Understanding Bosnia, Part Four

While foreign fighters and their 'charitable' successors plant the seeds of radical Islam in Bosnia, local politicians and their followers seem bent on ensuring that the country remains a place of ethnic intolerance and division, Anes Alic and Vildana Skocajic write for ISN Security Watch.

For six centuries Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) have maintained the external pageHanafi tradition, following a moderate and open-minded version of Islam, tolerant of other religions existing in the country and compatible with western values. Bosnian Muslims are considered among the most secularized in the world, but that image has become tarnished with the wartime arrival of the foreign fighters and missionaries of radical Islam.

The radical and traditional way of practicing Islam, until the early 1990s unknown to Bosnia's Muslims, arrived here along with the first shipments of weapons and money from Islamic countries during the 1992-1995 war.

During the war, the economic power of the majority of the country's population was reduced to nothing and the foreign charities from Islamic countries stepped in with much-needed aid to become the prime founders of the Islamic revival.

Along with the money, several hundred Islamic fighters (mujahideens) and weapons for the Bosnian Army, foreign preachers - mostly from Saudi Arabia - and Islamic literature poured into Bosnia.

This particular brand of financial support undermined the power and influence of the Bosnian Islamic community, which during the war largely focused on scraping together food supplies for starving citizens.

Particularly since the end of the war, Saudi Arabia has increased its foothold in Bosnia, financing the building of Islamic cultural centers and massive new mosques that contrast glaringly with the traditional ancient Turkish architecture - all with the goal of bringing Bosnian Muslims closer to the beliefs and practices of external pageWahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia.

The new Saudi buildings are just that - run by the Saudis entirely, with no involvement by the local Bosnian Islamic community or the Bosnian authorities in general. Largely, they remain under the supervision and care of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Sarajevo.

For its part, in 1993, the Bosnian Islamic community banned the Wahhabi movement as well as the practice of fundamental Islam in Bosnian mosques. The ban came at a time during the war when foreign fighters began recruiting moderate Muslims to their cause. However, the Wahhabi movement has since spread dramatically, even in largely secular Bosnia, since the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Since the 1993 ban, the Bosnian Islamic community has done virtually nothing to prevent Bosnian Muslims from taking up radical Islam. However, since emboldened Wahhabis began making attempts to occupy the Islamic community's administrative units and mosques in the past couple of years, the moderate Muslim leaders were forced to react. In 2007, several mosques in the north were closed for days due to skirmishes between local Muslims and Wahhabis.

'Communist Islam' vs Wahhabism

An opinion poll carried out by several Bosnian media showed that 70 percent of Bosniaks oppose Wahhabism, while 13 percent broadly support it. Only three percent declared themselves followers.

On the other side of Islamic power play, members of the Wahhabi movement consider the local Islamic community to be ignorant, lacking initiative, indifferent and transgressing Islamic norms, labeling Bosnia's brand of traditional Islam as "communist Islam."
          
The imported, post-war, missionary form of radical Islam replaced the foreign fighters who arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina to fight Croats and Serbs. Gathered in the El-Mujahid unit, even though their military success is minor, they committed serious crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, leading to war crimes sentences for several Bosnian Army officers and damaging defensive image of the Bosnian Army.

With the end of the war, many of these foreign fighters left the country, moving elsewhere to "defend Islam," while some stayed on, marrying Bosnian women and working in Islamic charities.

Since the end of the war, Bosniak officials have largely avoided dealing with the issue of former foreign fighters – at least until it was pressured strongly by the international community, namely the US government and its embassy in Sarajevo, to take stock of these new citizens and their activities in Bosnia.
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In the first months following the end of the war, Bosniak leaders were forced by the US government, which threatened to block its financial and military support, to suspend the El-Mujahid unit and to close all military training camps run by Islamic warriors. 

Then, under international pressure in early 2006, the Bosnian government formed a commission tasked with reviewing how some 1,500 people, most of them fighters who came to Bosnia from Muslim countries during the war, gained Bosnian citizenship. Under similar pressure, the government has ordered the commencement of the deportation of many of these foreigners. So far, some 600 citizenships have been revoked, but only one man has been deported.

Planting the Radical Seed

But today, Bosnia faces another, more dangerous problem: The increase of Bosnian Muslims who are rejecting the traditional moderate ways of "communist Islam" and taking up more radical views, gathering around the Wahhabi movement.           

In 1996, a high-ranking El-Mujahid fighter predicted as much in his response to the dismantling of his unit and the departure of many foreign fighters to places where they were more urgently needed, such as Chechnya and Afghanistan. "Foreign fighters will not be a problem for Bosnia, he said: They will move on.

"But we planted a seed here and you will have more and more Bosnian Muslims practicing traditional Islam," he said.

As it turns out, it was a rather prophetic statement. Numbering only in the several hundreds in 1996, Federation police believe there are as many as 5,000 practicing Bosnian Wahhabis today. Primarily, their began to grow after the US launched its war in Afghanistan, and later on as a result of the invasion of Iraq and Israeli offensives against Palestinians.

Wahhabis view the US-led war on terror as an attack on all Muslims, and as such, with each offensive, battle or incident, radical Muslim preachers have seen a boost in the recruitment of young "converts" from within the traditionally moderate Bosnian Muslim community.

Bosnian Wahhabis largely target youth with few economic opportunities and downtrodden, both from rural areas. They keenly take advantage of poverty, lack of education and poor social services, offering young people and refugees a variety of opportunities, including jobs, income and fellowship. There have been cases in which new members are paid several hundred euros per month for their loyalty. There is also evidence that members are paid for convincing their wives to wear the hijab in public, among other things.

Recruiters take young people under their care, organizing activities such as camping trips and sporting events, and then indoctrinating them with speeches and videos focusing on civilian casualties in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian Territories.

Who's Who

According to the last Bosnian census from 1991, 43.5 percent of the population declared themselves Bosniak, 31.2 percent Serb, and 17.4 percent Croat - the remainder declaring themselves of other minorities or simply "Yugoslavs." However, many who identify with a major ethnic group are atheists or agnostics (or perhaps children of former communist leader Josep Broz Tito), particularly in urban areas.

Because of this, nationalist leaders clearly enjoy greater support from their ethnic constituents in the rural areas of Bosnia, where religion and ethnicity tend to go hand in hand.

The next full-scale census is foreseen for 2011, but given the current situation, which is unlikely to change by then, the census will only show the results of ethnic cleansing and ethnic homogenization.

According to 2006 local census, more than 90 percent of those living in the Bosnian Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska are Serbs, while 6 percent are Bosniaks and 4 percent Croats. In the Bosniak- and Bosnian Croat-dominated Federation entity, a 2002 census showed that 70 percent of citizens were Bosniaks and 28 percent Croat, while only 1 percent were Serbs, or perceived themselves as such.

It is important to point out that in the Federation, in the areas where one ethnic group forms a clear majority (excluding large cities), other ethnic group are not represented by more than 2 percent in any modern census.

Though freedom of religion is guaranteed by state and entity constitutions, societal abuses and discrimination based on religious belief and practice persist. Discrimination against religious minorities is common nearly countrywide. In rural areas, local religious leaders and politicians contribute to intolerance through public statements and sermons. The attacks on refugees returning to their pre-war homes and religious objects are also very common. These attacks also tend to coincide with the run-up to national elections, during which nationalist rhetoric employed by certain political parties heightens religious and ethnic tensions.

Holy sites were among the first targets when the war broke out; all in all, some 3,290 religious buildings were destroyed or damaged, mostly mosques but also plenty of Catholic and Orthodox churches as wells as convents and synagogues. Likewise, holy places were one of the first targets for rebuilding once the war ended - even before the first refugees were helped to return to their homes. The country also saw a massive expansion of the construction of new holy places, despite the desperate need of funds elsewhere.

Before the war, religion and ethnicity did not play a major role in Bosnian society, unlike today, where they the top two priorities in the rural areas, but less significant in areas of mixed ethnicities, though the war did manage to cause the homogenization of urban areas in some instances.

There was a time, indeed not so long ago at all, that many here thought of themselves as nothing more than Yugoslavs.

Speaking to ISN Security Watch, a 24-year-old psychologist from Sarajevo said that he was not religious at all because he came from an ethnically mixed marriage, while his wife, an unemployed biochemist by profession, considered herself moderately religious.

A retired Bosnian Serb woman from Sarajevo told ISN Security Watch that she had been a devout Orthodox Christian all her life, but that that had never seemed to matter in the capital city. "I never had problems in Sarajevo even though many Serbs fled the city. I live off a small pension, and only God can help us," she said.

A female student from western Bosnia studying at Sarajevo University said she was religious, but that her circle of friends crossed all ethnicities and religions. "Young people are not practicing religion enough, and maybe because of that we are not progressive and developed enough," she theorized.

Raising Intolerance

Still, despite some glimmers of hope, if the nationalists continue to have their way in the government, it seems that the future generations, those who are too young to remember or were not even born during the war, will be more radicalized and more intolerant.

All schools, even those in the mixed urban areas, are mono-ethnic, learning three different histories, geographies, religions and languages. Existing textbooks on these subjects are filled with nationalist and intolerant language regarding the other ethnic groups, particularly when talking about the recent war.

Several nongovernmental organizations, both local and international, conducted a study of textbooks on national subjects from three ethnic curricula and concluded that in many cases they were fascist in nature.

Thirteen years after the end of the Bosnian war, education remains the least reformed sector in Bosnian society. Pupils and teachers at all levels continue to experience ethnic and religious segregation, intolerance and division. The segregated system affects not only students, but teachers as well, as they continue to be appointed based upon ethnic criteria.

Also, the continuing existence of schools divided along ethnic lines and operating on the basis of "two schools under one roof" lends little hope that Bosnia will overcome ethnic division and animosity - however fraudulent they are - any time soon.

This post-war Bosnian phenomenon, "two schools under one roof" is mostly present in the Federation entity. Under this concept, Bosniak and Croat pupils and teachers use the same school facilities but have no contact with one another, and follow divergent, ethnic-based curricula. In the Republika Srpska, Bosniak and Croat returnees similarly attend their own ethnic schools.

Recently, nationalist authorities launched a new project introducing religion in classes, starting in nursery schools at the age of two. 

"State schools have no business teaching young children religion," one Sarajevo mother of a six-year-old child told ISN Security Watch. "They try to sell it as 'religious science' – meaning that it is intended to educate children on all major religions, but that is not the case. If the school is predominately Bosniak, the children will learn Islam, and there is nothing scientific about it."

But what she found most troubling, she said, was that fact that though the class was not mandatory, out of 25 first graders, only her daughter and one other did not attend. "Many of the parents feel pressured, I believe, to use the class as a way to declare their ethnicity, rather than as a show of their religion, and that is very unfortunate."

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