Muhamed Jusić: Who from their own ranks reduces Bosniaks to a fanatical religious sect

Columnist Muhamed Jusić reminds that accusations of radicalization of Bosniaks based on their religious identity are a constant narrative that has been promoted in these areas for decades. However, says Jusić, it has become relevant again these days, and accusations that „Islam in Bosnia is changing“ can be heard from high-ranking political officials of neighboring countries, „and now even from some in the EU, as well as numerous public opinion makers from media and academic circles of the countries of the former Yugoslavia“. 

„It is clear that behind such accusations, at least when it comes to neighbors and those nearby, lies an attempt to primarily weaken the political position of Bosniaks and thereby remove the last pillar on which the idea of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a unique and integral country of all its citizens and peoples rests“, wrote Jusić in one of his commentaries in Preporod.

Politicization of Radicalization

„This by no means implies that the problem of global violent extremism and religious fanaticism has not also washed over the shores of the traditional way of living Islam in Bosnia. On the contrary, this is a serious challenge that Bosnia and the Muslim community are dealing with, just like all other Western and predominantly Muslim states and societies. The problem is not that we need to confront the danger of all forms of extremism, including faith-motivated ones, but rather the unacceptable politicization of this phenomenon. Those who politicize the issue of violent extremism in BiH do not do so to solve the problem, but to profit politically from it. Radicalization of Bosniaks on religious grounds suits them, and they encourage and maintain it, and when necessary, even fabricate it“, Jusić believes. He further writes:

„In this way, the primary attempt is to turn the international community, more precisely key Western metropolises, against the idea of a integral BiH as a civic state. Those in the EU who do this do so to pander to their radical right and shake the idea of a united Europe. Terrorist attacks carried out worldwide by militants invoking Islam, the brutality of ISIL, and refugees from the Muslim world seeking shelter from wars and poverty in Western countries have created a new Islamophobic atmosphere that many, who were stopped in the 1990s in their idea of dividing Bosnia and destroying Bosniaks as either a biological or political factor in these areas, are trying to exploit. They are now seeking allies and like-minded individuals in Europe, encouraging each other in their xenophobic attitudes“.

„And the easiest way to delegitimize the Bosniak and Bosnian political factor and thereby open space for the division of BiH or its political and economic subjugation to neighbors is to reduce it to the status of a religious minority. If this religious minority, in its interpretation and practice of faith, also showed elements of fanaticism, incompatibility with the democratic organization of society, and a complete lack of ability to live in modern European societies with other peoples, that would be the best argument for those who constantly claim that local Muslims are merely a 'backward historical mistake', a 'foreign element in the European fabric', a 'backward people professing a faith incapable of accepting modernity'. 

Muslims who are unable to build and maintain state institutions because they do not consider them Islamic, who consider participation in democratic elections as kufr, and who would like to be left to live in closed enclaves according to rules that exclude them from the social and political life of society, are the realization of the dream of those who from the beginning offered Muslims in the 1990s to be a 'religious minority on part of the territory' or, if they decided to be a people, have their own state and national consciousness, to disappear“.

Syria as a Warning

„What is surprising is that those who work on the radicalization of Bosniaks from their own ranks are not aware of this. Those who claim that Bosniaks will not be protected from future genocides by a modern state with all its institutions in which they are a decision-making factor, but by mere religious formalism. These are the same arguments used by ISIL when it said that Muslims should declare jihad and fight for the caliphate, and that the Almighty would do the rest.

These are the „brothers“ of those who, following the same model, hijacked the Syrian people's revolution. Who, through an alleged fight for the interests of Muslims and Sunnis, led to their complete political delegitimization in their home countries from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon. And they are trying to implement similar scenarios in numerous other states. Today, when Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis have ceased to be a political factor in these two key Arab and Muslim-Sunni states, and when they are converting to Christianity to obtain asylum in Europe, those who have not yet been killed by allied bombs or massacred by sectarian militias claim that this is just another trial from Allah and that Muslims certainly care about the next world, not this one.

Let us remember how the regime of Bashar al-Assad from the beginning of the revolution claimed that the opposition and the Free Syrian Army were religious fanatics and terrorists who would kill all dissenters and wanted to return Syria to the Middle Ages. It should not be forgotten that at the beginning of the Syrian revolution, he released 47 commanders of the future Al-Nusra and ISIL as a sign of the regime's „good will“. These very individuals would turn against the Free Syrian Army and the state and societal institutions that were just emerging. By introducing their vision of „Sharia“, they would create parallel communities, their own judicial and security bodies, presenting themselves as the only correct Muslims and protectors of pure Islam, and over time turn against each other, claiming that only they are sincere and true followers of pure Islam who alone work in the interest of Muslims. In the end, the Syrian opposition would be left without international support, without legality and legitimacy, reduced to militant sectarian groups unable to build a functional modern state that would be an opponent to the ruling regime, which became the only one protecting minorities and guaranteeing that Syria would not turn into a breeding ground for terrorists.

Israel used the same technique before this, constantly keeping Palestinians in a state where they must radicalize, weakening their state and national institutions and pushing them into the hands of extremists, and then when they resort to terrorism, claiming to the whole world that they were right when they said that they do not deserve a state because it would be a breeding ground for terrorists and a threat to the entire 'normal world'“.

Mandate over Bosnia

„I suspect that the same scenario was intended for Bosnia in the 1990s, but this people showed state-building awareness at key moments. We are only now realizing some of the evidence for this.

It seems that some today are trying to take over Bosnia using the same tactic, i.e., to obtain a mandate to govern it after convincing the world that someone needs to impose order here, in order to divide it, if not officially then into zones of influence where in the RS Serbia will have the final say, and in the Federation Croatia, whose president has already invited the Islamic Community in BiH to ask them for help if it cannot cope with the challenge of radicalization.  To obtain this mandate, it is important to prove that Bosnia cannot govern itself, that the majority people there lack the capacity to build national and state institutions, that it is a fanatical minority in conflict with modernity, and that it needs a protector to keep it under control and slowly civilize it. We cannot help but recognize the same arguments due to which Bosnia did not gain its statehood from the Ottomans and due to which Austria-Hungary received a mandate in Bosnia.

Let us remember that the Milošević regime also acted from the same positions, and its propaganda called the fighters of the Army of BiH of all nationalities mujahideen, a word that a large number of Bosniaks may not have even heard until the 1990s. The internationally recognized authorities of BiH were constantly reproached that they actually wanted to create an „Islamic state“.  

We must not forget how these same centers of power played this card even before the 1990s. Long before there was a global Al-Qaeda, ISIL, and millions of refugees at Europe's doors. And we can only imagine what they would have given then to have today's „born-again Muslims“ who, with their statements on social networks, would confirm everything their propaganda machinery claimed about Islam, Muslims, Bosniaks, and Bosnia.

These same promoters of divisions and ethnically clean areas where all members of one people live in the same state, majorizing minorities, now see their „golden opportunity“. They feel that a new opportunity has presented itself that they must not miss, and that is why we see how these ideas and their advocates have risen from the dead again. We understand them, but not the pseudo-scholars from our own ranks who think they are doing good while throwing themselves into ruin, reducing Bosniaks to a fanatical religious sect incapable of functioning as a modern nation in the contemporary world“.