Oxford: Oxford University Press. - 216 p.

The appearance of the monograph by Bulgarian researcher Inna Merdzhanova with the intriguing title "Rediscovering the Ummah: Muslims in the Balkans between Nationalism and Transnationalism" is certainly an event for the scientific community engaged in studying modern ethno-religious processes in the Balkans. Moreover, the publication of this study is very timely, since more than 2 years have passed since the appearance of the well-known work of the British scientist Harry Norris "Islam in the Balkans: religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World", which can be considered somewhat consonant with Merdzhanova's research1. Norris ' work presents a broad and detailed historical panorama of the development of the Islamic tradition and the formation of Muslim communities in the Balkans, as well as cross-cultural contacts with the Arab world. At the same time, modern processes mostly remained out of the scientist's field of view. Over the past decades, various collective studies, including those published relatively recently, have tried to fill this gap.2 In comparison with these thematic collections, the monograph of the Bulgarian researcher is a homogeneous text that reflects religious, ethnic and socio-cultural processes in different regions of the Balkans. This is a rather difficult task, which the author coped with quite successfully, especially considering the small volume of the book (198 pages).

Inna Merdzhanova is a Bulgarian researcher, currently working in Moscow.-

1. Norris, Н. Т. (1993) Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

2. See, for example: Furat, A. Z., ErH. (eds) (2012) Balkans and Islam: Encounter, Transformation, Discontinuity, Continuity. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Currently working at Trinity College, Dublin. Bulgaria itself is such an important country for studying the Muslim communities of the Balkans that the author might have a justified desire to make the "native" region the main focus of the study. Fortunately, Merdzhanova was able to avoid this temptation, and the material in her book, which covers various regions of the Balkans, is balanced and representative.

The first section provides basic historical information about the spread of Islam in the Balkans and Muslim communities during the Ottoman and post-Ottoman periods, as well as demographic data. In addition, the author examines identity politics during the emergence of national states, the establishment of communist regimes, and the dramatic events associated with the collapse of the communist system and the collapse of the Yugoslav Federation. Particularly noteworthy is the comparative analysis of the relationship between nationalism (secular in nature) and the Muslim religious tradition in the process of forming the collective identity of Albanians in different regions - in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. The author convincingly shows that the connection between the religious and national identity of Macedonian Albanians is closer than that of their compatriots in Albania and Kosovo (P-45 passim), which is explained by the minority status of Albanians in this country and the need for national consolidation in relation to the Slavic-Orthodox majority.

As mentioned above, the author presents material related to various Balkan Muslim communities in a balanced way. However, this applies mainly to the main and largest ethnic groups, while information about other equally important but small communities, such as the Muslim Roma, is very sparse and fragmentary. For the sake of justice, it should be noted that the author quite often mentions Muslim Roma in the context of considering Muslim communities in Bulgaria (p.12 passim), which cannot be said about other regions of the Balkans. In our opinion, a separate chapter should be devoted to this ethnic group, given the unique nature of the religious culture of the Balkan Roma.

The author declares an interdisciplinary approach to the study of relevant issues, including the sociology of religion, political science, and anthropology. At the same time, the study-

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telnitsa takes the position of socioconstructivism and considers Muslim peoples as "sociological Muslims" - that is, those whose identity is formed on the basis of a number of factors, including beliefs and practices, cultural and family traditions, and national identity (p. xv), thereby denying Islam an independent heuristic value. At the same time, we can state that the author leaves almost no attention to the first of the above factors, namely "beliefs and practices", which, in turn, significantly narrows the research perspective. In our opinion, it would be much more productive to include in the analysis the concept of "Islam" as a "discursive tradition" (Talal Asad) as a separate factor determining the identity of Muslim communities in the Balkans, especially since the author largely follows this logic when talking about the influence of religious culture and historical memory of Muslims on modern processes The Balkans, dating back to the Ottoman period. T. himself. Assad wrote about this: "The Islamic discursive tradition is simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses the concepts of the Islamic past and future, correlating with specific Islamic practice at the present time. Obviously, not everything that Muslims say and do belongs to the Islamic discursive tradition."3. Such an approach would avoid unsubstantiated claims , such as the claim that the attitude of Balkan Muslims towards Islam is no different from that of Balkan Christians (p. xiv). It is obvious that this attitude will be different due to the difference in the theological and legal postulates underlying these religious traditions and the religious and social institutions based on them.

In the second chapter, the author deals with the analysis of "transnationalism" and its various manifestations in modern social, cultural and ethno-religious processes in the Balkans. Again, we should note the excellent presentation of the material, which allows the reader to understand the complex and sometimes dramatic vicissitudes of the modern history of the Balkan peoples. An important issue that the author addresses in this section is the conflict between the region's traditional interpretations of Islam

3. Asad, Т. С1986) The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, p. 14. Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown.

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(Sunni-Hanafi) and Salafism, which gained some traction here through various Islamic foundations from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as well as "Mujahideen" during the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia and the post-war period. The author makes a reasonable conclusion that Salafi purism and universalism not only did not contribute to the unity of the Muslim peoples of the Balkans within a single Ummah, but, on the contrary, led to further fragmentation and discord in the Balkan Muslim environment, which, in turn, strengthened local Islamic identities (p.67).

The key research concept included in the title is "transnationalism", which is very popular today among researchers of diaspora Muslim communities. The author shares the approach proposed by the American researcher John Boven, who points out that transnational Islam presupposes a "global public space of normative debate" (p.54) and cannot be reduced to migration processes and transnational religious movements. At the same time, the researcher notes that this global public space is formed by various individual and collective agents and networks.

Merdzhanova emphasizes that nationalism and transnationalism (represented in the region by Arab and Turkish influences) They are not completely opposite forms of social organization or successive stages in the historical development of Muslim communities. Rather, they co-exist and play a more or less important role in the formation of national identities in various regions of the Balkans (p. 55). In general, the author is very skeptical about the impact of transnationalism and Islamic universalism on Muslim communities in the Balkans, emphasizing that the appeal to the idea of "ummah" is more sporadic than systematic and does not transform into a political one. ideological project (p. 58).

The third section of the study is devoted to gender issues, in particular, such burning issues as family relations, participation of Muslim women in the public sphere, wearing the hijab. An important aspect that the researcher draws attention to is "strengthening the boundaries of communities" through the fight against mixed marriages,

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This is particularly characteristic of the Muslim institutions of Bosnia (p. 88). We can observe similar processes in other regions, especially where Muslims are in the minority, in particular in Crimea among the Crimean Tatar population. The researcher shows that the attitude to mixed marriages directly depends on the degree to which religious and national identity markers coincide. For example, among Albanians, who are mostly characterized by secular nationalism, intermarriage is a common and acceptable practice.

As for the hijab, as the author shows, there are also different approaches depending on the region. For example, for Bosniaks, this tradition is largely imposed from the outside, during the civil war and immediately after it, when Islamic foundations made the provision of aid directly dependent on public observance of Muslim norms of behavior (p.92). At the same time, in Bulgaria, the issue of the hijab is largely politicized, and it has become a symbol of the struggle of Muslims for their rights and against state restrictions (P-94 passim).

In the last section, the researcher addresses the problem of the role and place of "Balkan Islam" in the modern processes taking place in the Muslim communities of Europe. The author analyzes various ideologemes related to understanding the role and place of "Balkan Islam" in the Muslim space of Europe, starting from the post-Ottoman period. After the collapse of the communist regimes, one of the key ideologies is the "return to the European family", which manifests itself, on the one hand, as an awareness of oneself as "indigenous European Muslims", and on the other-as secularization and even as a "return to Christian roots", which is typical for some Bulgarian-speaking Muslims (p. 119 passim). At the same time, the image of the Balkans as an area of "inter-civilizational rifts" or "inner East of Europe"is being actively formed.

The author notes that the Muslim identities of the Balkan peoples are formed in the context of a common history and political geography with the Christian peoples. They are localized, based on the traditions of "Ottoman Islam" and reformism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and are largely resistant to external influences (p. 122 passim).

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The researcher shows that the centralization processes typical of Western Europe, when - often with the support of foreign foundations-network associations of Muslim communities and public organizations and various national and transnational coordination councils are created, have not become significantly widespread among Balkan Muslims (p. 126 passim).

Summing up, the author characterizes the Muslim communities of the Balkans as communities of the" middle way", balancing between secularization and re-Islamization, on the one hand, and globalization, Europeanization and localization, on the other (p. 131). At the same time, the study proves quite convincingly that the influence of transnationalism on Muslim communities in the Balkans is not only insignificant, but also leads to the opposite result: instead of spreading Islamic universalism based on purism and purifying Islam of cultural elements, local ethno-religious identities are being strengthened (p.131).

Concluding the review of Merdzhanova's research, it should be noted that the author managed to fit a large variety of contexts and ideas into a relatively small volume of the book, and the successful structuring of the monograph does not allow the reader to "get lost" in the presented material. We are confident that this work will arouse interest among Russian researchers and will help to revive the scientific discussion around the problems associated with modern transformations of collective identities in Muslim communities.

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