Bosniaks of Serbia
Coat of arms of Bosniak national minority in Serbia
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 145,278 (2011) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|
Raška District (105,488) Zlatibor District (43,220) Sandžak / Raška historical regions |
|
| Languages | |
| Bosnian | |
| Religion | |
| Islam | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other South Slavs |
Bosniaks are the fourth largest ethnic group in Serbia after Serbs, Hungarians and Roma, numbering 145,278 or 2.02% of the population according to the 2011 census. They are concentrated in south-western Serbia, and their cultural centre is Novi Pazar.
Bosniaks primarily live in south-western Serbia, in the region historically known as Sandžak, which is today divided between the states of Serbia and Montenegro. Colloquially referred to as Sandžaklije by themselves and others, Bosniaks form the majority in three out of six municipalities in the Serbian part of Sandžak: Novi Pazar (77.1%), Tutin (90%) and Sjenica (73.8%) and comprise an overall majority of 59.6%. The town of Novi Pazar is a cultural center of the Bosniaks in Serbia. Many Bosniaks from the Sandžak area left after the fall of the Ottoman Empire to continental Turkey. Over the years a large number of Bosniaks from the Sandžak region left to other countries, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, Germany, Sweden, United States, Canada, Australia, etc.
Today, the majority of Bosniaks are Sunni Muslim and adhere to the Hanafi school of thought, the largest and oldest school of Islamic law in jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. Some in this region are Albanian by ethnicity and live in villages (Boroštica, Doliće, Ugao) located in the Pešter region. They have adopted a Bosniak identity in censuses, due to past sociopolitical discrimination against Albanians in the former Yugoslavia after World War Two.
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Wikipedia