Although most of the Slavic muslims initially also identified themselves as Montenegrins, gradually over time more and more Slavic muslims started to use Muslim as an ethnic identity instead of only a religious identity.

After the Yugoslav Wars this changed again and at the 2003 and 2011 census most Slavic muslims declared themselves Bosniaks, because they have relations with Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina and mostly live in the northeast of Montenegro.