Albanian dervishes versus Bosnian ulema: the revival of popular sufism in Kosovo 1 Ger Duijzings In: Les AŶŶales de lautƌe Islaŵ (Paris), 7; special issue: Kosovo. Six siècles de mémoires croisées, 2000, 105-125. [puďliĐatioŶs page Ŷuŵďeƌs added] [105] In the West many people tend to regard the Muslim world as an undiversified and monolithic entity, an image that has been replicated for Islam in the Balkans as well. Although theƌe is a ǀague ŶotioŶ of dosŶiaŶ Musliŵs ďeiŶg ŵoƌe EuƌopeaŶ thaŶ those in Turkey and the Middle East, the Western view is still dominated by a general fear of Islam as a religion which threatens European and Christian civilisation. This fear is not exclusive to Western Europe, but has been strong in the Balkans as well, particularly in Serbia but also (to a lesser extent) in Cƌoatia, ǁheƌe the iŵage of the oƌieŶtal otheƌ has also ďeeŶ pƌojeĐted oŶ to the dLJzaŶtiŶe Serbs (Bakiđ-Hayden and HaLJdeŶ ϭϵϵϮͿ. IŶ this sLJsteŵ of ŶestiŶg oƌieŶtalisŵs the “eƌďiaŶ version has been most outspokenly Islamophobic and primarily directed against immediate neighbours: the Albanians in Kosovo and Muslims in Bosnia. In Serbia, open animosity towards these Muslims surfaced several years before the outbreak of the war, particularly after Miloševiđs ƌise to poǁeƌ iŶ ϭϵϴϳ. At that tiŵe the “eƌďiaŶ ŶatioŶalist ŵass ŵedia staƌted to depict them as fundamentalists who were embarking upon a Jihad against the Orthodox Serbs. This chapter is intended to show that Balkan Islam is not a monolith and, as in most other parts of the Muslim world, encompasses a broad variety of forms and expressions, which have given rise to internal conflicts and divisions (Poulton and Taji-Farouki 1997:2). The focus of this chapter is on 1 This text is a much shortened and revised version of my unpublished MA thesis ( Derwisjen in Joegoslavië. Religieus nonconformisme onder Albanese moslems in Kosovo. ICSA, University of Nijmegen, 1989). I would like to thank Mart Bax, Nathalie Clayer, Henk Driessen, Aleksander Lopasic, Alexandre Popovic, and Bonno Thoden van Velzen for useful comments and suggestions on the previous versions of this text, which recently was also published as a chapter of my book Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo (London: Hurst, 2000).