Wahhabism in the Balkans: a threat to regional stability? (1) by Hajrudin Somun* The phenomenon of Wahhabism must have extraordinary stamina because it succeeded -- after circling around the Islamic world since its initial appearance on the Arabian Peninsula in the middle of the 18th century -- in reaching the Balkans and the remote and devastated village of Gornja Maoca in Bosnia at the beginning of the 21st century. World media have given much attention to an event that took place in this village on the dawn of Feb. 2, 2010. More than 600 Bosnian police conducted a raid on the village, arresting seven people suspected by prosecutors of threatening the country’s “territorial integrity, constitutional order and provoking inter-ethnic and religious hatred.” Prosecutors said the police operation, in which European Union police also took part, was the largest since the end of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the Bosnian public, the very name of the village and the outward semblance of the seven detained men -- huge beards and shortened trousers -- was enough to know that the target of the operation was people belonging to Wahhabism, one of most exclusive and radical branches of Islam. Although widely known as Wahhabis, named after their founder Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab (1703-1792), they call themselves Salafis -- or descendants of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and the first three generations of Muslims (salaf). Before last century’s inflow of extremist Egyptian Salafis to Saudi Arabia, they also called themselves muwahhidun. It is well known how Abd-al-Wahhab, trying to introduce his rigid theory of purification of Islam from all thoughts but the Quran and Hadith, and destroying most sites, monuments and graves from early Islam, made a political pact with the Saudi clan from Najd. He and his followers challenged Ottoman pluralistic religious rule and tolerance, trying two times to establish their own state. They not only opposed other religions, but also taught that Sunni Islam was corrupted by Shiite Islam and other innovations. When Napoleon was conquering Egypt, they were destroying the holy Shiite city of Karbala. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and fully supported by the British, the Saudi sheiks finally succeeded in forming the modern state of Saudi Arabia, introducing strict Wahhabi Islam as the country’s religion. Using the wealth from newly discovered oil, and their capacity as the custodians of Mecca and Medina, Saudi-sponsored organizations began spreading Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world. I will leave aside the wider assumptions about how that amalgamation -- of the rigid theological sectarianism and tribal mentality with the interests of exploiters and consumers of the enormous oil wealth -- has played a historical role in preventing the meeting and interaction between Islamic spiritual, scientific and cultural achievements from previous centuries and the political, scientific and cultural advancements of contemporary Western civilization. I will, however, ask what has become of the Balkans in general and Bosnia in particular as a result of such efforts. When news about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina started to spread throughout the world in 1992, hundreds of volunteers came from Russia and other Christian Orthodox countries to support the Serb aggressors, and hundreds more from Muslim countries came to fight together with their Muslim brothers, who were exposed to ethnic cleansing and slaughter. Only some of the Muslim volunteers were followers of Wahhabism. Most of those volunteers were young radical Arabs who had gained experience in the war in Afghanistan against the Russians. They formed a special unit called “Mujahideen,” which was mainly affiliated with the Bosnian Muslim army. Driven by religious hatred and fanaticism, some of them committed war crimes against Serb civilians and prisoners of war. Others were supported by Western intelligence agencies. While on a visit with Turkish President Süleyman Demirel to Zenica in the middle of the war -- he was not allowed to visit the besieged Bosnian capital city of Sarajevo -- I was told by a Bosnian police officer that he saw two mujahideen soldiers with British passports who were easily allowed by Croatian authorities to enter Bosnia. They all, however, whether followers of Wahhabism or not, did more harm to Bosnia than good, as will continue to be the case over the next 15 years. Due to the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, and especially US pressure on the Bosniak leadership, the majority of around 1,000 mujahideen soldiers left the country after the war. A part of them, Wahhabis in particular, obtained Bosnian citizenship by marrying Bosnian Muslim women, covering them in a three-layered black hijab and excluding them completely from public life. The mujahideen that stayed behind Succeeding in attracting dozens of Bosniak youth and using financial support mainly from Saudi-controlled charity organizations, the Wahhabis established their own base in the Bosnian village of Bocinje. After Sept. 11, 2001, Bosnia became one of the focuses in the US “war on terror.” It was discovered that some of the former mujahideen from Bosnia belonged to the al-Qaeda network. The alleged “terrorist camp” of Bocinje had to be dismantled, and the Bosnian government handed over to the Americans six mujahideen of Algerian origin who were immediately transferred to the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison. None of these measures have discouraged the Wahhabis. They extended their activity in Bosnian areas inhabited predominantly by Muslims and even tried to occupy Careva Dzamija (the Emperor’s Mosque) in Sarajevo. And so we return again to the village of Gornja Maoca, in which Bosnian and foreign Wahhabis established a new base. About 30 families have been living there in full isolation since 2003, following strict rules, without TV and telephone, but with a school where their children were educated in the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. They did not let journalists and officials enter the village until Feb. 2. The first reaction from the region to the police raid on that village came from Serbian Labor Minister Rasim Ljajic, who rightly said, “It is the same movement that appeared in the region after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” However, he does not think that Wahhabism, “which is unusual for Muslims in the Balkans and Europe,” represents a “real danger to the region or to Serbia.” They became “less visible” in Novi Pazar and Sandzak after Serbian police discovered their training camp. In the exchange of fire with police in 2007, one of them was killed and two wounded. In the Montenegrin part of Sandzak -- the Ottoman province that was divided after World War I -- Wahhabis also emerged, but less in number and activity than in Serbia. They caused anxiety among the local Islamic Community. Wahhabis, as elsewhere in the Balkans, accuse imams of “abandoning the faith” and say that only their teachings constitute real Islam. Their presence and activity in Albania can be considered negligible as well, especially if compared with their involvement in Macedonia and Kosovo. In Macedonia, Wahhabis sided with other pro-Arab radical groups in pre-existing conflict with the Islamic Community between the extremist and moderate wing, adherents of traditional Islam and Sufism. Non-Muslim Macedonians were frightened by news of three extremist groups operating in their country, particularly in its western part, predominantly inhabited by ethnic Albanians: Tarikat, Red Rose and Wahhabism. Those more militant groups formed a faction called “The Protectors of Islam.” They have already taken over from the official Islamic Community three historic mosques in the country’s capital of Skopje. A few years after its appearance in Bosnia, Kosovo became fertile ground for Wahhabism. There were no serious incidents following NATO’s intervention in 1999, but last year showed signs of change. Wahhabis began spreading their interpretation of Islam in poor villages, opening dozens of Quran schools and preparing to take over the country’s Islamic Community. Two prominent Kosovar imams were brutally attacked by Wahhabis in January 2009. First, Osman Musliu, who tried to prevent them from occupying the Zabel Mosque, was attacked. He said he “doubted that Serbia had damaged Kosovo as badly as the Wahhabi infiltration.” A few days later, Kosovska Mitrovica imam Hamit Kamberi was beaten by the “people in short pants” so fiercely that he lost his consciousness. They wanted to replace him because of his insistence that Kosovar Muslims should follow the traditional Islam “they first learned from the Ottomans.” *Hajrudin Somun is the former ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Turkey and a lecturer of the history of diplomacy at Philip Noel-Baker International University in Sarajevo. 2010-03-02
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 21:52:24 +0000
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