Reis Kavazović on Orbán's statement: Monstrous untruth that Bosniaks are the problem

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held a press conference yesterday in which he, among other things, as shared on social media by his office representative Zoltan Kovacs, stated that “the challenge with BiH is how to integrate a country with two million Muslims”. This scandalous statement drew a reaction from the Grand Mufti of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Husein-ef. Kavazović.

"If it turns out that Prime Minister Orbán's statement is true, then everyone in Europe, not just the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Islamic Community within it, has reason for concern.  Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina are predominantly members of the Bosniak people, just as Catholics are predominantly members of the Croatian people and Orthodox Christians are members of the Serbian people. Bosniaks are an old European people and, together with the other two constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, have determined and borne the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina since ancient times. The aforementioned statement by Prime Minister Orbán suggests the monstrous untruth that Bosniaks are foreigners in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that they are a problem because they are predominantly Muslim.

If xenophobic and racist ideologies become the basis on which the policies of a united Europe or its member states are founded, then this takes us back to not-so-distant times in our past when European unity was attempted to be built on similar fascist, Nazi, violent and genocidal ideologies that led to the Holocaust and other terrible crimes.

Therefore, we rightly expect Prime Minister Orbán to explain what exactly he meant by such a statement, which has caused unrest among members of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as across Europe and the world.

Deniers of the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region, and those who support them, most often claim that organized and systematic crimes against Bosniaks did occur, but that there was no genocidal intent. At the same time, from that ideological milieu, we hear statements like this one from Prime Minister Orbán every now and then, about how the mere existence of the Bosniak people as a nation in a part of Europe is problematic and how they should be eliminated as such, and that elimination can range from genocide like we saw in Srebrenica to the deprivation of any political sovereignty and legitimacy for them as a people or the state in which they live, which is now being attempted through support for separatist policies aimed at dismantling the Bosnian state and introducing apartheid into its political and social life.

Finally, Bosniaks and Hungarians, like all other European peoples, have a turbulent history. We remember the incursions of Hungarian kings into the medieval Bosnian state, as well as the role of Bosniaks and other Balkan peoples in the Ottoman conquests of Hungary. Likewise, we remember the colonial policy of Austria-Hungary towards Bosnia, as well as much of the good we created together through that history, from shared elements of our Central European culture to the graves of Bosniaks that still dot Hungary, testifying to the times when we stood together in the same trenches.

That is the history behind us, with all its bitter and pleasant periods, and it is up to us, as responsible people, to see what kind of Europe we want to leave for our descendants. I hope it is not a Europe in which the Bosniak people will again be subjected to genocide and displacement as in the 1990s, and only because they profess faith in the One God and call themselves Muslims.

I was convinced, after my well-intentioned and sincere visit to Prime Minister Orbán in 2016 and the conversations we had, that the time for such chauvinistic statements was behind us. My disappointment is all the greater, but I hope that these statements and policies will not permanently damage our friendly relations with the good people of Hungary," the reis stated.