pazar! I have been lecturing there all week and most of the female students do not cover their heads.

One woman at the university complained that many of the women now covering themselves in Novi Pazar have been influenced by “Wahabism” and “don’t understand Islam.” She didn’t have a problem with women who cover—indeed, one of the most impressive women I met at the university through her covers herself completely except her face—but with women who do it mindlessly, improperly, and with the righteousness of the converted.

Leaving aside headscarves on women, one cannot mistake the gender and cultural conservatism of Novi Pazar. Almost no women are among the many groups of men whiling away time with friends in cafes—a real contrast with Belgrade. And most establishments are called “milk bars” which indicates that they don’t serve alcohol. It is hard to imagine a dry Belgrade café.

Novi Pazar is the unofficial capital of the region known as the Sandžak (often pronounced and spelt as Sanjak in English). It is sort of a funny name for a region because the word is simply the old Ottoman word for province or district. The Sandžak is the area along both sides of the new international border between Serbia and Montenegro.

A backwater with severe unemployment today, the Sandžak of Novi Pazar was historically strongly contested. When Serbia and Montenegro won their independence, the Ottomans maintained control of the region which geographically separated Serbia from Montenegro. Ottoman control was in the interest of both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires as it prevented the two Serbian-speaking peoples from uniting and deprived Serbia of access to the Adriatic Sea.

Today, the region has a large Muslim population which increasingly thinks of itself as Bosniak, like the Bosnian Muslim population. While the town of Novi Pazar was evenly divided between Orthodox and Muslim Serbs only a few decades ago, today is it is overwhelmingly Muslim though several heavily Orthodox municipalities are nearby.

Almost everyone denies that there are tensions between Orthodox and Muslim Serbs but this denial is often followed almost immediately by a criticism of the other group as complainers or a cause of problems that belies the denial. Still, the Sandžak does yet appear to be Bosnia in terms of its propensity for ethnic discord and violence even if Muslim and Orthodox Serbs seem increasingly separated into their own areas.

Politics in Novi Pazar is dominated by two Sandžak regional parties, an affiliate of the Bosnian Muslim SDA and its rival, the SDP. In the past, SDA has argued for regional autonomy; one person asked me why there could not be a Bosniak Muslim autonomous region of the Sandžak since the Bosnian Serbs could have an autonomous Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Apparently, some have even floated the idea of Sandžak independence or linking region with Bosnia, though both appear totally unrealistic as Serbia would never countenance either and the Bosniaks lack both the desire or the power to try to force either outcome. However, the SDA seems to have become silent on the question of autonomy, let alone independence, for this ethnically mixed region and it appears to have faded from view.

Even a clueless foreigner can usually identify the Orthodox and Muslim areas—and not just from the churches or mosques. Orthodox businesses frequently advertise beer and use Cyrillic while Muslim businesses favor the Latin alphabet. One is also somewhat more likely to see Serbian flags bearing the Serbian Orthodox crosses with four “C”s (Cyrillic for “S” and short for the nationalistic slogan “Only Unity Can Save the Serbs”) in Orthodox parts of the Sandžak.