From: Michael Sells <m_sells@haverford.edu>
Subject: Re: Europe vs. Muslim Bosnians
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X-XXDate: Thu, 13 May 93 13:08:52 GMT

Subject: RE: Europe vs. Muslim Bosnians
From: f54oguocha
Date: 13 MAY 93 02:28:53 GMT
In article <13MAY93.02285380@edison.usask.ca> ,
f54oguocha@edison.usask.ca writes:
>In a previous article, josip@eng.umd.edu (Josip Loncaric) wrote:
>> 
>>Actually, just after the FIRST world war, many Muslims were killed by
Serbs.
>>Under Serbian-led regime between the two world wars, many Croats were
>>also killed (especially during the dictatorship introduced on Jan. 6,
1929).
>>
>Josip,
>
>please, don't be offended at this question: Who are the "Muslims" in the
>Bosnian context? i know that a moslem/muslim is a believer in Islam.
Islam 
>is a religion and it is practised in many parts of the world. But it is
not
>, yes definitely not, an ethinic group. ok! so, these Bosnian Muslims,
who
>are they? to which ethnic group do they belong? what language(s) do they
>speak? do they have a different language from that of the Serbs or
Croats? 
>the way the western press use the word 'muslim' in this Bosnian debacle
has 
>kept me wondering when the meaning of muslim/moslem i knew from
childhood was 
>changed in the dictionary. this is just a question. no flames intended!
>
>oguocha


You've asked a crucial question that underlies much of the genocide. 
Bosnian Muslims are slavic in ethnicity. They speak Serbo-Croatian. But
there is a Christo-Slavic ideology whereby all true slavs are Christian
and anyone who converted to Islam thereby must have changed ethnicity by
changing religion.  See the poems of Ngegos or the novels of Ivo Andric
who brilliantly displays these attitudes on the part of what he calls
"the people" (i.e. Christian slavs).  For this reason, the war-criminals
call all the Bosnian Muslims "Turks" even though they are not ethnically
Turk and do not speak Turkish as their first language.  For this reason,
what is actually a genocide labeled against those who are ethnically
identical but religiously "other" is called, paradoxically, "ethnic
cleansing" rather than "religious cleansing."

Thus, while a war rages between Serbs and Croats as a continuation of
WWII, and older agenda, the annihilation of Islam and Muslims from
Bosnian, is being carried out under the cover of the Serbo-Croat war.

Regards,

Mike.
>
--
Michael Sells, Department of Religion, Haverford College
Haverford, Pa 19041-1392
