The central question here is: do the “moderates” here have the political will, support of the population, and is it their own genuine intention, to prevent the outright Islamization of Bosnia? Time will tell.
And a follow-up question: do said “moderates” have a better defense than to glibly insist the chapters and verses quoted by the “radicals” were “taken out of context?”
We get that one a lot, of course, when we report on jihadists’ own reliance on Islamic texts and teachings to motivate and defend their acts. Oddly, enough, such bland pronouncements just never seem to halt the jihad. It keeps happening, and we keep reporting on it. “Bosnia: Radical Muslims urge boycott of security forces,” from AdnKronos International. August 17:
Sarajevo, 17 August (AKI) – Radical Wahabi fundamentalists have been leafleting mosques throughout Bosnia Herzegovina urging Muslims not to join the country’s police and army.
AdnKronos is frequently a useful source, but one can’t help but note what amounts to a George Carlin-esque attempt at softening the blow of a succinct term like “jihadist” by stretching it out over more syllables. By the year 2020, they should be up to a good paragraph or so in the mainstream media.
“Those are forces devoted to a fake god who we should fight against with all of our powers,” read the leaflets, which Wahabis have been putting in mosque collection boxes.
Members of Bosnia’s Muslim community dismissed the leaflets as a “desperate and insane appeal”.
The leaflets also contained several passages from the Koran which had been “misinterpreted” and “used out of context”, they said.
Funny how that keeps happening.
Similar leaflets were found in mosque contribution boxes just before the bombing of a police station in the central Bosnian town of Bugojno on 27 June that killed one policeman and injured six others.
Wahabi leaflets first appeared in Bosnia when the government decided to contribute to NATO forces in Afganistan and Iraq. The leaflets accused the government of “betraying our Islamic brothers” in these countries.
Bosnia’s imams are said to be deeply concerned by the bombing in Bugojno and the reappearance of wahabi pamphlets. Bosnian mosques are not well protected and it is impossible to monitor people entering them, according to the imams.
The Wahabi movement first appeared in the Balkans during the 1990s wars, when ‘mujahadeen’ from Islamic countries came to Bosnia to fight on the side of local Muslims.
Wahabi cells have been radicalising supporters, running training camps and plotting violence in recent years, according to a number of terrorism experts
Bosnia state security agency OSA director Almir Dzuvo said in July there were some 3,000 well equipped radical Islamist militants in Bosnia, who posed a serious terrorism threat to the country.