THE IMAM KHOMEINI IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

FEAR OF ISLAMIZATION

A paper with Khomeini's picture appeared on the newstands in Sarajevo. Those who until yesterday boasted of their red party membership cards, and rapped on those who went to the mosque on Friday, are now the first to go to mosques and hadj to Mecca. The newly-created believers are retold the Kuran by a digest system. After which everyone starts talking and fearing a horrible islamization of Bosnia.

AIM Sarajevo, July 13, 1994

And finally, it came to be. A newspaper with the picture of the Imam Khomeini on the front page appeared on the surviving newstands in Sarajevo. True, this special issue of the "Word" (Rijec) came to Sarajevo from Zenica, printed by the "Opresa" Zenica shareholding company, and sponsored by the Irani Centre in the same city. At the incredible price of DM 10, on ninety pages of the "Word", printed partially in color, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about the Imam Khomeini, and you didn't dare ask. This time replies to such questions are drawn up in a fashion unbelievably similar to brochures of the type "Along Tito's Revolutionary Paths", from which Yugoslav pupils learned about the life of the greatest son of all our nations and nationalities. And the Imam Khomeini, naturally, in the present Bosnian constellation can be the "son" of only one people. And will that people accept him as such will be shown , not by some uncertain long future usually mentioned in connexion with such forecasts, but precisely by the current developments.

The reactions of the average Sarajevan to such a publishing "spectacle" are still rather undefined, from well known witticisms, to total seriousness. The windows of some catering establishments already feature the prominently displayed front page in colour depicting the Imam in one of his well-known thinking poses. Somehow at the same time, in several Sarajevo papers, primarily the "Oslobodjenje", and in the national weekly, the "Ljiljan", a polemic was initiated, involving numerous analysts or "analysts" in its pretentiousness and lack of taste, becoming one of the main topics among the population, bored with the current idleness of a dead economy and the imitation of peace-time life. In question is actually, a polemic caused by an article of the writer Dzemaludin Latic, a close friend of president Izetbegovic , in which he advocates that the Islamic community of B&H should excommunicate mixed marriages and harshly attacks Bosnian intellectuals who do not base their vision of life on Islam.

Slavko Santic, a journalist on the staff of the "Oslobodjenje", a paper which has for over two years now been skillfully simulating independence and journalistic professionalism replied to Latic in very bad taste, calling him a Zhirinovsky among us. The game was later joined by the writer Hadzem Hajdarovic, the newly-appointed minister of culture, Enes Karic, the "Krug 99" (Circle of 99), whose ambition is to rally the majority of the independent intellectuals of Sarajevo, as well as many others. Such a polemic, still in no way supported, but neither renounced by the authorities, as well as the mentioned special issue of the "Word" on the late statesman who drew his country into a decades-long war and the darkness of political totalitarianism, have already been made use of by some as key theses in proof of claims on the irrepressible islamization of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Such a subject, in all fairness, by its frequency and sensationalistic intonations mainly by the Belgrade and Zagreb, but also by the European press, reminds of a variation of something which is already becoming tiring in its wish to prove this or that thesis. Such stories, like the one increasingly frequent in Sarajevo, namely that Zenica is a "green" town, is creating in many a phobia of that notorious islamization. Fear is not much more pronounced in the local Serbs or Croats than in the local Moslems, i.e. Bosniacs as this Bosnian people is of recently officially called.

It is a fact that the Bosniac people entered this war as a more or less undefined, or at least insufficiently defined grouping, seeking for its own identity stopped somewhere in-between the digging up of the history of medieval Bosnia, islamic culture and the so widely underlined fusion of East and West. Naturally, the identity of the Bosnian Moslems is in no way disputable either at national level or at the level of its statehood. That is also proved by the magnitude of the genocide committed over them. But, the problem lies in the way in which that identity was and still is determined - such examples are the mentioned "Word" and the on-going polemic.

The interstice created by the insufficiently concrete political definitions of the leadership of the Bosniacs, where it seems that the leading people are always first waiting for the initial theses of the opposite sides to define their points of departure only then, is now trying to be taken advantage of by people who always viewed the future of this territory as part of the global islamic revolution, the most drastic proponent of which was precisely the Imam Khomeini. Many Bosniacs will more or less consciously accept such ideas, which is understandable to a certain extent due to the horrors they have gone through, and also due to the indifference on the part of the Western community. However, in a much larger part there exists if not genuine resistance, then at least scepticism towards more global islamic processes. Basically, all this reminds of the well-remembered instruments of the communist times with a popular, naturally good-hearted but somewhat stupid grassroots base and its political superstructure.

This was also attested to by the manner of choosing those who would make this year's hadj to Mecca, led by Izetbegovic personally, where it was a matter of political and religious prestige to be seen in the group of pilgrims of whom many, until yesterday as it were,boasted of their red party membership cards and denounced those who went to mosques on Friday. At the same time, a booklet was published for internal use, which in digested form retells the Kuran to Sarajevan dignitaries. Extremely unseemly for a book of such religious,historial and civilizational value. But it is important to be in the trend.

All this, regretablly, removes Islam as a religion from its real religious and civilizational context in defining the Bosniacs and establishes it as a means of political manipulation. It is hardly likely that such manipulations will take root at least among the Sarajevans who have, globally speaking, managed to retain their common sense. But the problem is that today they have little say so on anything. The mentioned examples can be treated as isolated excesses for some time to come, but their frequency and the prominence given to them by the media can only, regretabbly, give additional food to the champions of sensationalistic stories about the islamization of Bosnia.

Karim Zaimovic