Bosnia: Muslim Presidency Member 'fostering Fundamentalism'

[Crvena zvezda]

BOSNIA: MUSLIM PRESIDENCY MEMBER 'FOSTERING FUNDAMENTALISM'


Belgrade, 18 May (AKI) - A prominent Bosnian publicist and author has accused a Muslim member of the country's three-man state presidency, Haris Silajdzic, of fostering radical Islamism and of protecting Islamist terrorists connected with Al-Qaeda. Dzevad Galijasevic, author of a trilogy "Epitaph for Bosnia" and former mayor of central Bosnian town of Maglaj, said in an interview to Belgrade weekly NIN on Friday that Bosnia wasn't just a shelter, "but a base from which terrorists are being sent to western countries."

Galijasevic, himself a Muslim, said the "Islamisation" of Bosnia didn't start during Bosnia's 1992-1995 civil war, when thousands of mujahadeen from Islamic countries came to fight on the side of local Muslims, but many years before. The radicalisation of local Muslim population was started by the war-time Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic, who spelled the project of Islamisation of Bosnia in his book "Islamic Declaration" published in the 1970s. The book was packed with with religious intolerance and pleaded for the creation of a Muslim state "from Algiers to Indonesia", Galijasevic pointed out.

Izetbegovic was jailed by the then Yugoslav communist authorities and the book was banned, but it later helped him to impose himself as a national Muslim leader when Bosnia seceded from former Yugoslavia in 1992, triggering civil war between Muslims, Serbs and Croats, the country's three main ethnic groups.

"The war has only intensified and accelerated this process," said Galijasevic.

He said it was it Izetbegovic and Silajdzic, at the time prime minister, who invited mujahadeen to come and fight in Bosnia, many of whom later remained in the country and continued work on the radicalisation of local population.

"Many of the imported 'missionaries' had criminal and terrorist biographies," said Galijasevic. They were coming individually and in organised groups, often hiding behind the names of various 'humanitarian organisations'," he added.

Apart from fighting in the battlefield, the mujahadeens' task was "to bring local Muslims closer to Islamic civilisation and draw them away from European and South culture Slav, to which they belong by looks, family, culture and everything else," Galijasevic pointed out.

He said the US State Department in its recent report on terrorism singled out Bosnia as a country in which "terrorists create shelters". Galijasevic pointed out that it was said in a mild form, because the US doesn't want to provoke terrorists to hurt their interests and diplomats. "But they know that Bosnia-Herzegovina isn't a target, but a place from which terrorists are being sent to Western countries," he said.

He noted that foreign intelligence services refer to potential terrorists in Bosnia as "sleepers" who are waiting for something and do nothing. "That's a great mistake," said Galijasevic. "They work full speed on the process of ideological indoctrination and recruiting local potentials, it's happening every day in certain mosques, by certain religious leaders, cleverly covered by some politicians and prosecutors," he said.

Asked who among Bosnian politicians protected terrorists, Galijasevic said: "Haris Silajdzic is certainly on top of the pyramid. He's using his influence and his party's infrastructure to treat terrorism as isolated incidents, instead of being put on the agenda as a real problem," Galijasevic said.

Following Bosnian war, Galijasevic was sacked as mayor of Maglaj after he evicted a group of mujahadeen from occupied Serb homes in the near by village of Bocinja. He's now involved in private business and is mostly dedicated to writing.

Asked whether he was threatened and if he feared for his life, he said he had no protection from local authorities, but had "precious help from the international forces" guarding peace in Bosnia. "I've been through it all many times, but I'm doing this so that my sons, Kemal and Edin, have future," Galijasevic concluded. He said Bosnia would "sooner or later" have to face reality and choose between radical or moderate Islam.



(Vpr/Aki)