Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe

South-eastern Europe...played host to long-simmering tensions of state-making, community-building and religious resistance amid the ruins of empire. Emily Greble's important new book analyses many of these themes, using the history of Muslims in south-eastern Europe—and later Yugoslavia—from the 'long post-Ottoman transition' through the Second World War as her case study....Greble's book should spur Europeanists to pay much more attention to this regional history, which has had a large impact on the history of the continent in various ways.... Greble has certainly succeeded in her wider effort to reveal how Europe's Muslim communities helped define a 'modern political order' that existed 'within European history, not alongside, outside or on the peripheries of it', and which European historians specializing in other regions—including the readers of this journal—would do well to keep more firmly in view. * Paul Betts, German History *
Books of the Year 2022 * Tony Barber, Financial Times *
Despite having a significant presence in Europe since the eighth century CE, Muslims continue to be seen above all else as Muslims rather than citizens of the nation-state they inhabit. Greble addresses how Muslims in the Balkans, specifically former Yugoslavia, were viewed by the state and how they interacted with it. Beginning in 1878, the author examines how Muslims, rather than being brought into Serbia's secular society, were tied more closely to religion through the state's maintenance of Islamic socioreligious law. The Muslim community's distinct legal structure left it struggling to negotiate its political belonging until the post-WW II period....Ultimately, under Tito, the Shariʽa legal order was eliminated, transforming Islam from a legal issue into a cultural idea. This work's great strength is Greble's approach to the topic from a Muslim perspective, instead of viewing Muslims as Europe's Other, which is, unfortunately, the norm. * Choice *
Greble makes adroit use of rich material drawn from numerous archives in Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia and Serbia, and supplements this with wide reading. * Mark Mazower, Times Literary Supplement *
Greble's important book casts modern Europe's history in a fresh perspective by concentrating on the continent's indigenous Muslims. * Tony Barber, Financial Times Best summer books of 2022: History *
[A] fascinating new book... By reorienting our perspective, Greble reveals how vital it is to see Muslims as part of modern European history rather than outside it, how they were never "relics of a non-European past" but instead vital actors in Europe's tortured modernisation. She also raises important questions about the continued unwillingness of states across the globe to "accept the existence and possibility of Muslim citizens", from toxic political discourse in Europe and America to brutal persecution in India, China, and Myanmar. This important book asks difficult questions about both past and present. * Christopher Kissane, Irish Times *
The salient strength of this book is Greble's foregrounding of Muslim voices and insistence on defining them as European... Readers should relish her triumphant restoration of Muslim agency...In the end, we discover a European history that includes Islam and, in the process, might need to rethink what exactly 'Europe' is. * Theodora Dragostinova, History Today *
Greble's nuanced retelling of the region's social and political landscape has renewed urgency. Her work serves as a refreshing intervention to the literature on various fronts. It subverts stereotypical assumptions promulgated by the 'Eastern Question', whereby Muslims are portrayed as a simple ethnic minority living under colonial rule. Instead, Greble shows how they are a marginalized indigenous group that is by no means a monolithic, homogeneous entity... Greble's neatly crafted thesis serves as a counterpunch to a decades-long clash-of-civilizations discourse, which pits Muslims of the region as Ottoman outsiders to be scapegoated as and when deemed necessary... Ultimately, the author offers a complex perspective not only of Balkan Muslims and their lived experiences, but also, the implications of this upon wider society and the states themselves. * Maryyum Mehmood, The World Today *
It takes a bold book to ask 'Who is a European?', a question that nonetheless dominates European politics today, both domestically and in the corridors of power in the European Union. This scholarly and meticulously researched history of the Muslim populations of Europe between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries pays special attention to the Balkans.... Emily Greble's book demonstrates that Muslims are by no means a recent addition to Europe's states and societies, but have been part of them for much longer than contemporary headlines about immigrants, foreign workers and refugees.... In other words, the author turns the perspective that the state is the one that assigns a place to Muslims, since she emphasizes that they themselves are the ones who have the purpose of defining themselves and positioning themselves as citizens within a European framework. * Francis Ghilès, Esglobal *
Bringing together European and Shari'a law, cultural, social and political history, this striking account spans seven decades as it treats Islam as indigenous to Europe, and shows that Muslims have long been part of European history, politics and society. Greble...challenges our notion of what it is to be a citizen of Europe. * The Bookseller (Editor's Choice) *
In a well-documented account, laced with personal stories, Greble outlines how more than a million Ottoman Muslims became citizens of the new European states from 1878 until after the Second World War It is a story of citizenship, exclusion and the changing meaning of minority rights and religious freedom. How Muslims have not only experienced Europe's turbulent history, but have also played a crucial role in the development of social norms and political, ethical and legal structures on our continent... Greble's appeal is therefore 'to reintegrate Muslims into the story of European history and end their recurring exclusion'. Because if Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe makes one thing clear: Muslims are not guests here or engaged in a 'great replacement' of the white population. Muslims have always been part of Europe, which they then and still regard as their home. * Inaki Onorbe Genovesi, de Volkskrant *
Focusing on the historic place of Muslims in southeastern Europe, and on the contradictory ways states have attempted to categorize and manage them, this brilliant study confronts readers with the pressing question of who exactly constitute 'the Europeans.' * Pieter M. Judson, author of The Habsburg Empire: A New History *
Greble shows that far from being a recent addition to European societies, Muslim populations have been integral to European states and societies for much longer than contemporary headlines on immigrants, guest workers, and refugees would suggest. In this important study Greble reveals the ways in which Muslims have been at the heart of the making of law, politics, and society in modern Europe. * Mustafa Aksakal, Georgetown University *
In this bold study, Emily Greble addresses the question 'Who is European?' by showing the organic place and active participation of Muslims throughout modern European history. Using the example of the former Yugoslav space until the 1940s, her thorough research deftly overturns the usual perspective of the state assigning a place for Muslims. Instead, she emphasizes the agency of Muslims seeking to define and place themselves as citizens within a European framework. * Maria Todorova, author of Imagining the Balkans *
Emily Greble's Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe is an erudite and meticulously researched history of Europe's Muslim populations in the twentieth century. Greble teaches us that we will not be able to understand the genealogies of secularism, nationalism, liberalism, citizenship, and human rights without the crucial significance of Muslims in the making of modern Europe. This will prove an indispensable scholarly intervention to shatter the extremist ideologies that rely on the narratives of the clash of civilizations. * Cemil Aydin, author of The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History *
Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe is an engaging story with significant archival, geographic, and chronological breadth. Greble offers new comparative insights into how religious "minority" communities navigated Europe's turbulent interwar years, while opening up paths for further research. Above all, her book is a reminder of how important it is for scholars to think beyond entrenched geographical boundaries and to center overlooked voices in scholarship. * Joshua Donovan, Reading Religion *
This study offers some new food for thought for the study of Islamic institutions under non-Muslim state rule by showing the different interpretations and implementations of European minority rights for Muslims in Southeastern Europe. * Translated from H-Soz-Kult *
This is a book about the lives of Muslims in what used to be Yugoslavia-in particular, what is today Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and North Macedonia...This is a book rich in information. * Maurits Berger, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands *