The caliphate has won the allegiance of Muslim groups in the Philippines, Nigeria, Libya and elsewhere. And now — an entire village in Bosnia, where we were always told during the wrongheaded American intervention there and its aftermath that all the Muslims were moderate and pro-American. “In The Bosnian Village Seduced By ISIS,” Reuters, March 11, 2015 (thanks to C. Cantoni):
…Bosnia and Herzegovina is fertile ground for fundamentalism, and people say that many who go to fight in Mosul and Raqqa pass through here on their way….
That’s what brought me here to the small town of Gornja Maoca, where the ISIS flag has been raised and the people live as if they were in lands conquered by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s men. Just like in Mosul, black flags are flying — a mere hour’s plane flight from Vienna.
“You’re going to Maoca?” asks my friend smiling. “Save yourself the journey. All you’ll find there is hypocritical silence. Did you know that you can’t find vinegar in Sarajevo’s supermarkets anymore? They’re owned by Arab groups. This is supposed to be a multiethnic city, but men won’t even shake my hand, and they lower their eyes when I speak. Because I am a woman, they won’t look at me,” she says.
Fights have broken out in the mosque in Nedjadici because new radical preachers want to abandon the old Bosnian prayer traditions, she tells me. “Don’t bother going to Maoca,” she says. “It’s not worth the hassle. There are bad people there.”
A few weeks ago in Sarajevo the trial of Bilan “the Recruiter” Bosnic began. He went around the mosques, gathering the support of poor youth in small villages — and there was no shortage of listeners. According to official reports, 130 Bosnians are currently fighting with ISIS, and at least 30 have already been killed. But these are just the optimistic official figures issued to avoid spreading panic.
A different world
Maoca is near Brcko, on the northeastern border with Croatia, at least four hours drive from Sarajevo. Even as we pass through the smallest towns, we can see new minarets being constructed, funded by money from Saudi Arabia.
We stopped at an inn and met a group of boys, and when it became clear we were heading to Maoca, one of them took out his phone to show me a photo. “Look! This is Mirza Ganic, the martyr,” he says, showing pictures of a bearded man holding his gun against the backdrop of a beautiful villa, built in the distinctive style of refined Syrian mansions. There’s another photo of a group of guys in a pool, and the final one is of the same man wrapped in a blanket, dead, at the feet of his companions.
“He was born in Sandzak, and he got injured on his way here,” the boy says. “It wasn’t a mortal wound. He could have been easily saved. But he came here to die and become a martyr, so they left him to bleed to death.”
Bairo “the Bosnian” Ikonovic is another who went over there; he’s one of the bosses in the caliphate. “Some people decide to travel in space, but here in Bosnia this is how they hold on to a glorious past. In their minds, it will bring back the golden age of Islam,” says the boy.
The small Serbian cemetery was moved away when the Muslims bought the lands. Wherever you stand, there are simple tombstones and crosses, most of the deceased unnamed. A group of children plays nearby, the girls with their heads covered. There is something wry and gentle in the way they look at you, like the smile of an old lady and sad child mixed together. The two biggest kids are lookouts, ready to warn when someone is coming.
The houses here are barns made of stones and mud, and the flags of the caliphate don’t fly from the windows of the houses anymore because the police took them down. But the black and white lettering remains on the balconies of those who proclaim the “true faith.”
Prayer and violence
We stop near the mezdid, the place of prayer — in Salafist Maoca, there is no mosque. Trousers, djellabas and niqabs all hang in the local shop. We arrive just before noon, prayer time, and women dressed in black niqabs traipse through the snow with their brightly colored plastic sandals. The men all have long beards, boots and warm layers piled on top of their djellabas.
The head, the “emir,” is Nesred Imamovic, and he left for Syria months ago with his wives and children. He named Merset Cekic as head of the community. This is a man who hurries to prayer; he lost an eye and looks at us with the remaining one with hatred as he spits on the ground. “Go away. No one here wants to talk to you,” he says.
It isn’t easy to live here, says a man who finally agrees to speak with us. “We have come from different places in Bosnia. Many work as masons and laborers in Brcko. Some people have even tried to go to Germany and Austria for work, but the people at the border saw that they came from Maoca and sent them back, telling them they were terrorists,” he says.
“When the flags were put up, around 200 soldiers came with their faces covered, terrifying all the children,” says the man, who wishes to remain anonymous. “They smashed up houses and stole about 3,000 euros from me. You tell me, is this not terrorism?”
Asked about the caliphate, he replies, “Muhammad said the whole world will belong to Islam, and the cross will be broken. This is the sign that this time is coming.”
But this holy war is killing many Muslims, I tell him. “Answer me first, foreigner: What do the Americans, the British, all you infidels do to the Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria? This is fascism. The Muslims in Sarajevo and other cities are the same as the Americans — they’re false believers,” he says. “I dream of a Bosnia where there’s a mosque at every corner to pray.”
He invites us to his house to show me how it was damaged by the police. One of his children is learning to read by reciting verses of the Koran, and black veils hastily disappear behind a door. He shows me the police report, which details the items that were confiscated: a gun, three bayonets and a sword.
nicu says
And from there coming more ” refugees ” to Germany , UK , etc .
But , no : it’s no Islamisation ….
Maria says
well of course the Bosnian Muslims are Pro American when it suits them if it wasn’t for America poking its nose in there would be no Alquieda or ISIS Bosnians where trained by the CIA like ISIS is being trained Western Impearalist and islam Terrorist united to split up Yugoslavia because they hate Orthodox Christians Bosnia and Kosovo is Part of Serbia. I think Russia should do more to help the Serbia NATO need to take there fitlhy bases out of Kosovo and Bosnia and let Serbs take there country back
gravenimage says
Oh, good grief. Just like Justin, we have another troll here who ludicrously blames America for creating Jihad, all while giving actual Jihadists a free pass. Ugly and bizarre.
Spot On says
Talk about opening Pandora’s Box…many years ago while in Spain, I innocently asked the taxi driver what he thought of Spain’s new Dictator. He went silent and said we cannot speak on that subject. However, he felt free to speak about the pitfalls any other country. We see a lot of that kind of talk but little about each own country’s problems.
Someone once told me that money don’t talk, it screams. Politicians seek power and money flows toward the powerful. The ordinary people at the bottom can only dodge and weave as they go through life. Ordinary Christian people in the East and West are somewhat in the same boat.
One thing for sure, we have the best politicians here that money can buy but we CAN get rid of them without going to war.
mortimer says
Rather than becoming more ‘reformed’, Muslims are becoming more ‘traditional’ as in more jihadist.
The level of threat is growing because Western politicians refuse to see Islam as the source of the ‘traditions’.
John Doe says
Jason, those are the Slavic muslims ( not fully 100% as Turks ( Ottomans) raped the women so they are having genetics of Turks and they are slightly different and recognizable by their facial appearance to the locals. They received the religion forcefully during the Ottoman kingdom in order to save the families and keep the piece of land and stockpile to feed themselves and that’s to tell you how indoctrinated this religion is ……they kept it for many generations and now it’ ALL to them, they die for it!!! On the other hand the rest of people *(the Serbs) either fought back or payed Jyzia ( or also called “Harach”) If they did not pay they were mutilated, impaled on the spear next to the spine from anus to the neck , which was then put upward in the ground and they would slowly die in excruciating pain, they also decapitated people and even made a fortress where they cemented the heads to make people fearful !!! Ottomans were ravaging this area for 500 years doing it this way!!!!! So funny they were doing these atrocities in the name of islam ( intentionally not using capital letter ) and that is what we see being done in the middle east and in Africa in the name of the same relligion!!!!!!! And then some try to say that they do not represent islam so called the religion of piece. Historically they just follow the book…..evil book!!!!
Jay Airahs says
This seems to suggest that Bill Clinton was a traitor and unfaithful to his own country and supposed Christian faith.
It appears that Bill Clinton’s shallow convictions allowed him to ignore a sacred commitment he made to protect and defend the United states from its avowed enemies.
Hillary Clinton continued that practice of appeasement to Islam policy and put her own selfish interests ahead of her commitments in Benghazi.
What a sorry pile of dog poop. (B.J. Bill) & (Head-bump Hillary) still groveling to Islam’s perversion while trying screw everyone that Mecca allows.
underbed cat says
To John Doe, that is very informative history,but horribly gruesome. I am exasperated right now due to a phone call by a by a family member chiding me about that fact that I was on the computer..and made the remark, “don’t worry there is no Isis in Pennsylvania, ya know the authority talk. Then on top of it mentioned a trip planned for Italy……so in closing I said “be careful”…isis says they will enter Rome soon. BIG MISTAKE…..on my part. So I am the family crazy.Do any other JW readers get this from people they know.,? All highly educated…..but I believe uninformed.???
Spot On says
Hil and Billary are just two con artists that made it to the big stage. They try to bilk everyone they encounter out of their money and that is what they enjoy doing. In Bill’s case, he plays a similar game with women. That is all they are about.
pongidae rex says
Amidst all the talk of an ‘Islamic Reformation’, few seem to realize that such a reformation is happening today before our very eyes. Islam is going back to its Arabic roots in savagery. The West is so blinded by magical thinking about what an ‘Islamic Reformation’ would look like that they do not see what is in front of them. ISIS is the vanguard of ‘reformed Islam’.
cs says
I must say that I watched over 40 hours of documentaries on the ex-Yugoslavia conflicts. I must say none of them portrayed nothing of the kind. They were dismissing this other side and only demonizing the Serbs. Now I know the Serbs did horrible things, but they put it in very black and white, and doing so they lied a lot, this conflict is much more grey then I expected, I supported a lot the idea of this so called “multicultural” Bosnia that Zizek and so many others painted for me. Deceived once more by MSM.
Jeff says
Level the place.
Peggy says
Jay Airahs says
April 12, 2015 at 1:13 pm
Maria, you are Justin seemed intent on proving that the root cause of Islamic terrorism and encroachment is due to Western motives. This implies that Muslims are merely pawns.
===============
That’s what the west intended them to be but miscalculated badly. The west is so focused on destroying Russia that they would destroy their own countries in the end in that process. The real enemy was always Islam but because the west never really had a taste of what Islam is all about they fell into the trap they were making.
It’s time for the US to stop being paranoid about Russia, join them and fight the real evil out there, Islam. Use Camp Bondsteel to aid Serbs in cleansing Kosovo from Islamic Albanians, take their land back and then deal with Bosnia. It’s time to admit the huge mistake and rectify it.
Bosnia is very dangerous to Europe and Serbs are the only ones who know how to deal with them.
Mannie says
It’s pretty obvious that we entered the Jugoslav War on the wrong side. The Serbs were the good guys.