Islam in the Republic of Macedonia
Islam is in Macedonia, according to Christianity, the religion with the second most followers. According to the most recent census of 2002 counted themselves 674 015 of 2022547 inhabitants to Islam, which accounts for about 33.33 percent of the total population. Macedonia is thus to Turkey, Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the European country with the fifth highest proportion of Muslims in its population.
Since the Balkan state is characterized multiethnic for centuries, different ethnic groups or parts of them belong to the Muslim faith. Thus, Albanians, Turks and Bosniaks are almost exclusively Muslim. Furthermore, a minority of ethnic Macedonians ( Torbeschen and Gorani ) and the Roma to Islam counts.
Islam in Macedonia is characterized mainly Sunni, the law school of the Hanafi is predominant. Also, Sufism has a long tradition in the country. So there are a lot dervish monasteries that are maintained by various Sufi orders. This interpretation of Islam is due to the Ottoman past of the country. Between the 15th and the early 20th century the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. Since the independence of Macedonia in 1991 but spread among Muslims increasingly Wahhabis, Salafis, Shiites and followers of other directions of Islam, which differ significantly in comparison to the tradition in Macedonia.
Demography
The highest proportion of Muslims in the community populations are located mainly in the western part of the country, mainly in urban areas of the Albanian and Turkish minorities. Muslims make in the towns Debar, Gostivar and Tetovo, the vast majority in the population. Significant minorities there are in the cities of Struga, Kičevo, Skopje, Kumanovo and Veles.
History
First contacts between the Christian inhabitants of Macedonia with Islam existed before the military invasion of the Ottomans in the Balkans. Wandering dervishes and distributors in transit shaped the early image of the new religion. Chance founded former small monasteries.
1371 began the gradual conquest of Macedonia by the Ottoman Empire. 1387 was the first time Thessaloniki and Skopje in 1392 came to case. Earlier, Bitola and Prilep in 1385 were captured, however. The region remained for the next 500 years under the rule of Constantinople. The new territories were administered in the province of Rumelia.
Under the Ottoman rule, however, Christians and Jews enjoyed comparatively many rights and were not deliberately discriminated against in their religious activities. Rather, the Ottomans in the so-called millet system tried to balance the different religions and ethnic groups in the empire, which mostly succeeded. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century lost power continuously and repeatedly had to make territorial concessions to its neighbors. The "sick man of Europe " finally lost a lot of power with the strong emergence of nationalism in his country. With the independence of Greece ( 1830), Bulgaria (1870 ), Serbia ( 1817), Montenegro (1878 ) and Albania (1912 ) finally broke the Islamic state and with it the organization of the Muslims who have had to re-order now.
In the time of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Muslims were recognized as a religious community and the building of mosques and Koranic schools was encouraged. After all, were in the 1970s, 12.3 percent of the Yugoslav population of Muslim faith.
After the Yugoslav wars of Islam experienced in Macedonia really a flower. It emerged and created new large mosques today, but at the same Macedonian Orthodox churches and illuminated crosses are mainly created in their vicinity. This ethno- religious conflict turned out quite early in the history of the young Republic of Macedonia. In the Albanian uprising in 2001, the conflict escalated between the Christian Macedonians and Muslim Albanians. Since then, the situation has greatly reassured, however, it comes almost a year to attacks on mosques and churches, not only on recent but also to older, culturally and historically and architecturally important buildings.