Serbian Muslim Leader Call for Autonomy for Sandzhak Region

As German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls on Serbia to abandon its claims on Kosovo, including predominantly Serb northern Kosovo, to strengthen its candidacy for membership in the European Union a leader of the country's large Serb Muslim minority in Sandzhak, Mufti Muamer Zukorlic, has renewed his calls for the Serbian government to establish Sandzhak as an autonomous region due to its Muslim majority. Sandzhak is one of Serbia's more backward regions, with resentment over its economic state be aggravated by the largely Orthodox Christian composition of its security forces. More here.

Serbian Orthodox and Yugoslav Muslim Leaders Call on Montenegrins to Identify in Census

Patriarch Irinej (Gavrilovich) of Pech of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Mustafa Ceric, head Bosnia-Herzegovina's Muslims, and Muamer Zukorlić, grand mufti of Serbia's Muslims, have all called on Montenegrins to freely identify their ethnicity and faith in the upcoming national census in Montenegro. Nationalists in Montenegro are pushing for the republic's citizens to identify as ethnic Montenegrins regardless of their actual ethnicity. More here.

Sandzhak Mufti Calls for Regional Autonomy

The Grand Mufti of Novi Pazar, Muamer Zukorlić, and leader of Serbia's Muslim minority in the Sandzhak region called on Muslims in Serbia to boycott school and national St. Sava celebrations on his feast day, calling the celebrations attempts at forced conversion. He is leading a push to have Sandzhak granted autonomy, saying that autonomy would protect the region's Muslim minority from the Orthodox majority while also not infringing on the rights of the region's Serbian Orthodox residents. Given recent events in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo there is an understandable reluctance on the part of Serbia to grant the region autonomy. More here.