I am horrified by servility: Mufti, did Kolinda contribute to interreligious dialogue?

Written by: Esad Duraković / Depo.ba

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In a series of high Bosniak awards to the controversial (to say the least) President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, this recognition, highlighted (4 February 2020) on the official website of the Meshihat of the Islamic Community in Zagreb, stands out:

"Mufti Academician Aziz ef. Hasanović presented President Grabar-Kitarović with a special recognition for her contribution to the development of interreligious dialogue, for which the President thanked, expressing pride /.../"

This Madam President, now former, throughout her entire mandate, tried to slander BiH for Muslim extremism in institutions around the world, especially in EU institutions (thus slandering an entire people and a state!), fabricating that there are thousands of Muslim terrorists in BiH and the like, while intelligence services have proven, among other things, not only that this is untrue but that some intelligence circles from the neighborhood planted weapons in Bosnian mosques or prayer rooms, etc. She did this because she knows very well how it fits perfectly into global Islamophobia, that it is the ultimate argument against Bosniaks and thus against BiH as a state.

Is that, esteemed Mufti, a contribution to interreligious dialogue?!

However, much earlier, the Mothers of Srebrenica (in 2015) servilely "crowned" the President as the "Queen of the Balkans." After many justified negative reactions, Munira Subašić again shocks the public because in 2018, meeting with the controversial President, after all her slanderous statements around the world against BiH and its Muslims, she repeats, spitefully and almost foolishly, convinced that she, despite everything, has the right to crown or dethrone someone: "... regardless of everything, she remains for us the Queen of the Balkans..." Truly shocking!

Every genocide, including the Srebrenica genocide, is epic because as such, in itself, it is the suffering of one people IN TOTALITY, and the basic characteristic of an epic is precisely contained in the totality of certain events related to a specific people. Therefore, the Bosniak genocide (perhaps it should be called that, and not just "Srebrenica," because this essentially and wrongly localizes it) cannot be privatized by any person or any association. With all due respect to the survivors who lost their loved ones, it must be borne in mind that this genocide is the "tragic heritage" of all Bosniaks, that no group of people or individuals has the right to politically or in any other way manipulate it, diminishing the sanctity of the victim. Genocide cannot be privatized: with everything it contains, it remains in the collective, in the epic totality and sanctity.

Neither the Zagreb Mufti nor Munira of Srebrenica are bothered – among the multitude of the President's slanders – by the fact that in July 2019, during a visit to Israel, at the highest level of an interstate visit, she said that "BiH is under the control of militant Islam." Throughout her entire mandate, she tried to blacken BiH precisely from positions of Islamophobia, using terrible constructs, slanders, insinuations, and the like.

No, this is not the end! That same Madam President received in Sarajevo – truly unbelievable! – in 2015, the International Recognition "Isa-beg Ishaković" because, as stated in the explanation, "of her efforts invested in building good relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina," although relations between Croatia and BiH have never been worse (since President Tuđman) than those created precisely by President Grabar-Kitarović. This recognition was awarded to her by the phantom KLEPSIDRA, exploiting the striking lack of principle of some academics on the jury.

The presidential mandate of Mrs. Grabar-Kitarović was also assessed in Croatia itself by many Croatian intellectuals, even statesmen, as a mandate of scandals and political clumsiness, constant flirting with fascist emigration around the world, and especially as a mandate of complicating relations with BiH. All the more shocking is this announcement on the website I quoted at the beginning.

The President's consistency in making gaffes of all kinds is her own affair, but a particular problem is the consistency of Bosniak servility towards her, and not only towards her. Servility here is a kind of special disease. (I will cite another example, at least in parentheses. In 2016, a significant number of intellectuals, secular and theological ulema in Sarajevo, launched an initiative for UNSA to award an honorary doctorate in philosophy to a Zagreb Arabist, although his work is not philosophical at all, but he is merely a graduate Arabist and translator. After the recommendations had already been signed and the initiative was well advanced, I drew attention to the fact that this Arabist does not have the body of work for such recognition and that in his book published in 1980, he writes that the Palestinians are to blame for their situation because they are backward and primitive; that the Prophet Muhammad believed in multiple gods, that he received Revelation during epileptic seizures, etc. Instead of accepting the mistake I pointed out to them privately, that ulema (both theological and secular) stopped communicating with me because I thwarted their sycophancy.)

After all, I must say: 

I am horrified by that all-encompassing servility, that very great deficit of dignity.