Intergroup Relations and Group Maintenance

Many of the Bosnian Muslims who came during the first two waves of immigration – just after World War II and from the late 1960s to the 1980s – were particularly close to the Croatian community in Canada. Some Bosnian Muslims were even among the founders and leaders in several Croatian-Canadian organizations and in Croatian cultural activity. These earlier Bosnian Muslim immigrants socialized easily with other south Slavs, in particular Serbs, as well as peoples whose origins were in central and east-central Europe, such as Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Germans, and Austrians. Intermarriage with persons of those backgrounds was not uncommon.

The break-up of Yugoslavia and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has had a profound impact on the group’s interrelations in Canada. At the individual level, those who have intermarried with Croats or Serbs frequently find themselves alienated from those communities and, in some cases, from family members. As a community, the Bosnian Muslims have almost no contacts with Serbian Canadians, except with those few Serbs from Bosnia-Herzegovina who support the political unity and independence of that country. The former excellent relations with the Croatian community have been strained over the plans of some government officials in Croatia to divide with Serbia all of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Considering the fragile status of their homeland, the Bosnian Muslims, especially the recent arrivals, are anxious to preserve a distinct heritage for their children and to inform Canadian society of the plight of their homeland. To achieve these goals, language and religious instruction classes exist in the Toronto, London, Kitchener, and Vancouver communities. Although Serbo-Croatian had been the literary language of Bosnian Muslims in former Yugoslavia, instructors in Canada stress that Bosnian is a distinct Slavic language (written in the Roman alphabet) that should be recognized in its own right. To promote their understanding of Bosnian history and culture, a group in Toronto established in 1993 the Akademsko Društvo Bosne Hercegovine (Academic Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina), which has published a few issues of a Bosnian-language journal called Anali Akademskog Društva Bosne i Hercegovine (Toronto, 1994– ).