Muslims (ethnic group)

Muslims

Muslimani Муслимани
Flag used to represent various Muslim minorities in the former Yugoslavia
Total population
c. 60,000
Montenegro	20,537 (2011)[1]
Serbia	13,011 (2022)[2]
Bosnia and Herzegovina	12,101 (2013)[3]
Slovenia	10,467 (2002)[4]
Croatia	3,902 (2021)[5]
North Macedonia	1,187 (2021)[6]
Languages
Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Gora dialect
Religion
Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
Other mainly Muslim South Slavs (Bosniaks Croat Muslims Serb Muslims Gorani Torbeši Pomaks)

"Muslims" (Serbo-Croatian Latin and Slovene: Muslimani, Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic and Macedonian: Муслимани) is a designation for the ethnoreligious group of Serbo-Croatian-speaking Muslims and people of Muslim heritage, inhabiting mostly the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The term, adopted in the 1971 Constitution of Yugoslavia, groups together a number of distinct South Slavic communities of Islamic ethnocultural tradition. Prior to 1993, a vast majority of present-day Bosniaks self-identified as ethnic Muslims, along with some smaller groups of different ethnicity, such as Gorani and Torbeši. This designation did not include Yugoslav non-Slavic Muslims, such as Turks, some Romani people and majority of Albanians.^[7]

After the breakup of Yugoslavia, a majority of the Slavic Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the Bosniak ethnic designation, and they are today constitutionally recognized as one of three constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Approximately 100,000 people across the rest of the former Yugoslavia consider themselves to be Slavic Muslims, mostly in Serbia. They are constitutionally recognized as a distinct ethnic minority in Montenegro.^[8]