CIP WahhabiWatch #37
Resid Hafizovic on Islam in Bosnia-Hercegovina, February 28, 2009

Excerpts from Interview with Prof. Dr. Resid Hafizovic, Faculty of Islamic Studies (FIN), Oslobodjenje [Liberation], Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina, November 22, 2008 Translation by Center for Islamic Pluralism Oslobodjenje: How do you view the recent statement by the cabinet of the reis-ul-ulema [chief cleric Mustafa efendija Ceric]? At the beginning of the week it reacted, via a newspaper commentary, to an interview with professor Mustafa Spahic of the Gazi Husrev Beg medresa, and before that, to the protest letter by students from the Faculty of Islamic Studies. Hafizovic: There is nothing special to discuss. From the beginning everything was clearly said. To previously-stated descriptions, coming from a “recognizable” place, some new ones are added. For such a “job” no special creativity is even needed. It is enough that the “target” is there, because it determines which arrow has to be launched, which label to apply, which descriptive to add. Every totalitarian consciousness has learned this and tried it a long time ago. And the “virtue” of that consciousness is currently that it always finds a way to crawl out of “its” past time to which, as if we were cursed, we believed it was consigned, and comes back into our time, it finds its own “island” in our time and settles there. That, as is customary, is the “place” where one never has to take an examination in democracy, human rights and freedom, justice and equity. Let us not talk about arguments because for this consciousness they are pure blasphemy. It doesn’t need them. To this consciousness all that is forbidden is permitted because, by accident or not, it always finds itself in a “convenient place” which is “struck” by a surprise attack… it defends itself, as it defends its own fief, with any means, even those that are not tolerated by human or divine laws. Oslobodjenje: Did you receive the letter from the students of the Faculty of Islamic Studies?
Hafizovic: Yes, I did receive it. Although without proper signatures. But, I understand the students. For God’s sake, this is not 1968. Times have changed. But for the worse. Oslobodjenje: Professor Hafizovic, two years ago Ceric’s office criticized one of your texts in a statement. Tell me, please, what happened since then? Hafizovic: Yes, that is right. What has, in the meantime, changed? Nothing, absolutely nothing has changed. I made my opinions public back then and hold to them to this day. And Ceric’s office, it seems, has continued its practice of media lynchings. Only time has, in the meantime, witnessed the arrival of a much worse state of things than that which I wrote about back then, much more quickly and clearly than anyone ever expected. Oslobodjenje: How would you describe today’s situation within the Islamic Community of Bosnia-Hercegovina: is it able to deal with temptations, is it successful in resisting the increasing number of Wahhabis in our country? Hafizovic: If someone from the sidelines were to totally neutrally and independently monitor the organizational schematics of the Islamic Community, they would think it is a perfectly organized institution. However, that is a wrong impression; everything is far from perfection. All the Islamic Community of Bosnia-Hercegovina has accomplished from 1993 until now was an uncontrolled expansion of the administrative apparatus, that grew to the extent that it slowly threatens even the raison d’etre of the Community. From a different perspective, spending money, time and energy on nurturing something which is a purpose unto itself, and an excessive administration, has always, in any case, threatened the institutions of the Islamic Community that by their foundational nature are of great importance for that Community, and are pledged to its lasting and true development. I speak in the first place about the supreme educational institutions within the Islamic Community, the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo which has already become recognized in the world, and the Gazi Husrev Bey madrasa in Sarajevo . However, both of these educational institutions are already quite relativized if only by the reality of uncontrolled opening of an unacceptably large number of madrasas and universities of Islamic studies. Today in Bosnia-Hercegovina we have more of those than in any of the most theocratic states in the Muslim world. It is not about hyper-production of unnecessary personnel anymore, which cannot, in any case, find work anywhere, instead the issue is the threat to and betrayal of the quality of teaching in the educational institutions of the Islamic community.
On the other hand, alongside so many educational institutions in the Islamic community, behold the paradox: the Bosniaks, instead of being spiritually more free, creative, self-assured and intellectual, today are completely spiritually enslaved, crippled, un-free and intellectually “castrated.” That has, of course, to do with the official politics of the Community, which also contributed totally irresponsible and dishonest policies and a political strategy, which, if there ever was one, has been imposed on the Bosniak people all these years by Bosniak politicians and government officials. Many of them have, in the past and today, sat in the highest regulatory bodies of the Islamic Community, but it never bothered them nor have they ever publicly looked in a critical manner at the slippage of quantity at the expense of quality in educational institutions of the Islamic Community. Therefore, an independent historian, who will write the new history of Islamic Community in Bosnia-Hercegovina from a relevant distance, will clearly observe that this is one of the darker, if not the darkest times of the most important institution of Bosniaks. You can only then evaluate how that Community is able to answer temptations of all kinds. Oslobodjenje: In spring [2008] there was a public debate about the expansion of construction of mosques in Sarajevo , and during autumn construction of the magnificent Rijaset building [of reis-ul-ulema Ceric] was announced. Is construction the best recipe for a better life of Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina? Hafizovic: I have nothing against construction of mosques, nor do I have anything against construction of sacred buildings as such. On the contrary. Many sacred buildings were destroyed in the recent aggression against Bosnia , most of them mosques. They need to be rebuilt. But mosques need to be built where they are truly needed, and not out of competitiveness and a wish to be the source of divisions of any kind. There are priorities in everything, including construction of mosques. The Prophet of Islam (a.s.) himself showed this with his own example. It is very odd to build new mosques, when we can’t even pay the imams in those we have already built, which is almost a regular occurrence with imams in the reduced Bosnian entity.
As far as the magnificent facility for the Rijaset, which they want to build, is concerned, that is the summit of irresponsibility and lack of any consciousness of real necessities and priorities of the times in which we live. Raising an edifice worth tens of millions of marks in a time when eighty percent of people in the country are starving is an unacceptable example of insensitivity, shamelessly shown by people who consider themselves “servants of God.” Students at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo do not have their own dormitories, and the Rijaset is building itself a new residence – right there is a part of the answer as to why the students of the Faculty of Islamic Studies are unhappy and why they are sending letters to everyone around them. From a different perspective, we are witnessing that in the recent years there is an unusual construction syndrome rampant in this city. In it grow unusual, somewhat frightening towers that remind us of “towers of Babylon .” We do not need to mention that they always are examples of ugliness, high-handedness, incurable vanity and a wish to become “masters of the city” in which, today or tomorrow, no head will rest on one’s shoulders if it disturbs the “quiet night” which is already descending upon this city. When the new residence of Rijaset is erected on Kovaci, we’ll have all the standards by which the life and freedom of local people will be leveled; they will be happy to wake up alive and, firstly, humbly greet on one side, then on the other the “masters of magical rings” who overbearingly put a stamp on our “Balkan time.” And with [the Serbian business oligarch] Miskovic, directly or indirectly, woven into the local line of construction by cause and effect – this once-extended hand of Milosevic’s bloody and genocidal vortex in Bosnia – perhaps, if a new aggression on this country happens, snipers will again shoot us like wild game from those towers of Babylon. May it not be repeated, but [Belgrade-style] towers are already spreading throughout this city. Oslobodjenje: What do you think about today’s political situation in our country: the international community is slowly packing their bags, local politicians seem unprepared for a constructive dialogue, and even when they try and agree – problems appear. How did you view the meeting of Covic-Dodik-Tihic in Prud near Odzak? Hafizovic: About it, simply, I do not think anymore, rather I shake from shock and fear. It reminds me irresistibly of the time right before ‘92 and afterward. If we have the real principles of political theory and responsible practice of politics in mind, then I have to say that we, generally, do not have politicians, even politicians who are defined according to parameters of true political theory and responsible practice of politics. Our current politicians are everything except what they should be. On the basis of their practice until now, which has clearly shown they are primitive, uneducated, greedy and truly unpatriotic, they, often by using their public offices, exploited the state budget to build a future for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Therefore, they are not politicians, that is, they have a typical smuggler-chicken farmer mentality that, instead of developing strategic and development projects for this country, sells the little valuable state capital that is left for a cheap price. Therefore, I doubt any agreement they reach, especially those that lead far away from the eyes of the public and outside the legal institutions of the system. Whatever agreement they reach, I am afraid it will always be for their own benefit and to the detriment of the state of Bosnia . But the representatives of the international community have been helping them in all of that through all these years, whether in their irresponsible execution of functions entrusted to them, whether in open work to the benefit of interests of some centers of power far away from the borders of this country. They will, obviously, soon leave and with them, maybe, many of our political and other officials who have already taken enough from this country that it will not matter to them where they will spend the rest of their lives. Patriotism, which they obviously lack, will certainly not be any obstacle in that. Oslobodjenje: Bosniak political leaders Sulejman Tihic and Haris Silajdzic, for more than a year, have argued with one another because of the energy sector and privatization of BH Telekom. Professor Hafizovic, how do you see the development of events on the Bosniak political scene? Hafizovic: That is as clear as daylight. They even argue in front of TV cameras. And that is nothing unusual. It is only unusual that Bosniaks never seem to understand that those two will never take them anywhere. They are not, unfortunately, arguing because they have such good solutions for this country and can’t agree on whose model has better priorities to be implemented and applied. They argue because they are not successful in taking from the state and the people everything they believe they are entitled to, they and their most prominent political think-alikes… Therefore, the only solution for Bosniaks is that at the first opportunity they should deny [those two] the confidence they never deserved in the first place. Oslobodjenje: In his interview Professor Spahic expressed concern for the relationship of education and science in our country and in his extremely picturesque way he confirmed that the greatest corruption is in lack of knowledge. What do you think about our universities and the scandals that are shaking them? Hafizovic: Professor Spahic is concerned with good reason. And he is not alone in that. The majority of sensible people who have this country and its progress in their hearts are concerned to the core. Our education is in a very sorry state. A massive social shock, caused by a terrible aggression against Bosnia-Hercegovina, has made it possible that a social sediment has risen to the surface, and the recognizable echelon of values in education, culture, morale, religion, upbringing … rocks itself to the point that today we see a very different order of values, many of which are mere pseudo-values. A good portion of the mentioned “social sediment” has not, according to the nature of things, returned to its place, but numerous individuals have overnight, so to speak, risen into our new social, cultural, educational, political and, if you will, even religious “elite.” We have heard many objections to so-called “socialist education” [during the Tito period] but, despite everything, it gave us an educational depth and general culture which today, simply said, you cannot see anywhere. As we have quasi-politicians, quasi-culturalists, quasi-national and religious workers, we equally have quasi-intellectuals and a quasi-academic community. Honors are due some worthy individuals. There are so few of them, however, that it is not worth mentioning them. Overnight so many schlock universities, colleges and academies have grown that soon we will have one university, one college and one academy per inhabitant. And when you add to that the “salami slicing” which we are just now putting in place, again in our peculiar Balkan way, which drastically reduces knowledge, we can hope to soon have quasi-intellectuals and quasi-academic citizens to a second power. For years in this country we have been witnesses of the practice that someone can become a regular university professor without publishing a single book, a minister of education without ever seeing education during his life, a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts without any relevant references, a mufti who never studied subjects in Islamic law even at a grade “C” level and so forth. Therefore, the impression is irresistible that our academic community is clearly stuffed with “intellectual eunuchs” whose minds have been covered with spider webs for some time. But that does not mean they can be excused by saying: “Well, don’t reproach them, they don’t know what they’re doing!” Their responsibility is immeasurable since today they are preparing our children to be cheap labor in a future united Europe , because our country’s diplomas won’t be worth anything. Oslobodjenje: Since September 11, 2001 Muslims must justify their existence, it seems, because of the existence of Al-Qaida. Where are the Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina today? Hafizovic: Seen generally, Muslims today are enslaved between openly negative Western-European political and military attitudes toward the Muslim world after September 11, on one side, and incompetent, authoritarian, bribable and repressive political regimes in the Muslim world whose non-democratic, absolutist governance, supported by their political partners from the West, are upheld and maintained by incompetent local religious elites, on the other side. No one from the relevant religious authorities in the Muslim world has publicly come forward with a clear and strong legal decision (fatwa) in which they would explain why the murderous, terrorist and aggressive practices personified in Al-Qaida are not justified by Islam and the Islamic religious worldview. The silence of religious authorities on this topic has given courage to the shocking virus.
As far as Bosnian Muslims are concerned, today they are confused, without rights, robbed and deserted by everyone. They are mute spectators of a vulture-like national and religious politics that shamelessly manipulates, sells and lives off their sacrifice and their hard life. Squeezed on a last scrap of Bosnian land, we have the same country that about ninety years ago was, according to the land registers of the Austro-Hungarian government (1903), 91.1% their private property, and now they fear for their future. They are slaves in their own country but no one will tell them that… Oslobodjenje: Your scientific work has been immensely valued throughout the world, even more valued than in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Why is that so? What are you currently occupied with? Hafizovic: That is not only my destiny. That is the destiny of the majority of intellectuals of these lands. That has, simply, become some kind of a local tradition. With regard to the status of our education, public culture and academic community, with notable exceptions, today there is no one to evaluate what you do.
As far as my current intellectual efforts are concerned, right now I am finishing the last technical details for preparation of five manuscripts which should, God willing, be published in the following year. The first two are my books: one about “Islam and Western European Identity,” which will be published in Sarajevo, another on “Traces of Infinite Wisdom in Sufi Spirituality,” in English, will be published in Malaysia, then my translation from an Arabic original and my introductory study of Suhrawardi’s Theosophy of Light, one of the supreme classical works because of the content of which the author was beheaded. After that a translation from French of a spectacular study by Henri Corbin on “Ibn Sina and His Visionary Discourses,” with my long introduction. And finally, part two of four, of an Arabic manuscript by the famed Abdulah efendija Bosnjak, a man from these lands, who lived in Istanbul in the middle of the seventeenth century and various other cultural centers of the Muslim empire of that time and, among others, wrote the finest commentary on the Fusus al-Hikam (Seals of Wisdom) of the famed mystical philosopher from Muslim Spain, Ibn ‘Arabi. This Bosnian and Bosniak, Abdula efendija, sat during the day with the Ottoman sultan and gave him advice, traveled from one end of the empire to the other as his advisor, and at night wrote the most beautiful pages in the history of Muslim thinking in the Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages. His “Commentary” in its complete translation will total about 2000 pages on its own. His son Hasan efendi at that time was the main mufti in Jerusalem , whose fatwas and legal writings are even today unusually attractive works. These two persons, father and son, among hundreds of such during their time, are only indicators of what the scientific and educational parameters of the Bosniak elite once were, compared with what they are today

CIP WAHHABIWATCH #36: FRONTLINE KOSOVA REPORT –
THE BATTLE AGAINST WAHHABISM HEATS UP! – JANUARY 17, 2009

CIP NOTE: This dramatic document follows on CIP WahhabiWatch #33. CIP will continue to translate and publish materials on the confrontation in Kosova. We wish to point out that so-called “mufti” Naim Tërnava has been a participant in the fraudulent negotiations with Catholics in Rome and other Christians, run by fake Sufi Hamza Yusuf Hanson, under the title “A Common Word.”

Osman’s War
Express [Prishtina, Kosova], Friday, January 16, 2009

Instead of the leadership of the Islamic Community of Kosova (ICK), Mullah Osman Musliu is dealing with the Wahhabis. His protests have moved the District Government in Drenas while ICK is waiting for the return of [Kosova reis-ul-ulema, who calls himself Chief Mufti] Naim Tërnava. Mullah Osman reveals the chaos in the highest institution of Islam in Kosova, which is slipping out of control

by Jeton Musliu

As long as Mullah Osman Musliu is alive and chairman of the Drenas branch of the Islamic Community of Kosovo (ICK), the mosque in the village of Zabel will never suffer the fate of the mosque in the village of Morina near Skënderaj.
This is the oath taken by Mullah Osman, who was beaten a few days ago in the Zabel mosque and who considers the imam at Morina near Skënderaj a very dangerous person.
Despite the fact that the Morina imam is known for the generous aid he distributes to ordinary people in the area, Mullah Osman has a different opinion of him.
“Those who give out a lot of money are the ones who do the worst. harm. Something else is hidden behind the money and behind the aid,” Mullah Osman tells Express newspaper. “I do not think Serbia has damaged Kosova the way the Morina mosque has.”
Regarding Naim Tërnava, chairman of the ICK, Mullah Osman says he is intimidated by the Wahhabis. He explains that this is why they are now preaching as imams. They include “Mazllum from Prizren, Shefqet Krasniqi from Prishtina, and others from Macedonia or Albania ”. ICK is too weak to control the imams or the mosques and the worst example, according to Mullah Osman, is Imam Shefqet Krasniqi who ia allowed to preach in the mosques of the Drenas district without asking any permission.
“If Shefqet Krasniqi is a Wahhabi, something must be going on. The fact that he comes to my home (mosque) and operates in Drenas ignoring the chairman of the local Islamic Council and ignoring the imam shows there must be something afoot. We have notified ICK and mufti Tërnava about all of this but the measures taken have been very weak,” explains Imam Osman.
His face still shows the signs of violence against him and his hand is still bandaged, but after Friday’s incident [January 9, 2009] in the Zabel mosque, Mullah Osman Musliu has still not heard from one person: Naim Tërnava himself, leader of the ICK. Usually in the last nine years, the news that some recognized, higher figure in the ICK has been beaten naturally ends without a public discussion of Wahhabism. This time Mullah Osman has decided to make a difference.
Surprisingly, the initiative to remove Wahhabis and other religious radicals from the ICK-administrated mosques has not been initiated from the top of the ICK, but from the periphery, by Mullah Osman Musliu. With letters to the District Government of Drenas and to the ICK. Mullah Osman called for substantial measures to prevent Wahhabi operations in the mosques and in properties administrated by ICK.
“I think that I have done a good deed by bringing this issue into the open and I have decided not to keep silent on this,” Mullah Osman says to Express. “We have decided to close the mosque in Zabel until everyone calms down and I have fully recovered and am back on my feet.”
While the ICK leadership has as yet failed to respond to the letter of Mullah Osman, the Drenas district government reacted promptly. One important item in the letters that Mullah Osman sent to ICK and the district government involved illegal Wahhabi activity in the library of the elementary school in Komaran.
Hyrije Xhemajli, head of the School Inspectorate in the district administration reports that immediately after receiving the letter, her institution sent inspectors to this library.
“The inspectors did not find those who run the library but they have collected enough evidence about how the various educational activities are conducted, including the courses in foreign languages [i.e. Arabic]. Based on this information we will investigate and decide whether certain educational activities violate the law,” Xhemajli told Express.
However, she explained that any official inspectorate action regarding the buildings administrated by ICK must take place in cooperation with this religious institution.
“We are looking at ways the law provides for dealing properly with the issue,” Xhemajli said.
As he is visited by numerous supporters bringing greetings, Mullah Osman says he is very satisfied by the support he received from the District Council of Drenas ,and the district head himself has met him at least five times.
“Some members of the ICK Leadership have also visited me but they cannot decide anything. I am waiting until chairman Tërnava comes back from abroad,” Mullah Osman explains. He declared it has been easier for Wahhabis to operate since Naim Tërnava has begun running ICK than it was when Rexhep Boja was chairman of the ICK, because the latter opposed them.
“I have noticed that mufti Tërnava is unable to fight the Wahhabis, because he is afraid and intimidated by them. Even when Rexhep Boja was head there were Wahhabis here but he opposed them,” said Mullah Osman, who declares he was against the recent re-election of Naim Tërnava as the head of ICK.
He explains that mosques are property of ICK, ias well as its library, control of which has now totally slipped from the hands of this religious institution, and operation of which is totally deviant.
This newspaper has tried to contact the ICK officials, but they did not want to comment on this case until Naim Tërnava returns to Kosova.
“We need to know what is being presented to our children. I have demanded that other mosques and organizations, including Christian groups, be inspected as well. We must not allow any manipulation of our children,” concluded Osman Musliu.
The Drenas chairman of ICK believes in what he says and adds that it is of less importance what happens to older generations.
“I am willing to let a Christian priest come and speak in a mosque to people who are older than 18 years, but it is different when it comes to institutions intended to educate and not to manipulate our children. We have made great sacrifices to become those who teach our children. We should not let others educate them,” says Imam Osman.
He wants a Law on Religion prepared as soon as possible, so that the state can control religious activities. This should not be like what communism imposed but should be limited to defending the law.
“Wahhabis may build new mosques, but they cannot preach in the mosques of ICK,” Mullah Osman Musliu concluded
[Translation by Center for Islamic Pluralism]

Lufta e Osmanit
www.gazetaexpress.com/index.php/artikujt/lexo/954/C4/C15/

Në vend të kreut të BIK-ut, me wahabistët ka filluar të merret mulla Osman Musliu. Ankesat e tij kanë vënë në lëvizje komunën e Drenasit, kurse BIK-u pret ardhjen e myftiut Naim Tërnava. Mulla Osmani rrëfen kaosin që ka përfshirë institucionin më të lartë islam në Kosovë, të cilit duket se ka filluar t’i rrëshqasë kontrolli nga duart.

Nga Jeton Musliu më 16.01.2009 në ora 9:01

Mulla Osman Musliu gjallë, të jetë kryetar i Degës së Bashkësisë Islame të Kosovës (BIK) për Drenas dhe në të njëjtën kohë xhamia e fshatit Zabel të shndërrohet sikurse ajo e fshatit Morinë, kurrë jo. Ky është betimi që i ka dhënë vetes mulla Osmani, i rrahur disa ditë më parë në xhaminë e fshatit Zabel, i cili imamin e xhamisë së fshatit Morinë të Skenderajt, e konsideron shumë të rrezikshëm.
Pavarësisht se imami i xhamisë së fshatit Morinë njihet për ndihma të mëdha që iu shpërndan popullatës së asaj ane, mulla Osmani ka një mendim tërësisht tjetër. “Ata që japin shumë para, ata edhe shkatërrojnë shumë. Kjo sepse, pas parave dhe ndihmave, fshihet diçka tjetër. Unë mendoj se Serbia nuk i ka bërë Kosovës, çka i ka bërë xhamia e Morinës”, thotë mulla Osmani për Express.
Naim Tërnavën, kryetarin e BIK-ut, mulla Osmani e quan të frikësuar nga wahabistët, ndërkohë që shpjegon se pa ndonjë leje dhe kontroll, gjithandej ligjërojnë hoxhë si Mazllumi nga Prizreni, Shefqet Krasniqi nga Prishtina, të tjerë nga Maqedonia apo Shqipëria. Duke ilustruar pafuqinë e BIK-ut për kontroll mbi imamët, xhamitë dhe hoxhët, mulla Osmani jep shembullin kur hoxha Shefqet Krasniqi ligjëron në xhamitë e Drenasit, pa e pyetur askënd.
“Nëse Shefqet Krasniqi është wahabist, diçka ka. Fakti se ai vjen në shtëpinë (xhaminë) time dhe vepron në Drenas pa e pyetur kryetarin e Këshillit dhe pa e pyetur imamin, diçka duhet të ketë. Për të gjitha këto është njoftuar BIK-u e myftiu Tërnava dhe masat që ata kanë ndërmarrë janë shumë të dobëta”, shpjegon imam Osmani.
Ai fytyrën ende e ka të nxirë nga grushtet dhe dorën të lidhur me fashë, por pas incidentit të së premtes në xhaminë e fshatit Zabel të Drenasit, mulla Osman Musliun nuk e ka vizituar ende një person, pikërisht Naim Tërnava, kreu i BIK-ut. Ndërkohë, me iniciativën e mulla Osmanit, për herë të parë në nëntë vitet e fundit, çështja e wahabizimit në Kosovë, duket se nuk do të kalojë thjesht me lajmin thuajse të zakonshëm të rrahjes së ndonjë drejtuesi të hierarkisë së BIK-ut.
Për çudi, iniciativa për të spastruar xhamitë, të cilat i administron BIK-u, nga personat e njohur si wahabistë, e nga të tjerët si radikalë fetarë, nuk ka nisur nga koka, që është BIK-u, por nga fundi, pikërisht nga mulla Osman Musliu. Me nga një letër drejtuar Komunës së Drenasit dhe BIK-ut, mulla Osmani ka kërkuar që të ndërmerren masat për parandalimin e ushtrimit të aktivitetit të wahabistëve në xhamitë dhe pronat e administruara nga BIK-u.
“Po e shoh që kam bërë mirë që rastin nuk e kam lënë nën hije dhe kam vendosur të mos hesht. Kemi marrë vendim që ta mbyllim xhaminë në fshatin Zabel, derisa të ulen pak gjakrat dhe të shërohem”, thotë mulla Osmani për Express.
Derisa pas kësaj kërkese të drejtuar një ditë më parë nga mulla Osmani, BIK-u ende nuk ka reaguar, ndryshe ka vepruar komuna e Drenasit. Përveç në xhaminë e fshatit Zabel, në letrat e tij, imam Osmani njofton Komunën dhe BIK-un me aktivitetet e paligjshme të wahabistëve edhe në bibliotekën e Shkollës fillore në Komaran.
Hyrije Xhemajli, drejtoreshë e Drejtoratit të Inspeksionit në këtë Komunë sqaron se menjëherë pas letrës, ky institucion ka reaguar duke dërguar inspektorët e vet në këtë bibliotekë. “Inspektorët nuk i kanë gjetur drejtuesit e saj, por kanë parë njoftime për aktivitete të ndryshme arsimore, duke përfshirë edhe kurse të gjuhëve të huaja. Bazuar në këtë, ne do të hetojmë çështjen për të parë nëse këto aktivitete arsimore janë të ligjshme”, thotë Xhemajli për Express.
Megjithatë, ajo sqaron se të gjitha aktivitetet e kësaj drejtorie që kanë të bëjnë me kontrollin e objekteve që veprojnë në kuadër të BIK-ut, do të bëhen me bashkëveprimin e këtij institucioni fetar.
“Jemi duke shqyrtuar mundësitë që në përputhje me ligjin të veprohet si duhet”, thotë Hyrije Xhemajli, drejtoreshë e Drejtoratit të Inspeksionit të Komunës së Drenasit.
Derisa pret mysafirë të shumtë, mulla Osmani thotë të jetë shumë i kënaqur me përkrahjen nga ana e Kuvendit Komunal të Drenasit dhe vetë kryetarit të Komunës, i cili e ka vizituar së paku pesë herë.
“Edhe disa nga anëtarët e Kryesisë së BIK-ut kanë ardhur, por anëtarët e Kryesisë nuk mund të vendosin për asgjë. Po pres derisa kryetari Tërnava të kthehet nga jashtë”, sqaron mulla Osmani. Sipas tij, nën drejtimin e Naim Tërnavës, wahabizimi e ka pasur shumë më të lehtë të veprojë sesa në kohën kur kryetar i BIK-ut ka qenë Rexhep Boja, sepse ky i fundit është distancuar.
“E kam parë që myftiu Tërnava nuk është në gjendje t’i luftojë wahabistët, sepse e ka frikën dhe drojën. Edhe në kohën e Rexhep Bojës ka pasur wahabistë, por ai është distancuar nga ta”, thotë mulla Osmani, i cili shpjegon se hapur ka qenë kundër rizgjedhjes së Naim Tërnavës në krye të BIK-ut.
Ai sqaron se xhamitë janë pronë e BIK-ut, duke përfshirë edhe bibliotekën për të cilën thotë se tashmë tërësisht ka devijuar dhe nuk kontrollohet më nga ky institucion fetar.
Gazeta ka bërë përpjekje të kontaktojë zyrtarët e BIK-ut, por ata nuk kanë dashur të thonë asgjë në lidhje me këtë rast, me arsyetimin se Naim Tërnava nuk është në Kosovë.
“Ne duhet të dimë se çfarë po u servohet fëmijëve tanë. Këtë kërkesë e kam bërë që edhe xhamitë edhe shoqatat e ndryshme qofshin edhe të krishtera, të kontrollohen. Ne nuk duhet të lejojmë që me fëmijët tanë të luajë dikush”, konkludon mulla Osman Musliu.
Kreu i BIK-ut për komunën e Drenasit është i bindur në ato që thotë dhe shpjegon se pak rëndësi ka çfarë bëhet me gjeneratat e vjetra.
“Unë jam i gatshëm që një prifti t’ia lejoj të vijë në xhami të mbajë ligjërata për persona mbi 18 vjeç, por jo në lokale, e të keqpërdoren fëmijët tanë. Ne kemi bërë sakrifica që t’i mësojmë fëmijët tanë vetë, e jo të vijnë të tjerët t’i mësojnë”, thotë imam Osmani.
Ai kërkon që sa më shpejt të hartohet dhe miratohet Ligji për fetë, në mënyrë që shteti të ketë kontroll mbi to, jo sikurse në kohën e komunizmit, por të dijë se çfarë ligjërohet e çfarë bëhet. “Wahabistët mund të ndërtojnë xhami të veta, por jo të ligjërojnë në xhamitë e BIK-ut”, përfundon mulla Osman Musli

CIP WahhabiWatch #35: Wahhabis trying to capture Islamic Community of Kosova

Express [Prishtina, Kosova], January 14, 2009 Mullah Osman Musliu, an official of the Islamic Community of Kosova (ICK) believes that the people who beat him up are known “Wahhabis”. He says they want to take control of the ICK. Following this event in Zabel, a village of the Drenas district, the police arrested nine persons. The daily Express discloses their names By Jeton Musliu Nine persons have been arrested as suspects in a violent assault on mullah Osman Musliu in the village of Drenas , which occurred last Friday [January 9, 2009]. Police said that two other victims also suffered beatings: Bashkim Ibrahimi from the village of Zabel i Ulët and a third person. Four people arrested by police will be held for thirty days as the investigation of this incident continues; five more will be held for the same number of days in house arrest. Two of the main suspects in the assault on mullah Osman in the Zabel village mosque, when he arrived for a local imam installation, are from the same village; the other two come from two other villages. The oldest of these four, aged 30, is from Llapushnik village, while the youngest, who is only 23 years old, is from Zabel i Ulët. The names of the people held in jail because of the assault are: Sefedin Gashi (born 1979) from the village of Llapushnik, Rrustem Bublaku (born 1984) and Nderim Bublaku (born 1985) from Zabel i Ulët and Shefqet Krasniqi (born 1982) from the village of Gllobar. The names of those held in house arrest for 30 days are: Zekë Bublaku (born 1949) from Zabel i Ulët, Veli Hajrizi (born 1945) from Shtrubullovë, Arsim Kastrati (born 1986) from the village of Nekovc, Shpejtim Shala (born 1979) from the village of Cikatovë e Re and Nuhi Thaci (born 1965) from Llapushnik. Police officers explained to Express that judging from the clothes that two of the four held in jail were wearing when arrested, and otherwise because of their appearance, they belong to the “Wahhabi” sect. “They had the usual beards and short pants, which distinguished them from others,” said a police officer directly involved in the investigation of this case. Contacted by Express, mullah Osman Musliu said he is convinced that the assault on him was organized by “Wahhabis.” “I am a mullah and I know about them, I recognize them,” said Musliu, explaining that he will not be intimidated despite the beating. “They can kill me, but I will not be intimidated. Their goal is simple. They want to take over the Islamic Community of Kosova,” mullah Osman told Express. As on previous occasions, the Islamic Community of Kosova reacted against this new incident only with a declaration that deemed it as a shameful act, but without taking any further measures. ICK has asked the public security organs to make sure that these incidents do not happen again, although only a few weeks ago a high official of the supreme Muslim institution in Kosova was attacked in the garden of his own house. Professor Xhabir Hamiti suffered wounds in his face and head after being beaten in the garden of his house, and like mullah Osman, when interviewed by Express newspaper, Hamiti blamed “Wahhabis” for the assault. According to him, also, these groups want to take control of ICK. Mullah Osman Musliu is the chairman of ICK for the district of Drenas and had traveled to the local mosque in Zabel for installation of an imam for the community of believers. However, the presentation of the new imam was prevented by the intervention of people in the crowd. The altercation soon turned violent and mullah Osman thinks that everything was well organized for an assault on him. Zabel villagers said they have nothing against mullah Osman and that the persons who provoked the incident are not from that village.
[Translation by Center for Islamic Pluralism]

Albanian text: Wahabistët synojnë BIK-un?
Mulla Osman Musliu, zyrtar i Bashkësisë Islame të Kosovës beson se është rrahur nga persona që i identifikon si besimtarë “wahabistë”. Thotë se ata duan ta marrin BIK-un. Për këtë ngjarje, e cila ka ndodhur në lutjen e së premtes në fshatin Zabel të Drenasit, policia ka arrestuar nëntë persona. Express sjell emrat e tyre Nga Jeton Musliu më 14.01.2009 në ora 8:45 Nëntë persona janë arrestuar si të dyshuar për rrahjen e hoxhës Osman Musliu nga Drenasi, ngjarje e cila ka ndodhur të premten e kaluar. Në këtë rast, përveç mulla Osmanit, si viktima, policia i konsideron edhe Bashkim Ibrahimin nga fshati Zabel i Ulët dhe një person tjetër. Katër prej këtyre nëntë vetave tashmë u është caktuar masa e paraburgimit prej tridhjetë ditësh, ndërkohë që pesë të tjerëve masa e arrestit shtëpiak, gjithashtu në afat prej tridhjetë ditësh. Dy nga personat e dyshuar për sulm mbi mulla Osmanin, në xhaminë e fshatit Zabel, në lutjen e së premtes së kaluar janë nga i njëjti fshat, kurse dy të tjerë janë të fshatrave të ndryshëm. Më i vjetri prej këtyre katër personave të paraburgosur është tridhjetë vjeç nga fshati Llapushnik, kurse më i riu vetëm 23 vjeç nga fshati Zabel i Ulët të Drenasit. Të arrestuarit që janë duke u mbajtur në paraburgim në lidhje me këtë rast janë: Sefedin Gashi (1979) nga fshati Llapushnik, Rrustem Bublaku (1984) dhe Nderim Bublaku (1985)nga fshati Zabel i Ulët dhe Shefqet Krasniqi (1982) nga fshati Gllobar. Në lidhje me këtë rast, masa e arrestit shtëpiak në afat prej tridhjetë ditësh u është caktuar Zekë Bublakut (1949) nga fshati Zabel i Ulët, Veli Hajrizit (1945) nga fshati Shtrubullovë, Arsim Kastratit (1986) nga fshati Nekovc, Shpejtim Shalës (1979) nga fshati Cikatovë e Re dhe Nuhi Thacit (1965) nga fshati Llapushnik. Zyrtarë të policisë shpjegojnë për Express se në momentin e arrestimit, duke u bazuar në mënyrën e veshjes dhe dukjes, dy nga katër të arrestuarit që janë duke u mbajtur në paraburgim, i takojnë sektit “wahabi”. “Dy prej tyre ishin me mjekra dhe me pantallona të shkurtra, që sigurisht se dalloheshin nga të tjerët”, thotë ky zyrtar nga policia i cili është i përfshirë direkt në hetimin e këtij rasti. I kontaktuar nga Express, hoxha Osman Musliu shpjegon se është i bindur se rrahja e tij është bërë nga “wahabistët”, persona që i takojnë këtij sekti të besimit islam.
“Unë jam hoxhë dhe e di, i njoh”, thotë Musliu, duke shpjeguar se nuk e ka ndërmend të frikësohet as pas kësaj rrahjeje që i është bërë. “Ata munden edhe të më vrasin, por nuk frikësohem. Qëllimi i tyre është i thjeshtë, ata duan ta marrin Bashkësinë Islame të Kosovës”, thotë mulla Osmani për Express. Sikurse edhe në rastet e tjera, edhe kësaj here, Bashkësia Islame e Kosovës vetëm ka reaguar ndaj këtij incidenti, të cilin e ka quajtur të turpshëm, por pa ndërmarrë ndonjë veprim konkret. BIK-u ka kërkuar nga organet e rendit që raste të tilla të mos ndodhin më, pavarësisht se vetëm disa javë më parë një zyrtar i lartë i institucionit më të lartë të besimtarëve islamë në Kosovë është sulmuar në oborrin e shtëpisë së tij. Profesor Xhabir Hamiti ka marrë plagë në fytyrë dhe kokë nga rrahja që i është bërë në oborrin e shtëpisë së tij dhe sikurse mulla Osmani, edhe ai, në një intervistë për Express, për këtë veprim përgjegjës ka bërë grupet “wahabi”, të cilat, sipas tij, gjithashtu duan të marrin nën kontroll BIK-un. Edhe Mulla Osman Musliu është kryetar i BIK-ut për komunën e Drenasit, i cili ditën e premte ka shkuar në xhami për të prezantuar para xhematit imamin e ri të xhamisë së fshatit Zabel. Por, prezantimi i imamit të ri nuk është lejuar të bëhet nga disa të pranishëm, veprim i cili ka degraduar në përleshje e që mulla Osmani mendon se ky ka qenë një organizim kundër tij. Fshatarët e Zabelit kanë deklaruar se ata nuk kanë asgjë kundër mulla Osmanit dhe se incidenti i ndodhur nuk ka rrjedhur nga fshatarët e këtij vendbanimi

CIP WahhabiWatch #34: Urgent Call for Protest Against Saudi Arrest of Shia Cleric Tawfiq Al-Amer, June 26, 2008

Ahsa is a district in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Ahsa makes up 24.5 % of the area of Saudi. Out of its 1.1 million population, Muslims of the Shia sect are 60%. The other 40% are Muslims of the Sunni sect. In the country as a whole, the Shia make up a minority of about 15%. Because of their belief, Shia in Saudi are considered to be citizens of a lesser level. They practice their worship with little freedom and they are discriminated against in most of their civil rights.
Examples:
• A Shia could not be found in any key position in the whole country. Jobs like ministers, government advisors, governors, presidents of public companies, municipality presidents, diplomats, religious public positions, or officials in Islamic organizations financed by the government are forbidden for Shias.
• There are some posts in the government where a very few Shias are selected. Still, Shias from Ahsa have very little space in them.
• There is no Shia from Ahsa in the Consultative Council.
• There is no Shia from Ahsa in the Eastern Province Council.
• In Ahsa itself, there are 46 government administrations. None of them has a Shia General Manager.
• The Shias in Ahsa cannot get a license to operate a private school or even a kindergarten.
• Out of the 319 local male schools, there are only 7 Shia headmasters.
• Out of the 309 local female schools, there is no Shia headmistress.
• King Faisal University (governmental) has its HQ in Ahsa. Of its 287 professors, only 7 are Shias.
• In the Health Affairs Directorate, out of the 34 key positions, only 6 are for Shias.
• Poverty levels among Shias are clearly higher than others. This could be observed by the growing number of Shias applying to charities for relief.
• Licenses for new mosques are difficult to attain. It is still the case that old mosques and old and new Husainias (Shia public halls) are not allowed licenses. It's a common practice for the government to close these religious places under the pretext that they are not licensed.
• Shias cannot get a license for any religious school.
• Shia worship is considered illegal. In the last 7 years, the government arrested more than 160 Shia persons in Ahsa and jailed them between 7-30 days for reasons related to worship. This practice is still going on. Last week, the latest arrest has happened.
• Public celebration of Shia religious occasions is considered illegal. In the last one and half years, the Governor’s Office in Ahsa has raided a couple of areas having these festivals, damaged all festival sites and humiliated participants.
• Up to today, the government does not allow publication of Shia religious books, it blocks their websites, and does not allow them any expression in the public media.
The problem is even worse when looking into details of how Shias are dealt with in different areas by bosses, officials, or even by the general public. All this discrimination has a starting point. It's the bad stereotypical image created by the government and the Wahhabi (the official sect adopted by the government) religious body in the country. Shias are continued to be stereotyped as 'infidels' and 'traitors'. In the past, in government publicity and school text books, Shias were accused as infidels and traitors in a direct way. After 9/11 the Saudi Government has been put under a lot of pressure from the outside to adopt reforms and to be tolerant. But persecution of Shias remains. However, a new strategy is adopted -- not to refer to Shias per se but to specify some of their religious practices in still accusing them of being infidels.
Every time a new declaration is issued by Wahhabis that Shias are infidels, Shias get very worried. Shias are used to experiencing a new wave of discrimination and hate against them, every time such a declaration is announced.
Lately, 22 very well known Saudi Wahhabi clerics, who have good relations with the government, issued a statement against Shias, stating that Shias are infidels, traitors, and a great threat to Sunnis. The Saudi government did not take any action to combat such divisive statements that encourage hatred and allow for a new wave of discrimination against Shias.
On June 14, 2008, Shia Sheikh (Cleric) Tawfiq Al-Amer, 49, from Ahsa, in the mosque where he is Imam, criticized the Wahhabi Statement, showing how dangerous it could be to the community, and asked the government to prevent such statements and to remedy the results of it.
Sheikh Al-Amer is known to have supported the religious and civilian rights of Shias in the past. He has been called many times by the Governor’s office to ask him to stop his activities, which he did not agree to. Sheikh Al-Amer was detained on April 29, 2005 for 24 hours. On June 22, 2008, he was arrested and put in jail without trial. It is thought that the cause of the arrest is his critique of the Wahhabi clerics and his previous activities of which the Governor complains.
The Human Rights First Society calls on the Saudi Government for the immediate release of Sheikh Tawfiq Al-Amer

Human Rights First Society

CIP WahhabiWatch #33: Michael J. Totten on Wahhabism in Bosnia-Hercegovina
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/06/a-dark-corner-o-1.php
A Dark Corner of Europe, Part II

“The Balkans produce more history than they can consume.” – Winston Churchill “Sarajevans will not be counting the dead. They will be counting the living.” – Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb leader, war criminal, fugitive Sarajevo can be startling for first-time visitors. Shattered buildings, walls riddled with bullet holes, and mass graveyards are shocking things to see in a European capital in the 21st Century. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was more violent than the others in the former Yugoslavia, and it shows. If I believed in ghosts I'd say Sarajevo must be one haunted place. At the same time, the reconstruction and cleanup work is impressive. The destruction gave me a jolt, but at the same time I was slightly surprised I didn't see more of it. Bosnia is a troubled country with a dark recent past, but it is no longer the war-torn disaster it was. Sarajevo was under siege for almost four years by Bosnian Serb forces on the surrounding hilltops who fired mortar and artillery shells and sniper rounds at civilians, but it’s over and it has been over for more than a decade. Most damaged buildings have been repaired, and many neighborhoods look almost as though nothing bad ever happened to them.
I was on my way to Kosovo to investigate the world's newest country after its declaration of independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. It made little sense to visit only Kosovo without taking at least a brief look at some of the other countries in the former Yugoslavia to get a little on-the-ground regional perspective. My long-time friend Sean LaFreniere <http://seanlafreniere.blogspot.com/> joined me on the road-trip portion of the trip from Serbia's capital Belgrade to Kosovo's capital Prishtina. It is of course impossible to acquire anything like a masterful understanding of the contemporary Balkans on a whirlwind trip in a rented car, but that wasn't the point. Both Sean and I have wanted to visit the region for personal reasons for more than ten years. And I knew I could see Kosovo, the focal point of my trip, with clearer eyes if I first had some context and could compare and contrast the brand-new country with some of its neighbors.
Sarajevo, though, is a bewildering place for a first-time visitor trying to get a handle on things, much as Lebanon was the first time I traveled there during the twilight of the Syrian occupation. Out-of-date books and simplified media reports for distant foreign consumption can only help so much in these kinds of places, I'm afraid. There is a great deal of local detail rarely covered by foreign correspondents that can only be absorbed through immersion. Acquaintances of mine who live or have lived in Syria say the same is true there, and I believe them. It’s probably true almost everywhere. “Maybe in twenty years Bosnia will be nice again,” said a Bosnian I know who lives now in Oregon. “I love Sarajevo,” an Albanian woman in Kosovo later told me, “but I was there recently and saw on their faces that they are unhappy, more than they were a few years ago. You could see it and feel it.” On the other hand, Sean and I met a man named Avdo in the Turkish Quarter of the old city who says the situation is bad but getting better. His biggest complaint wasn't about politics, but the exorbitant price of real estate in the city. Whether it's getting better or worse, I can't say. Serbian writer Filip David's basic diagnosis seems to be right, though. “In Sarajevo it is not a good situation,” he said to me and Sean in Belgrade the day before we left Serbia for Bosnia. “My friends who are Croatians and Muslims, they are not satisfied. It doesn't function. Serbs, Croatians, and Muslims in the [government] that must decide, they can't decide anything. Everybody must say yes.” Bosnia-Herzegovina is ethnically divided between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks. No group commands a numeric majority. Muslims makes up a plurality of the population at just under one half, but everyone is a minority. The country is also politically divided between the Serb-controlled Republica Srpska and the rest of the country. Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Republica Srpska aren't three separate regions, however. Republica Srpska itself divides both Bosnia and Herzegovina. The map is a mess, and so is the country.
It doesn't feel like a mess on a brief visit, though, the way Baghdad does, for example. The Bosnian war was ferocious – worse than Iraq's – and seeing Sarajevo in reasonably good shape was a welcome reminder that terrible wars end. I could not have imagined Sarajevo looking the way it does now in the middle of the 1990s.
Some of my friends and family thought I was a bit strange for wanting to see Bosnia, even though the war has been over for more than ten years. The truth is that Sarajevo is great for cultural and historical tourism. Belgrade is sometimes described to would-be travelers as an undiscovered jewel of the Balkans, and it's true that the place is a bit underrated for what it has to offer, but that goes at least double for Sarajevo. Serbia is still known for extreme politics, but that won't affect visitors. Bosnia's former reputation as being go-there-and-die dangerous is a much harder one to live down no matter how out of date.
It’s a beautiful place, actually. Not only is it worth seeing, it is worth going to see. Sarajevo’s old city center is unique. One part looks and feels like Turkey, another like the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. There aren't many cities in the world where in less than five minutes you can walk from an Eastern urban environment to another that is unmistakably Western. Sarajevo reminded me of Beirut in both good ways and bad. Bad because, like Beirut, parts of it are still shot full of holes despite the massive and impressive reconstruction since the war ended. Good because, also like Beirut, there are sizable numbers of mosques and churches in a city that has been a civilizational crossroads for centuries.
Before the war, the percentages of Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the city were more or less even, with Christian Serbs and Croats together just barely eking out a majority. The war changed the demographics, though. Sarajevo is mostly Muslim Bosniak now. That’s fine as far as it goes, but the city sadly no longer is the same kind of living example of inter-religious tolerance and co-existence that it once was. Nationalists like Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, and their ilk made sure of that.
Aside from some of the architecture, however, Sarajevo doesn't necessarily look or feel like a Muslim-majority city. In this way it resembles Istanbul, only from outward appearances it is even more secular. Most Bosnians aren’t demonstrative about religion.
I saw very few women wearing Islamic headscarves. Alcohol is no less available than it is anywhere else in Europe – or in Turkey for that matter – for those who want it. It is hardly an Islamist environment. Sarajevo is a city of both the East and the West, but it is wholly European at the end of the day. Sean and I stayed at the Holiday Inn, a hotel made famous by war correspondents in the mid-1990s. It looks like a modernist cube from the 1970s, though it was built in the 1980s. It fits in rather well in a part of the city near the center that is dominated by other modern buildings. Some are generically international while others look explicitly communist.
The war never left my mind while Sean and I were in Sarajevo. Something that struck both of us at once upon arrival in the city is how narrow it is in the old part of town. Serb snipers took up position in houses on the tops of the hills and fired at anyone they saw moving, including, of course, fellow Serbs who decided to stay. The infamous “Sniper Alley” was right outside our hotel. The narrowness of the city – you can walk from one edge at the bottom of one hill to the other side in just a few minutes – means the snipers always were close. If you can see the hills, the hills can see you, and the hills loom beautifully but ominously over everything.
That night I dreamed I was trapped there during the siege, scrambling to find a place where I couldn't see hills. *
“[Serbs] say Republica Srpska has the right to separate from Bosnia,” Filip David said to me and Sean, “but they stopped because the United Nations asked them to stop. If Serbs speak in that way, they have no right to protest Kosovo.” “So now they've realized the contradiction and quieted down?” Sean said. “Yes,” David said. “They stopped in this moment, but in the future nobody knows. The Croatians in Bosnia are not satisfied. They [also] ask for their own territory and government.” “So it may yet split into three,” Sean said. I have no idea if Bosnia will ever actually split into three. Dividing it up peacefully, equitably, and in a way that would satisfy everyone wouldn’t be possible. Partitioning unevenly mixed countries, especially those with so many mixed families like Bosnia and Iraq, is a nasty business. Kosovo’s break with Serbia was a lot cleaner than what could be done in Bosnia or what could be done anywhere in Iraq south of the three Kurdish autonomous provinces. James Longley captured the gruesomeness of the idea well in his documentary film Iraq in Fragments. “The future of Iraq will be in three pieces,” says an old man. A young child, perhaps the man’s grandchild, answers him this way: “Iraq is not something you can cut into pieces. Iraq is a country. How do you cut a country into pieces? With a saw?”
It's on the minds of some in Bosnia, though, and Kosovo's declaration of independence makes the question more complex than it already was. Sean and I met with Samir Beglerovic from the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo and asked him what he thought about it. “What does the Muslim community of Bosnia think about the independence of Kosovo?” I said. “I think everyone can support this independence,” he said. “Everyone who knows the situation in ex-Yugoslavia knows that Kosovo had maybe the worst position in ex-Yugoslavia before the 1990’s. So there is support for them. In the beginning all Kosovo wanted was to be a republic within Yugoslavia. They didn’t allow that, so then the problem began and they wanted independence, and finally they got it. People from Bosnia – Muslims and Croatian people – they are supporting this.” “Does anyone here who isn't a Serb support the Serbian side?” I said. “There was some talk,” he said, “[about whether or not] it was good for Bosnians for Kosovo to seek independence now. Some thought it would be better if they waited three, four, or five years because we don’t have a clear situation [in Bosnia]. They say that now, by giving Kosovo independence, Serbia is sending a clear sign to the Republica Srpska that they can do the same thing to Bosnia. And now Bosnian politicians think from this perspective it would be better for us if they didn’t do it now.” While it may seem reasonable to let the Serbs in Republica Srpska leave Bosnia if they want to, as many think it is reasonable to accept Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, there are grounds for rejecting the idea, and not just because it would be messy. There are also issues of justice. “49 percent of Bosnia is Republica Srpska,” Beglerovic said. “But from 80 percent of it, people were killed and expelled from their lands. This is territory they won by war, nothing more.”
Sean and I met Predrag Delibasic, a half-Serbian and half-Bosnian writer and film maker, in Belgrade the day before we arrived in Sarajevo. He told us about his childhood in Bosnia where his group of closest friends were from different ethnic backgrounds. They were the subjects of a documentary film he made called Maturity Exam. His friends then and now were from different backgrounds. Filip David introduced me and Sean to Delibasic and the rest of his crowd who meet every day at the same cafe downtown. Members of their group hail from Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo. “Everyone here is of the same opinion,” David said. “We are all in favor of good relations with Kosovo and each other. We have only one Serb, and he is an anti-nationalist.” “We are all friends,” Delibasic said. “We don't care about ethnicity. But others, people around here…it's hard. The radish is too deep. It cannot be uprooted.” Many at the cafe didn't speak English, so Sean and I spent most of our time talking to David and Delibasic, who did. “My best friend now is a Serb who married a Bosnian woman,” Delibasic said. “Jovan Divyak, the Serb defender of the city of Sarajevo.” General Jovan Divyak was the highest ranking Serb officer in the multi-ethnic Bosnian Army during the war. His very existence shows that even then the liberal idea of a cosmopolitan and ethnically-mixed Bosnia was still alive in the hearts and minds of some of its people. Not every Serb agreed with Slobodan Milosevic's and Radovan Karadzic's genocidal ethnic nationalist campaign, and some fought and died to put a stop to it. Many were singled out and publicly executed by nationalist Serb forces for resisting and for refusing to fight Bosniaks and Croats.
Sarajevo's Eternal Flame, a memorial to the military and civilian dead in Bosnia-Herzegovina during World War II
“Do you know who that man is?” Delibasic said and gestured behind him. “The man at that table there with the white hair?” I looked to my right and saw who I thought he was talking about four tables down. “The man sitting with the young woman?” I said. “He was Tito's general,” he said. Yugoslavia's communist dictator Josip Broz (Marshall) Tito must have had more than one general. “Which general?” I said. “What's his name?” “He is General Jovo Kapicic,” he said. “His son owns this cafe. We are good friends.”
One of the small pleasures of traveling to the small capital cities of small countries is how easy it can be to meet important people even by chance. Sean and I didn't want to talk about Tito's general, however. We wanted to talk about Bosnia, where Delibasic grew up. “When I was a kid in Sarajevo,” Delibasic said, “some visiting Montenegrin nationalists asked me, who are you? I had no idea, and I didn't care. So I made up an answer. I am Jewish! I said. My mother said no, no no. But I didn't know or care. My friends were Jews, Muslims, and Catholics. After I was told I wasn't Jewish, I said I was a Muslim. But that wasn't right either. So after that I've always just said I am a Yugoslav. If I could, I would take citizenship in Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro, as well as in Bosnia and Serbia. But I can't. I still call myself a Yugoslav, but the census-takers won't accept that as an answer.”
Explaining the crackup of Yugoslavia as a natural resurgence of “ancient hatreds” in a post-communist ideological vacuum is tempting for many observers, but it's wide of the mark <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3647/is_199910/ai_n8868169/pg_1> . It's true that Tito kept a lid on nationalist sentiments in its varied republics during the communist era, and it's also true that the Balkans in general have a long bloody history. But nationalism, in particular Serbian nationalism, was deliberately crafted as a replacement ideology by Slobodan Milosevic and like-minded political leaders desperate to cling to power and grab onto whatever they could as the country came apart. Milosevic's, though, wasn't the only violent nationalist movement in Yugoslavia’s history that Predrag Delibasic personally had to contend with. He is old enough to remember World War II vividly, and he told Sean and me about his experience with the Ustasha – the armed Croatian fascist movement aligned with the Nazis. “Armed and drunk Ustasha men came to our house when I was thirteen years old,” he said. “They demanded our papers and couldn't find them. My mother was very brave. She screamed at them and told them it was their fault because they messed up the house. The commander put a gun in her mouth. I grabbed the man's gun and said Kill me, not my mommy!” He and his mother were then taken to prison in Visegrad, just inside Bosnia near Serbia. They managed to escape and were smuggled across the border with the help of a train conductor. His family reunited in Uzice where his father waited for him and his mother. Later he joined Tito's Partisans. “I was a member of the Communist Party,” he said. “But I was ideologically quiet.” He didn't fare any better with the communists than he did with the Ustasha. “I was falsely accused of being a Stalinist,” he said, “after Tito broke with Stalin in 1948. Only recently, almost sixty years later, did I finally receive a document explaining exactly why I was arrested.” As it turned out, according to the document, Delibasic was accused of being a Stalinist because he met with a visiting film student from Moscow. “They sent me to Goli Otok,” he said. “Tito's concentration camp.” Goli Otok was a prison on an island in the Adriatic, now part of Croatia. It's name means Naked Island. The island is mostly bare, as were its prisoners. “They made us march naked,” he said, “and do forced labor.”
Communist architecture from a hilltop in Sarajevo
“That must have made you re-think communism,” Sean said. “Yes,” Delibasic said and nodded as he widened his eyes. “The camp was run by Tito's general.” “Which general?” I said. “Him?” Was he talking about the man he had just pointed out less than a half hour before? The man I had taken a picture of who was still sitting just a few tables down? Whose son owned the cafe? “Yes,” Delibasic said and gestured by nodding his head in the direction of General Kapicic. The old gulag chief nursed his coffee only a dozen or so meters away. “It was the hardest time of my life. I could not believe that my beloved Partisans would build such an infernal place.” I could hardly believe he was friends with the general who ran it, who made him work and march naked for meeting a film student. Just a few minutes later, General Kapicic got up to leave and stopped by our table on his way out. Delibasic introduced me and Sean to him. “He is a good friend to me,” Kapicic said to us in English, “and now to you. He is a very smart professor, and you should listen to him.” After the general left, I had to ask. “How can you be friends with him? After what he did?” “You heard what he said,” Delibasic said. “I accept it, and I don't hate anybody.”
Around a thousand Arab veterans of the insurgency against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan volunteered to fight a “jihad” against Serbs in Bosnia. The Bosnian Army was desperate for help at the time. European countries imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia which severely degraded the Bosnians’ ability to defend themselves. The Serb forces had most of the weapons, and the embargo preserved the imbalance of power. As it turned out, though, the Arabic mujahideen from the Middle East had no more effect on the war in Bosnia than they had when they ran off to Afghanistan. In each place they were basically tourists with guns who made little or no impact on the outcome of the war, or even the outcome of major battles. Some of these characters stayed in Bosnia where they still live today. Bosnia has a bit of an Islamist problem, but they aren't its biggest cause. Saudis and others from the extremist Wahhabi school of Islam swooped in after the war ended to rebuild damaged mosques in their own severe style and to impose their rigid interpretation of religion, as much as they can, on culturally liberal Europeans.
Stephen Schwartz – journalist, author, and Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism – has done a much more thorough job documenting the phenomenon that I could even attempt here, but I wanted to ask Samir Beglerovic about it since he lives there. He's a Sufi and therefore detested by Wahhabis as much as Christians, Jews, and other so-called “infidels” are. “How much of a problem is this?” I said. “We have a problem and I think it is obvious,” he said. “In the beginning, during the war, mostly people didn’t realize what was going on. They had their priorities to deal with – how to survive, how to do this, how to do that. And after the war I think the majority somehow didn’t recognize what was going on. We have seen some changes, we have seen some things we didn’t know about before, different approaches, different attitudes. There is something we didn’t have before in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mostly they were targeting the common people, not intellectuals as much. They were students that had gone to study in other countries in the East, and when they had received their MA or PhD they came here to Bosnia.” “Do you think it is a big problem,” I said, “or a small problem?” “It depends,” he said. “As far as individuals are concerned, we have to accept everyone, but regarding organizations, movements, we have to be very careful. As far as an individual is concerned, it is his choice, but if he wants to work within society, with students, you have to stop it, or you have to direct it through our traditional institutions.” “What is it exactly that the Wahhabis are trying to do here?” I said. “Are they trying to make Bosnian Muslims more conservative, or do they have a bigger agenda?”
“They say We have to Islamize you,” he said. “That's the notion they are using, to Islamize. They think that even the practicing Muslims – that means going to mosque, praying – they think they are not good enough, they have to be better. And also that our perception of Islam is wrong.” “What is your perception of Islam according to them?” I said. “I don’t know what they think,” he said. “They say it is full of innovations, things you cannot find in Islam. We made it up or got it from the interactions with the non-Muslims living traditionally here in Bosnia-Herzegovina, here in this part, especially from Europe. So it is a religious position, the Islamization. You are not Islamic enough, we have to Islamize you more.” “What is it about your version of Islam that they don’t like specifically?” I said. “Every segment of it,” he said. “Meaning our clothes, we are dressing like Europeans, the way we look, we don’t say you have to wear a beard, or that it doesn’t have to be long. It’s also the literature we are using because mostly we are leaning on the traditional scholars of Islam while they are leaning on the so-called reformers. There are lots of things. The logical aspects of Islam, the interior and exterior of the mosques, everything. Almost everything we do is wrong. It's very hard to recognize why and from where they get this kind of attitude.”
“How popular are they here?” I said. “We don’t have statistics,” he said. “That’s our major problem. We don’t do statistics. 1997 and 1998 were very hard years here in Bosnia, after the war. In 1996 it was still a kind of war. Sarajevo hadn’t been integrated yet in the first half of 1996, so 1997 was the year, you could say, you could begin to live a normal life. Or try to live a normal life. And then the first shocks came to you – you do not have a job. If you want to repair your house, repair your apartment, send your kids to school, go to school yourself, you need money. Therefore you need a job, and they were hard to find. So in the beginning people were mainly disappointed with the new aspects of life in Bosnia, post-war life, when everyone was expecting that the government would support people somehow, and we wouldn’t be having trouble with food and schools. And then there was this group that came in and started criticizing anyone who had any important position in the community, the government, or the political parties. The best way to recognize their strength may be from the newcomers on the Web sites, because in the print media they don’t have much space. We now have very strict regulations.” “Today?” Sean said. “Yes,” Beglerovic said. “In Bosnia-Herzegovina the Regulatory Newspaper Agency, the RAK. Radio stations and TV stations have to get a license from them.” “After that are they monitored?” Sean said. “Yes,” Beglerovic said. “They are monitored. And in the beginning if you do something wrong, first you pay, then you can be banished. There are a lot of inter-religious and nationalist…let's call it bad words.” “So if you incite amongst the public,” Sean said, “the government will be upset with you.” “Yes,” Beglerovic said. “There are some standards we didn’t have before.” “This is a problem for the Wahhabis?” I said. “For everyone,” he said, “but also for the Wahhabis because you are asking about them. The only space they can get is on web sites.”
“What do Bosnian Muslims think of NATO and the US?” I said. “I know most Serbs don’t like us, but what about your community?” Albanians in Kosovo love the United States for saving them from the mass murder and ethnic cleansing campaign waged against them by the Milosevic government. Bosnians, though, were left to twist in the wind and face Serbian guns alone for years with very little assistance. I would not expect Bosnian Muslims to feel the same way about Americans that Kosovar Albanians do, but some help is better than nothing, and it has not gone unnoticed. “We consider NATO the only way for feeling secure in our land,” Beglerovic said. “And it’s said that the only friend we have is the United States. So that’s why each time when someone like Richard Holbrooke says that Bosnia could be a place for Al Qaeda, it scares us. It can mean that we lose our only friend.” “It won’t happen,” Sean said. “Historically,” Beglerovic said, “we had our friends in Austria and in Germany. But the only practical support we get is from the United States. I mean, okay, Germany accepted a lot of Bosnian refugees, and everyone helped in a way, but the most practical help is coming from the United States.” I have no idea where all this is going, if Bosnia will be okay or if it won't. Will the country split into pieces? Will there be more fighting? Will the Islamists become dangerous to those who live inside and outside the country? I can't say, and I won't even guess. I've learned to be wary about predicting events in the Middle East – a part of the world I'm much more familiar with – so I know better than to guess what will happen in always-complicated and hard-to-read Bosnia. There are too many unresolved problems and too many variables. But the fact that it resembles, in some ways, a Yugoslavia writ small did not leave me feeling as optimistic as I would have liked. History there isn't over, that much is certain

CIP WahhabiWatch #31: Urgent Call for Protest Against Wahhabi Aggression in Macedonia, March 11, 2008

The Center for Islamic Pluralism has observed with great alarm the advancing, open aggression by Wahhabi Islamists at the Harabati teqe in Tetovo, Macedonia, a major site for Ahl-ul-beyt in Europe and the largest Sufi institution in the Balkan region. The situation has become so bad that crowds of Wahhabi adherents obstruct access by visitors to the teqe. The Wahhabis have now occupied the majority of structures in the teqe, so that the besieged caretakers of the site are limited to their main building. In the first week of March, 2008, the Wahhabis began discharging firearms at night-time on the teqe property in an obvious and lawless attempt to intimidate the caretakers.
The open aggression against Ahl-ul-beyt in Europe by the Wahhabi fanatics represents a serious terrorist threat to the entire region, in addition to an abominable act of cultural and religious desecration.
The Center for Islamic Pluralism calls on all Muslim and non-Muslim friends and supporters to send urgent protests regarding this situation to the U.S. Embassy in Macedonia and to the Macedonian authorities.

E-mails should read as follows:

“We strenuously protest the Wahhabi invasion of the Harabati teqe in Tetovo and call on the U.S. diplomatic authorities in Skopje, who monitor terrorist threats in the Balkans, to pressure the Macedonian government for the immediate removal of the Wahhabis from the Harabati teqe, by legal force if necessary, and protect the teqe from further interference.”

E-mails should be addressed to:

U.S. Embassy Skopje, Republic of Macedonia - EmbSkoWebM@mt.net.mk
H.E. Branko Crvenkovski, President of the Republic of Macedonia - www.president.gov.mk

Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
Executive Director
Center for Islamic Pluralism
Washington/London/Koln

CIP WahhabiWatch #30:
Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) Saudi monitors report that the extremist website Al-Sahat (The Battlefields) posted a criticism on October 31 of the demonstration held by al-Baqee.org at the Royal Saudi Embassy in Washington on October 22. The post noted that the event concentrated on opposition to "Wahhabi Fascism." Comments on the blog included a call for beheading of Ali Al-Ahmed, the Washington-based Saudi opposition figure, for his participation in the anti-Wahhabi rally. CIP strenuously protests the threat against Al-Ahmed and calls on the Saudi authorities to prevent dissemination of such incitement on the net.

CIP WahhabiWatch #29:
Macedonian Sufis Endorse Schwartz's Weekly Standard Article,
May 20, 2007

Selamaleykum warahmetallahuh wabarakatuh!

Ejvallah!

The Bektashi Sufi Community of Macedonia has endorsed the article by Center for Islamic Pluralism Executive Director Stephen Schwartz, "The Balkan Front," published in The Weekly Standard, issue of May 14, 2007. Dealing with Wahhabi aggression against Sufis, the article has been circulated in Macedonia as an urgent document. The article is accessible on CIP websites

Dear __________________________________________

The attached article from The Weekly Standard, published in Washington, is sent for your urgent attention. The Weekly Standard is the leading political magazine in the U,S. and is read each week by all leading political figures of both the Republican and Democratic parties, including President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Its topic is of the highest importance for Tetova and other Macedonians, as well as Muslims and non-Muslims throughout the Balkan region.

Respectfully,
The head of the Bektashi Community

___________________________________________

Baba Edmond Brahimaj

CIP WahhabiWatch #28:
Johann Hari - We all fund this torrent of Saudi bigotry - junkies don't talk back to their dealers
Published: 08 February 2007
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

Which glossy brand name has been the biggest winner on the planetary roulette wheel of globalisation? Most of us could reel off a dozen eligible mega-corporations: Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, the Nike swoosh. They are all wrong. The check-in-your-chips champion of globalisation is in fact a puritanical desert-nomad from the sands of Arabia who died in 1792, and the evidence was there in this week's Islamic panic front pages.
In his 18th-century oasis, Mohamed ibn Abd al-Wahhab Wahhab had a dream. He dreamed of an Islam stripped down to a cold list of mechanical rules, strictly enforced, severely upheld. He ordered whippings and beheadings of Muslims to "purify" the faith. He smashed up and burned down the worship places of the softer, more mystical Muslims all around him. And - his smartest move - he cut a deal. He met the chief of the desert bandits who lived in the nearby long stretch of sand called Najd - a man named Mohamed Saud - and offered him his allegiance, in return for enforcing his severe, new brand of Islam. The Saud ruling family and the Wahhabi doctrine have been locked in a stiff waltz ever since.
More than two centuries later, oil was discovered under the territory of these bandits, and billions of dollars began to soak into the Kingdom. True to their ancestor's deal, the House of Saud used this black gold to promote the ideas of Wahhab, no longer merely on their own sands, but across the world.
By paying for thousands of schools, mosques and trained imams, they dispersed the ideas of one reactionary little preacher to every continent. It has been a corporate strategy that leaves Ronald McDonald looking like a puffing, obese slouch. Slowly, steadily, they are succeeding in eroding other, gentler forms of Islam. They are globalising Wahhabism - and your petrol purchases are paying for it.
Which brings us to the swish, swanky classrooms of the King Fahd Academy in west London, in the year 2007. A Muslim teacher called Colin Cook has revealed that children there are taught, via Saudi textbooks, that Jews are "repugnant" and Christians are "pigs". Exercises for five-year olds include the charming exercise, "Mention some repugnant characteristics of Jews". Cook repeatedly heard children in the playground idolising Bin Laden. Challenged on Newsnight about whether she will stop using these racist books, the headteacher, Sumaya Alyusuf, said, "No... I cannot withdraw them. There are good chapters in the books."
Why are we surprised? The King Fahd Academy is not a freak. It is part of a deliberate globalised project, led by the House of Saud, that has been documented a hundred times. Azzedine Gaci, the head of the regional Muslim council, in Lyon, France, explains: "When Saudi Arabia gives you €1m with one hand, with the other they give you a list of what you must say or not say." Here's some of the things you can say, taken from standard-issue Saudi textbooks. For 10-year-olds: "The whole world should convert to Islam and leave its false religions lest their fate will be hell." For 12-year-olds: "There is a Jew behind me - come and kill him!"
And what can't you say? Anything about freedom for women, which is, the textbooks explain, "a continuation of the Crusades". A woman can only be taught to "enable her to be a successful housewife, an exemplary wife and a good mother". No need for maths or technology, shabibi, there's the kitchen. They are banned from any form of physical education, because it would be "obscene" for them to change their clothes outside the home. Besides, "they might become attracted to each other if they saw each other in leotards", in which case they would have to be killed.
These textbooks are not only being used in Riyadh and a few scattered outposts; let's look at two very different countries. In Sweden, almost every Islamic school is either funded by the Saudis or seeking out their cash, according to the investigative programme Kaliber. In Pakistan, there were 246 madrassas at the time of independence, in 1945. Today, there are 6,607 - the majority using these Saudi textbooks provided for nada. Every time you fill up with a fresh tank of petrol, you are helping to buy some more.
Moderate Muslims have been warning for decades that allowing children to be indoctrinated with this poison in their formative years kneecaps any attempt to stimulate less literalist readings of the Koran later in life. But where is the counter-offensive, siding with these decent Muslims against this wall of bigotry? There are 120 Muslim faith schools in Britain, many of which would not be financially viable without Saudi support. The Government proposes to build more. And in the mosques? Nobody seems to know how many of Britain's imams are trained by the Saudis.
In the US, the figure is 80 per cent, and in France it is 70 per cent. There was a taster of the Saudi mullah-training in a recent Dispatches documentary, in which the visiting Riyadh-trained cleric, Abu Usamah, raved in a Birmingham mosque that Jews and Christians are his "enemies", and called gay people "perverted, filthy dogs who should be murdered". The Government talked for a while about setting up programmes to train British imams, but the energy seems to have leached away.
Indeed, the Government paints persistently the House of Saud as "moderate", and Tony Blair is so close to the Saudi princes he just cancelled a corruption investigation into their relationship with BAE Systems. (Don't ask about the love-in between the House of Saud and the House of Bush, where, according to the expert Craig Unger, the Sauds have given more than $1bn to Bush's business ventures). As we allow this Wahabbi rollout, other forms of Islam are being ironed away. Wahhab is being posthumously granted his wish: for millions of Muslims, his is becoming the One True Faith.
Our governments are not stopping this Wahabbi-Saudi hate machine for a simple reason: as The New York Times writer Thomas Friedman puts it, junkies don't talk back to their dealers. We are addicted to the Saudi oil supply: it lubricates our cars, our planes, our food supply routes. In the face of this hunger, talk of national security or democratic ideals soon sinks into an oily gloop. Until we have built up clean, green alternatives to Middle Eastern oil (and isn't global warming reason enough?), you and I will keep paying at the petrol pump for this propaganda.
It's another ironic victory for globalisation: democrats in London are paying for fanatics in Arabia to indoctrinate children in Pakistan, and a thousand other places, and - yes - right back at us, at the end of the District line.

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CIP WahhabiWatch #27:
“They are wolf-dogs, they will attack our children” – Bosnian Villagers in Clash With Wahhabis, March 4, 2007

Text of report by Bosnian state network BHTV1 on 4 March 2007

News anchors Lejla Zvizdić and Damir Simić: “Around 100 residents of Barčići village near Kalesija [in the vicinity of Tuzla, a major city – CIP] clashed this morning with some 15 Wahhabis. One Barčići resident was injured in the incident. A prompt police intervention prevented larger
clashes. Villagers have announced that they will no longer tolerate the behavior of the Wahhabis at the local mekteb [Islamic school for children].” BHTV1 Reporter Samir Kahrović: “Around 15 Wahhabis this morning tried to connect the local mekteb in Barčići village to the electricity grid, after it was recently disconnected on request of the Kalesija Islamic Community. As the villagers tried to prevent this, one of the Wahhabis hit hadžija Šaban Barčić with ladders. This provoked around 100 villagers to take out of the mekteb the stove, generator and the books used by the Wahhabis. The police prevented an all-out clash between the Wahhabis and the villagers.”
Šaban Barčić, on camera: “I burst out crying. I am an elderly man, my heart is weak and cannot stand much.”
Reporter: “Barčići villagers have announced that they will no longer allow the Wahhabis to use the local mekteb. They are obviously afraid and do not trust the colleagues of their neighbour
Jusuf Barčić [student in Saudi Arabia, prominent Bosnian Wahhabi from Barčići, notorious for incidents he caused because of his radical view of Islam].”
Fikreta Mijkić, villager: “We have no choice but fight for what is ours. We built [the mekteb], and not they, the newcomers.”
Šemsa Barčić, villager: “They should shave their beards and use deodorant instead of coming here like dogs. For me, they are wolf-dogs, they will attack our children. I have female children and do not dare to send them [to the mekteb] at all. They are capable of anything. I do not trust them.”
Reporter: “The Kalesija Islamic Community says that the Barčići mekteb was for a long time usurped by the Wahhabis, underlining that this prevented the use of the mekteb for its main purpose – the religious education of the [local Muslim] children.”
Mustafa Turić of Kalesija Islamic Community: “Our proposal will be to close down and seal the building temporarily.”
Reporter: “Jusuf Barčić’s Wahhabis are preparing a response to this announcement of the Kalesija Islamic Community, which requires serious analysis and taking of a serious position by the Islamic Community of Bosnia-Hercegovina.”
[Wahhabi] Jusuf Barčić: “We have the right to use the religious facility for the purpose that it is intended for. If the Islamic Community persists in preventing Muslims from using the religious facility for rituals, we will be forced to ignore such a community, in a way, separate from them and start operating outside that structure.”
Reporter: “Barčić has added that in that case the Islamic Community will bear all the consequences of such a decision of the Wahhabis, without specifying what he implied by this.”

Edited by CIP from BBC Monitoring European, March 4, 2007
Further comment by CIP:
Jusuf Barčić is described in the Bosnian-language volume Vehabizam/selefizam, by Hasan Ali Sekkaf, edited by Jasmin Merdan and Adnan Mešanović, Sarajevo, Srebreno Pero, 2005, as “among the first generation [of Bosnian Muslims] to study at the Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia… well-known for provocations in mosques and elsewhere.”

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