The Islam is often blamed not to differentiate between a spiritual and a public sphere and therefore is prone to mingle religion and politics: especially in post-colonial societies like Northern Africa, the Caucasus und the Balkans, the Islam served as the key point for creating a national identity. The „Islamic discourse of the 19th century“ proves the opposite: Muslim societies in the Russian or Austro-Hungarian empire (e.g. Tatars and Bosniaks) separated clearly between language and religion as the basis for their cultural and political identity. On the example of Bosnia-Hercegovina, I will show that during the time of the Austro-Hungarian rule, pan-islamic „brotherhood“ was strictly limited to a non-political, spiritual level, whereas national concepts were always based on sharing the same language. Mostly unknown, this was an idea imported from Turkey, developed from a modernisation movement in the Islamic world. On the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina, I will analyse the two most influential Islamic political newspapers of the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century (Bošnjak/Bosniak and Behar/Blossom), in order to show how concepts of political togetherness were clearly separated from religious identity.
