Encounters with Islam within the Commonwealth's borders and beyond

ENAfter the Second World War, when Poland found itself in its new borders deprived of its large prewar Ukrainian, Jewish, German, and Belarusian minorities, a dominant narrative entered the Polish school curricula that identified the state with the nation as the optimal and “natural” condition. In the following decades, a somewhat unexpected reinforcement of this thesis came from the side of Western academics who linked Weberian bureaucracy, religious uniformity, and enforced social discipline with the rise of modernity, embodied in a nation-state. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose inhabitants had spoken different languages and belonged to different religions and confessions, was thus regarded as an aberration that had been deservedly punished by the partitions for its ineffectiveness as a state and a society. It is only in the late twentieth century, in an atmosphere of accelerating globalization, when the idea of cultural diversity lay at the foundation of the European Union and the notion of cultural uniformity was also challenged in the United States and other postcolonial societies, that historians began to look for inspiration in once despised heterogeneous bodies like the German Reich, Poland-Lithuania, and even early modern empires from Habsburg Spain to Manchu China. Although many scholars argue that the term “multiculturalism” rather belongs to the present era, as it refers to a genuine acceptance of the other that was unthinkable for early modern humans, the term is nonetheless used in reference to earlier periods, especially in regard to everyday social practice. In an article devoted to Lithuanian Tatars, the young Polish historian Adam Moniuszko defines the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a “multicultural” state, though he fails to define the term itself.While not rejecting this term altogether, one must observe that it is open to dispute and that the tolerance of early modern rulers displayed toward heterogeneous subjects was usually articulated in a context of hierarchy and subjection. To invoke an example that is especially familiar to the present author, even scholars who today favorably describe the toleration of Ottoman sultans toward non-Muslim communities admit that this policy merely served to maintain the legitimacy and stability of their empire, and that it was in no way dictated by any moral principles that would imply cultural relativism or an affirmative attitude toward religious dissenters. This chapter examines the history and development of a Muslim community that has survived under Christian rule in Eastern Europe for several centuries, preserving its religion and identity notwithstanding its ongoing assimilation in many aspects of everyday life and culture. Its history suggests that multiculturalism was possible as a social practice, though it was much less likely to be accepted as a legal concept until the very last years of the eighteenth century and the demise of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth [p. 66-67].