This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 195.29.96.122 (talk) at 16:54, 11 August 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 16:54, 11 August 2003 by 195.29.96.122 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks are Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia, a region in the west of the Balkan Peninsula. Bosnian Muslims are Slavs who were - willingly or by force - converted to Islam during the Ottoman period.
They speak a variant of the common Serbo-Croatian language, written in the same form of the Latin alphabet which is also used in the Croat (or Western) variant of the Serbo-Croatian language. The main difference of the Bosnian language variant is that it contains many borrowings from Turkish - many of them being Arabic and Persian in origin - due to the Islamic faith of Bosniaks.
Bosnia forms now part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a former Yugoslav Republic, having gained its independence in 1992 and suffered a long civil war (1991-1995).