ABDUL WAHID OSMAN BELAL
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From: Islahonline <islahonl...@gmail.com>
Subject: Bismillah [IslamCity] Islamists Gain Ground in Sarajevo
To: "eGroup For Muslims Around The World" <islamcity@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Monday, 4 May, 2009, 4:21 PM
THE PROPHET'S FIFTH COLUMN
Islamists Gain Ground in Sarajevo
By Walter Mayr in Sarajevo
Radical Muslim imams and nationalist politicians from all camps are threatening
Sarajevo's multicultural legacy. With the help of Arab benefactors, the deeply
devout are acquiring new recruits. In the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," Islamists
are on the rise.
The obliteration of Israel is heralded in a torrent of words. "Zionist
terrorists," the imam thunders from the glass-enclosed pulpit at the end of the
mosque. "Animals in human form" have transformed the Gaza Strip into a
"concentration camp," and this marks "the beginning of the end" for the Jewish
pseudo-state.
Over 4,000 faithful are listening to the religious service in the King Fahd
Mosque, named after the late Saudi Arabian monarch King Fahd Bin Abd al-Asis Al
Saud. The women sit separately, screened off in the left wing of the building.
It is the day of the Khutbah, the great Friday sermon, and the city where the
imam has predicted Israel's demise lies some 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles)
northwest of Gaza.
It is a city in the heart of Europe: Sarajevo.
"Tea or coffee?" Shortly after stepping down from the pulpit, Nezim Halilovic
-- the imam and fiery speaker of the King Fahd Mosque -- reveals himself to be
the perfect Bosnian host. He has fruits, nuts and sweetened gelatin served in
his quarters behind the house of worship. A chastely-dressed wife and four
children add themselves to the picture. It's a scene of domestic tranquility
that stands in stark contrast to the railing sermon of the controversial Koran
scholar.
Familiar Allegations
Sarajevo's King Fahd Mosque was built with millions of Saudi dollars as the
largest house of worship for Muslims in the Balkans. The mosque has a
reputation as a magnet for Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
the imam is said to be the patron of the Wahhabites, although they call
themselves Salafites, after an ultra-conservative movement in Sunni Islam.
Halilovic is familiar with the allegations and the usual accompanying thought
patterns: Wahhabite equals al-Qaida, which equals a worldwide terror network.
He says he has nothing to do with that, but he "cannot forbid a Muslim from
worshiping in my mosque according to his own rites." He explains the general
air of suspicion surrounding the King Fahd Mosque as follows: "The West is
annoyed that many Muslims are returning to their faith, instead of sneaking by
the mosque to the bar, as they used to do, to drink alcohol and eat pork."
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Many Bosnians have despised "the West" since 1992, when the United Nations arms
embargo seriously impeded the military resistance of the Muslims in their war
against the Serb aggressors. It wasn't until four years later, and after
100,000 people had died, that the international community -- at the urging and
under the leadership of the US -- finally put an end to the slaughter. Over 80
percent of the dead civilians in the Bosnian War were Muslims.
This traumatic experience left a deep mark on the traditionally cosmopolitan
Muslim Bosnians -- and opened the door to the Islamists. Years later, the
religious fundamentalists have declared the attacks by Christian Serbs and
Croats a "crusade" by infidels -- and painted themselves as the steadfast
protectors of Muslim Bosnians.
Imam Halilovic served during the war as commander of the Fourth Muslim Brigade.
A photo shows him standing next to a 155 milimeter howitzer, dressed in black
combat fatigues, a flowing beard and a scarf wrapped around his head. He
witnessed the arrival of the first religious warriors from countries in the
Middle East and northern Africa. These fighters brought ideological seeds that
have now found fertile ground -- the beliefs of the Salafites, Islamic
fundamentalists who orient themselves according to the alleged unique, pure
origin of their religion and reject all newer Islamic traditions.
Another Explosive Situation
Sarajevo is at the crossroads of the West and the Orient, in the heart of
Europe -- a place where Islam meets the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and a
place that shares the historical legacies of the Ottoman Empire and the
Austria-Hungary of the Habsburgs. If Europe were to lose Sarajevo's Muslims as
mediators between these worlds, it would have to contend with yet another
explosive situation.
Bosnia's capital city still remains a bustling town with well-stocked bars,
concerts and garish advertisements for sexy lingerie. Men with billowing
trousers and full beards and women with full-body veils are still a relatively
rare sight on the streets. The last reports of sharia militias intervening
against public kissing in parks on the outskirts of town date back two years
ago.
According to a survey conducted in 2006, however, over 3 percent of all Muslim
Bosnians -- over 60,000 men and women -- profess the Wahhabi creed, and an
additional 10 percent say that they sympathize with the devout defenders of
morals. But since the radicals and their Arab benefactors have been subject to
heightened surveillance in the wake of 9/11, they tend to keep a low profile.
In the evenings, though, individuals and small groups quickly exit the
shell-pocked apartment buildings surrounding the King Fahd Mosque. At this time
of day, there is a much smaller crowd of worshipers than at noon during the big
Friday prayers, and the fifth column of the prophet can almost feel as if it
has the mosque to itself.
They pray differently, with spread legs and in tight rows, "so the devil cannot
pass." They refuse to allow fellow worshipers to say the ritual peace greeting
"salam" at the end, they don't say a word, they don't want to be part of the
Jamaat, the community, and they leave the mosque together as a group before the
others.
Locked the Doors
The older generation of Muslims in Sarajevo's mosques now has to listen to
lectures from bearded missionaries on what is "halal" and "haram" -- lawful and
forbidden -- as if they and their ancestors had been living according to a
misconception for over half a millennium. To protest this, the imam of the
time-honored Emperor's Mosque has temporarily locked the doors of his house of
worship -- for the first time in its nearly 450-year history.
This clash of civilizations also takes place in less prominent places, like the
Internet forums of the Bosnian Web site Studio Din. Here the heirs of the
officially godless, socialist Yugoslavia can learn about the Salafi doctrine.
They ask questions that have to do with everyday life -- listening to music,
smoking, earning money -- but also questions dealing with clothing and moral
rules.
The answers from the preachers on the Web are unequivocal: "Music is forbidden
in Islam, listening to instruments is a sin." "Smoking is forbidden in Islam."
"Whoever works as a cleaning lady at a bank that charges its customers interest
is an accessory to a sin. It's no different than having cleaning ladies in bars
and brothels."
In October, 2008, the Baden-Württemberg state branch of the Office for the
Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency,
conducted a study on the Studio Din Web site, which is also regularly visited
by Bosnians living in exile. Entries in the forum -- which include discussions
on jihad, the holy war, as a direct way of reaching Allah -- indicate time and
again visitors from the Wahhabi King Fahd Mosque in Sarajevo, Imam Halilovic's
flock.
Could a radical, potentially violent parallel society be emerging in the Muslim
dominated region of the war-torn republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, eight months
after the signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the
European Union?
Explosive Belts
There are indications of this. Resid Hafizovic, a professor at the Islamic
University, was the first to speak of a "potentially deadly virus" in Bosnian
society. The head of the Bosnian federal police has recently admitted that
there is a growing threat of "terrorism with an Islamistic character" and has
cited indications that suicide bombers have begun to equip themselves with
explosive belts.
"They have everything to blow themselves up. Whether they do it depends on the
orders from their leaders," says Esad Hecimovic, author of a standard work on
the mujahedeen in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Last March, officials of the special
anti-terror unit arrested five men, including four Salafites in Sarajevo.
The Bosnian leader of the group, a former fighter in the Al-Mujahedeen Brigade,
reportedly has sponsors in Germany and Austria who helped him acquire
explosives. In connection with the arrests, police conducted raids in remote
mountain areas and seized caches of arms and military equipment that were used
for combat training exercises.
After discovering that some of the masterminds behind 9/11, such as Khalid
Scheikh Mohammed, had been active in Bosnia, international pressure increased
on the government in Sarajevo in 2002. Foundations were closed and police
searched the Sarajevo office of the Saudi High Commissioner for Aid to Bosnia,
which had until then enjoyed the protection of the United States.
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Al-Qaida veteran Ali Hamad from Bahrain and Syrian-born Abu Hamza are
currently in custody on the outskirts of Sarajevo and awaiting deportation.
Intelligence sources say that Hamza secretly channeled money between Arab
sponsors and Bosnian Salafites. The amount of €500 -- an average monthly salary
-- is reportedly rewarded for every woman who decides to wear a full-body veil.
The Islamists are slowly but surely permeating the firm ground upon which
Sarajevo's society stands. They are influencing men like the quiet, bearded cab
driver who waits for customers day after day at the bridge where the heir to
the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was
assassinated in June, 1914. On the evening of Sept. 24, 2008, the cabbie
suddenly appeared at the front of a protest, right in the midst of those who
shouted "Allahu akbar!" at the police line in front the Art Academy of Fine
Arts and attacked visitors to Bosnia's first gay and lesbian festival.
Wahhabites scuffled alongside common hooligans. Eight people were injured and
all subsequent events were canceled. Srdjan Dizdarevic, chairman of the Bosnian
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights -- an independent, nonprofit organization
for the protection, promotion and monitoring of human rights in
Bosnia-Herzegovina -- spoke afterwards of a defeat for civil society, of
"fascist rhetoric" leading up to the incident, and called it reminiscent of the
"pogroms that happened in the times of Adolf Hitler."
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Part 1: Islamists Gain Ground in Sarajevo
Part 2: 'We Are only Interested in Opening Ourselves as an Islamic Society'
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