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Exploring Muslim Contexts

The Enduring Legacy of the Habsburg Islam PolicyMuslim Communities in Central and Southeast Europe

Edited by Sevgi Adak and Thomas Schmidinger

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Published 31 January 2027

About this book

Examines contemporary legal and political structures governing Muslim communities in Central and Southeast Europe

  • Analyses in detail the status and governance of Muslim communities in the entire region of the former Habsburg / Austro-Hungarian Empire
  • Highlights the importance of the Habsburg legacy to understanding the historical continuities between the Islam Act of 1912 and the contemporary legal and political structures governing Muslim communities in Central Europe
  • Maps in detail the diverse trajectories followed by the successor states to the Habsburg Empire with regards to the governance of Islam and Muslim communities
  • Offers a specialised discussion of the case of Austria as the main successor to the Habsburg monarchy and home to the largest and most diverse Muslim population in Central Europe
  • Explores, in each national context, the complexity of the cultural and political dynamics that emerge as a result of the unique position of Central Europe as the home of centuries-old Muslim communities as well as of recent Muslim immigrants

When Otto Habsburg, son of the last emperor of the Austria-Hungarian Empire Karl I, died in 2011, among those who prayed at the funeral in Vienna’s Stephansdom was Mustafa Efendi Cerić, the Reis ul-ulema of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was to honour the long-lasting relationship between the bygone empire of the Catholic Habsburgs with European Muslims. The cornerstone of this association was the 1912 Islam Act (Islamgesetz) of the Habsburgs, which made Austria-Hungary the first Catholic European state to confer official status to Islam.

This book explores the legacy of this act and the ways in which it continues to impact the legal frameworks and political structures governing Islam and Muslim communities in the successor states of Austria-Hungary. It discusses the unique coexistence in Central Europe of centuries-old, ‘indigenous’ European Muslims with recently settled Muslim immigrants, and the trajectory of their interactions with the state. This volume is therefore not only crucial to the debate about European Islam but also to the question of the legal and political framework of Islamic religious communities in a secular Europe.

Reviews

The present volume is a welcome contribution to the field of the research on Islam in Europe, particularly Central and Eastern parts of it, as there are still far too few monographs or edited volumes in English dealing with the presence of Islam and its governance in this part of Europe. It could be part of the reading material in university courses covering governance of religion in Europe while individual scholars and public servants would also benefit from reading the book.
Table of contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration

Introduction: The Habsburg Legacy and the Governance of Muslim Communities in Central and Southeast Europe
Sevgi Adak and Thomas Schmidinger

1. Austro-Hungarian Confessional Politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina: International Law, Muslim Autonomy Movements and the Islam Act of 1912
Jan Kreisky
2. Islam and the Austrian State between Two Islam Acts
Thomas Schmidinger
3. A Hundred Years Later: The Debate on the New Islam Act in Austria
Sevgi Adak and Alev Çakır
4. Double Minorities at the Edges of Islam in Austria: Non-Sunni Muslims and Faith Communities between Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and Secularism
Alicia Allgäuer and Thomas Schmidinger
5. Islamic Communities in Yugoslav Countries: From their Formation in the Nineteenth Century to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia
Dunja Larise
6. Religion and State in Bosnia Herzegovina
Dino Abazović
7. Bosnian Islam? Islam and Muslims in Bosnia Herzegovina from a Historical Perspective
Esnaf Begić
8. Muslims and the State in Post-Socialist Croatia
Dino Mujadžević
9. Muslim Communities and Religious Freedom in Slovenia
Marinko Banjac and Anja Zalta
10. The Relationship between State and Islam in Hungary: From Empire-Building to Nation-State-Building
Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics
11. Czech and Slovak Muslims: A Long Way to their Own Islam Act
Štěpán Macháček
12. Islam and Muslims in the Successor States of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: The Case of Poland
Konrad Pędziwiatr

About the Contributors
Index

About the contributors

Sevgi Adak

Dr. Sevgi Adak is Associate Professor and Head of Research at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC), London. Prior to joining AKU-ISMC in 2016, she was a research fellow at the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam. She is the author of Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic (I.B. Tauris, 2022), and co-editor of Tek Parti Dönemini Yeniden Düşünmek: Devlet, Toplum, Siyaset (Tarih Vakfı, 2022). She is co-editor of the book series In Translation: Contemporary Thought in Muslim Contexts at Edinburgh University Press and is on the editorial board of Contemporary Turkey joint book series of the British Institute at Ankara and I.B. Tauris.

Thomas Schmidinger

Dr. Thomas Schmidinger is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr and Lecturer at the University of Vienna and the University of Applied Sciences Oberösterreich in Linz. He has published several books on Muslim minorities in Europe and politics in the Middle East. He is the co-editor of the Vienna Kurdish Studies Yearbook and was the contributor for Austria and Liechtenstein for the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe (Brill, 2011–14). Recent publications include: The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: Between A Rock and A Hard Place (Transnational Press London, 2020) and The World Has Forgotten Us. Sinjar and the Islamic State’s Genocide of the Yezidis (Pluto Press, 2022).

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