Link to full text and comments: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022115.php#more> http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022115.php#more
Jihad in Kosovo: a Response to Critics James George Jatras, Director of the American Council for Kosovo, here responds to some of the allegations made about Kosovo and about himself on this <http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30843_Totten-_An_Israeli_in_Kosovo/ comments/> LGF thread, about which I commented here <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022114.php> . In a recent posting by Michael Totten on Little Green Footballs ("Totten: <http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30843_Totten-_An_Israeli_in_Kosovo/ comments/> An Israeli in Kosovo"), and particularly in a number of the comments following, questions have been raised about assertions by myself and others, such as Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer and commentator Julia Gorin, about the relevance of jihad ideology to the violence committed by Albanian Muslims in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija against other communities, notably Christian Serbs. The comments, many of them repetitive, expand the posting to, at my last count, 84 pages, so it will be hard to address all of them. Boiled down to their essence, the criticisms can be summarized as follows: 1. The supposedly "moderate" nature of Islam among secular Kosovo Albanians, and the absence of Islam as an ideological incitement to Kosovo Albanian violence, as opposed to Albanian nationalism; 2. Indigenous Kosovo Albanian resistance to attempts by Saudi Arabia and other external forces to import Wahhabist radicalism into Kosovo; 3. The pro-U.S. (and pro-Israel) sentiments of Albanian Muslims in Kosovo and the merits of U.S. support for a moderate, pro-Western Muslim country; and 4. My purported role as a highly-paid lobbyist for Serbian interests. To take each point in turn: 1. The supposedly "moderate" nature of Islam among secular Kosovo Albanians. I hesitate to respond in detail to this assertion, mainly because Robert Spencer has done such a fine job of doing so in his comments on LGF. The main point to keep in mind is that there is a world of difference between asserting the existence of "moderate Islam" -- which does not now exist, never has existed, and, I suspect, never will exist -- and the unquestionable fact that many Muslims around the world are indeed cultural Muslims who are either unaware of or do not agree with Islam's undeniable mandates of jihad, sharia, and dhimmitude. There is no doubt that many of the Albanians in Kosovo fall into the latter category. Primarily a function of the secularizing influence of communist rule following World War II, particularly in urban areas, the residue of this factor can be confirmed by the liberal attitude Mr. Totten experienced in Kosovo, the fact that many nominally Muslim Albanians in Kosovo do indeed drink the fiery local distillate rakija (but generally do not, as asserted by some, eat pork), and consider themselves Europeans, not Middle Easterners. That tendency, however, needs to be balanced against a few others. To begin with, as has happened in other former communist areas, as well as places like Turkey, Iraq, and Pakistan where the local secularizing ideology (respectively, Kemalism, Baathism, and militaristic nationalism) has been weakened, there is a counter-tendency of a once-secularized Muslim population to return to its Islamic roots. This is reflected in Kosovo by the boom in mosque-building, which despite the massive aid poured into Kosovo from the United States, the European Union, and other sources, far outstrips other pressing needs. This has been attested to by Paul Andrew Kirk (see the last comment below the main article here <http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25301&page=1> ), an American who served two tours with the U.S. military in Kosovo. Kirk says: Islamic extremism is on the rise in Kosovo. KFOR [the NATO-led military mission] soldiers have been attacked in Gjilan [actual name in Serbian: Gnjilane], Ferizaj [Uroševac], and Prizren when I was there. You just won't see or hear about it in the news. More mosques have been built in Kosovo in the last five years than schools, roads, health clinics, and all other sanitation projects combined. Compliments of Muslim charities from the Middle East. Mr. Kirk's comments point to another factor: that Islamic violence in Kosovo is systematically underreported because the governments, notably that of the United States, have so publicly committed themselves to the Albanian Muslim cause that they don't want it reported -- it complicates their black and white, good (Albanian Muslim) and evil (Serbian Christian) caricature. Neither <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-miller/good-versus-evil-radovan_b_116661 .html> do the laptop bombadiers in the media, who, as they had in Bosnia, cheered on the great Kosovo "humanitarian intervention" in 1999 to stop a nonexistent "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians -- and which led directly to the real eradication of more than two-thirds of the Serbian community, as well as Roma (mostly Muslim, some Orthodox Christian), Croats (Roman Catholic), Jews, and others. This leaves most of the reporting of attacks on Serbs to the Serbs themselves, and as certified genocidal monsters, who cares what they say, or for that matter, what happens to them? Continue reading <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022115.php> "Jihad in Kosovo: a Response to Critics" ______________________________________
