Balkan Islamism: in step with the times
Zakir Abdul Karim Naik
Irfan Al-Alawi, Gethstone Institute for International Policy, in pure English warns: under the guise of the so-called “moderate Islamism” - the fake face of extremism and radicalism - to the Balkans, primarily in Kosovo, considerable forces of Wahhabis, deobandists and other Islamist terrorists flow from all over the world. The "faithful" are concentrated there under the slogans of "Islamic revival," a moderate interpretation of Islam and respect for other religions. Thanks to this question, the Islamists have already achieved a lot.
For example, their “merit” is that the British charity foundation “Rahma” (“Mercy”) feeds the radical sect of Deobandi, which, in turn, serves as the economic inspiration for the Taliban.
The Peace TV channel (“Peace”), the brainchild of the fundamentalist preacher Zakir Naik, serves as a powerful propaganda tool to bring new Islamist forces to the region. It was he who created the 12-hour daily program in Kosovo, where 90% Muslims live.
Mr. Peace’s “Peace TV” broadcasts daily from 9: 30 in the morning to 10 in the evening. Broadcasting in Kosovo is conducted in Albanian. Propaganda TV shows are an effective element of a new campaign to entrench South Asian Islamists among indigenous European (Balkan) Muslims. The programs of Peace TV, the analyst notes, are of a hard Wahhabi nature, and balance on the verge of insults and aggression, frankly directed against Sufis, Shiite Muslims, non-fundamentalist Sunnis, Jews, Christians, Hindus, and others.
Today, for the sake of television sermons, radical Islamists arrive in Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia mainly from Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Persian Gulf, from where the television channel is financed.
The activities of Mira are coordinated in Kosovo by the local “Center for Islamic Studies”, a kind of mysterious organization that does not have representation in the “real” world and exists, as it were, only on the Internet and on TV screens. It is as if this Center is researching and publishing fatwas, but it is not known who is leading it. The sources of financing of the Center are covered by a gloom of secrets.
The TV channel also broadcasts via satellite in English and Urdu, broadcasting to the countries of South Asia; transfers to Kosovo have been going on since 2009.
Mr. Naik, a doctor by training, publicly praised terrorism and praised Osama bin Laden, for which he was condemned by members of the Indian Muslim community. This man was denied entry to the UK in 2010, and then his Canadian visa was canceled.
As for the Charity Foundation, it was created in 1999 year - ostensibly to provide post-war assistance to refugees in Kosovo.
Deobandists and Wahhabis, writes with sad irony, the author seems to believe that the region is in need of an "Islamic revival." Under the guise of a moderate interpretation of Islam and religious tolerance, agitators and extremists consider it necessary to “improve” the moral health of the local Islamic community with global connections. After all, Kosovo is the only part of continental Europe, with the exception of a small part of Turkey, in which Sufi spirituality is one of the main elements in Islamic culture. As many as 40% of Muslims in western Kosovo are Sufis.
Meanwhile, for Zakir Naik and others like him, Sufism is only a pretext for “cleansing” the region from the “deviating”.
Not only in Kosovo, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina, radical Islamism is expanding and strengthening. BiH also covers the wave of Islamization. So считает Professor of Sociology at the University of Banja Luka (Republika Srpska as part of BiH) Ivan Shiyakovich
According to him, here, as in Kosovo, after the war, new trends emerged from the Islamic world - specifically from Saudi Arabia and Iran. Islam has ceased to be moderate, it has become radical. In the Muslim-dominated areas of BiH, it is not easy for the Christian minority to live: the people there are intimidated. They are already afraid to show belonging to a Christian culture. Mostly in BiH, as in Kosovo, Wahhabism. Recently, Wahhabis loudly declared themselves in October last year: a representative of this movement, who arrived in Sarajevo from the Serbian city of Novi Pazar, shot at the US Embassy. Nevertheless, the analyst notes, the item on Wahhabis was deleted from the spring resolution of the European Parliament on BiH.
The goal of local radical forces is the creation of a unitary Muslim state.
Not only in BiH and Kosovo, but in general in the Balkans, the situation is very tense. About this in an interview with the Voice of Russia рассказал former ambassador of Yugoslavia to Turkey and Azerbaijan Darko Tanaskovich.
In his opinion, the political and social situation of the past twenty years has allowed radical Islam to intensify in the Balkans. It was his program that filled the resulting ideological void in the region.
D. Tanaskovich explains:
The second is the gradual introduction of paramilitary groups, theologians, and mujahedin from the Islamic world, especially from Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they have long been leading jihad against the Western world, as is usually the case.
Thirdly, with funding, especially from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states, as well as from international funds, such as the Islamic League, missionaries are sent to the Balkans who advocate Islam much more radical than the type that is present there now. ” .
According to theological essence, Wahhabism dominates in the region (by the way, the official religion of Saudi Arabia). Wahhabism has a rigid doctrine, according to which almost all non-Muslims are enemies.
As for Deobandism, explains the ex-ambassador, Deoband is an Islamic scientific center in India, which has gained great prestige in the last century. Deobandism had no direct connections with the Balkans before; however, now preachers connected with the Taliban appear here, and thus with deobandism.
Zakir Naik, mentioned by the media, is by no means a “marginal”, D. Tanaskovich believes. Although he does not have a formal Islamic education, he is an influential Islamic preacher. His books were published worldwide in huge quantities.
With regard to the rapid spread of Islamism in the Balkans, from this region, according to the analyst, radical extremists have the opportunity to "productively influence Europe and the West" - much more productive than from remote Muslim countries. The Balkans are “the soft underbelly of Europe, where you can create what was once called“ White Al-Qaeda, ”where local residents, in which the West does not recognize terrorists and extremists, can be trained, trained - and gradually introduced to Europe.”
Tanaskovich says:
The West, supporting the Islamists in the Balkans, and indeed throughout the world. according to the conviction of the former ambassador to Yugoslavia, it is absurd:
Tanaskovich distinguishes between "approaches" to this issue of Western Europe and the United States. Europe does not have the strength to solve internal problems today, but spiritually it is experiencing an identity crisis. Therefore, it is not able to develop a unified position and accept the fact of the total Islamization of the Balkans.
The position of Washington is simply thoughtless:
As examples, the ex-ambassador cites Afghanistan and Libya. In the latter case, last year, al-Qaeda called on all Muslims to fight against the godless Gaddafi, and at the same time with the crusaders from America and the Zionists from Israel. (In fact, the same thing happened that in the eighties in Afghanistan, we add from ourselves, however, there it was not at the same time).
Tanaskovich doesn’t give an exact answer to the difficult question of US attitudes towards Islamism. According to him, the US has already realized that Islamists are about to turn out to be a powerful force that will dominate the Muslim world for ten years, or even more, and they will have to somehow cope with this. At the same time, they cannot protect the authoritarian regimes that previously prevented the coming of the Islamists to power.
In general, we note, the States found themselves at a crossroads: on the one hand, “American values” (paired with mineral resources) and the influence of “hegemon” in the world, on the other - the growth of Islamism as a result of the implementation of these very values and the arrival of it somewhere to power - in supposedly moderate forms.
Tanaskovich concludes by expressing the fear that there is no clear understanding in the world of the true nature of these relationships and consequences.
F. Pleschunov (Institute of the Middle East) indicatesthat, if recently radical movements in the Balkans acted in most cases covertly, today the increased activity of Islamists in the region is visible to the naked eye. It is intensifying not only on favorable local soil, but also because many of the extremists were denied entry into the countries of Western Europe, forcing them to “transfer destructive activity to other European states”.
The Islamization of the Balkans Pleschunov finds "a fundamentally new challenge." The analyst concludes that it is up to the Muslims of Kosovo, and then the Muslims of the Balkans, to oppose the aggressive propaganda of extremists parasitizing on religion.
Recent authors publications on SETIMS on the subject of Islamism and terrorist attacks in the Balkans, lead statement of the Lebanese extremist Omar Bakri Muhammad. This figure claims that the Western Balkans are Islamic, and therefore will become targets for future terrorist acts.
Bakri lived 20 for years in north London, until he had to move to 2005 in Lebanon. October 4 2012 of the year this fighter for the purity of faith stated:
Bakri was not too lazy to list the Islamic lands:
Such statements, of course, cannot have immediate, direct consequences, but they can give rise to extremist actions or, over time, cause a certain strategic shift in these or other European countries. This should not be underestimated, especially in the Balkan countries, where the threats of radicalism are very strong.
Milan Mikhailovich, a driver from Bosanski Novi, told SETimes journalists:
The Balkan theme indirectly troubled the Turkish Prime Minister, whose speech analyzes same "SETIMES". In a speech addressed to the UN Security Council on the Syrian issue, R. T. Erdogan, who is considered a “moderate Islamist,” compared the situation in Syria with the situation in Yugoslavia in 1990 and called on the international community to stop the bloodshed. Erdogan, the main critic of Bashar Assad, said at a conference in Istanbul on October 13 that the UN Security Council "should not repeat the mistakes that led to the Bosnian massacre in 1990's," and at the same time called the UN "helpless." Erdogan is also worried about the fact that about a hundred thousand refugees have already “moved” to Syria from Turkey.
Meanwhile, diplomat veteran Omer Engin Lutem, who held a number of positions at the Turkish Foreign Ministry and is responsible for Balkan and UN diplomacy in 1980, believes that the international community’s response to the Srebrenica massacre "largely explains the current situation around Syria." That is why the "UN mechanism is working very slowly."
The Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 was considered one of the worst atrocities that had only been committed in Europe after World War II. It is believed that the Serbs killed up to 8000 Muslims, most of the men.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, being in Srebrenica in July 2012, also compared the massacre of 1995 of the year to the situation in Syria. According to him, the UN then did not fulfill its duties, failed to prevent the genocide in Srebrenica. And he drew a parallel with Syria: “This can be compared with the current situation in Syria, where the international community is again taking a test.”
Erdogan also said that the Srebrenica massacre happened because the international community was not ready “to solve the questions posed at the end of the Cold War. But how to explain the injustice and weakness in the Syrian issue today? ”He asked.
However, Hayrugin Somun, the former ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Turkey, and now a teacher stories diplomacy at the International University in Sarajevo, does not believe that it is possible to compare the approach of the UN and the international community to today's Syria and the events in Bosnia in the 1990-s. He builds his position on the conviction that “barbarism in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia” was not due to sectarian disputes, but because of the aggressive policy of Slobodan Milosevic, whose goal was to create Greater Serbia. Hence the genocide against the non-Serb population. “There was a war for territories in the Balkans,” he says, considering it reckless to give hints of other parallels: after all, those can encourage nationalists.
At the same time, the analyst is ready to accept a comparison of today's Syria and Yugoslavia 1990's - but “only when observation focuses on external factors and their struggle for influence in the region”.
If you read between the lines, Somun points out here Erdogan’s desire (just an внешнего external actor ’) to strengthen Turkey’s influence in the region, turning Syria into a cesspool of religious war, where Kurds, Druze, Sunni and Shiites will slit each other with a certain dexterity of Islamist radicals friend She will still be Srebrenica ... Therefore, Erdogan constantly criticizes the UN and the Western countries in general for “weakness”. This very weakness does not allow Turkey to become stronger.
Now, when Islamism is growing stronger in the Balkans, a comparison of the situation in the disintegrating Yugoslavia of 1990's and present-day Syria does not even look ambiguous. His very admission shows how “moderate” Islamism of the same Erdogan, insisting on military intervention in Syria, can be. Indeed, in the event of the collapse of a weakened country according to the Yugoslav scenario, the country immediately, in the form of “provisional governments” (each in the manner of the Libyan PNS), or a little later, as a result of “democratic elections”, various Islamist radicals will come to power, who will promise to unite people under the banner of Allah. It is not for nothing that in Syria, al-Qaeda fighters and terrorists from all over the world, including the Balkans, are fighting on the side of the “rebels”.
Thus, the Balkans, which are rapidly filling with Wahhabism - with the indifference of Europe and the USA and along with the Islamization of a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa - are the newest enclave of world religious extremism, which, according to analysts, is already a threat to peace in the Balkans, and soon the future will be one of the hotbeds of terrorism for the whole of Europe.
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