Silencing Bosnia’s minarets

Just a week after Switzerland’s much talked about referendum that will effectively ban further construction of minarets in this ostensibly tolerant country, the xenophobic move seems to have reverberated in all corners of Europe.

In the eastern Bosnian town of Bjeljina, one of the many Bosnian towns where Serb troops and paramilitaries slaughtered and raped Bosnian men and women during the 1992-1995 Serbian onslaught against the independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one of the many town whose Muslim population has been successfully “ethnically cleansed,” a new move following a citizens’ petition demonstrates that Switzerland’s referendum has more far-reaching implications than seemed obvious.

The petition, signed by 1,200 Serb residents of Bjeljina, calls for the reduction of the volume of the ezan (call to prayer) as it apparently creates a disruptive “noise” for the local Serb population. Yet the same move, claiming to be in conformity with a 1989 law on the acceptable levels of noise pollution in urban settings, did not take into consideration the ringing of church bells in the same city. The reason for it being that, simply said, it doesn’t seem to bother the town’s (Serb) population.

This move, which will most probably go unnoticed in most parts of the world, shows that the Swiss referendum and growing Islamophobia in Europe will have more serious consequences for Europe’s autochthonous Muslims than for the largely North African, Turkish and South Asian Muslim immigrants of Western Europe.

Firstly, it shows that an increasingly Islamophobic Europe will encourage Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia’s autonomous entity known as Republika Srpska to increase their pressure on the little that remains of its largely annihilated Muslim population, thereby leaving behind an ethnically pure Serb entity.

Secondly, growing Islamophobia in the aftermath of Sept. 11 has enabled and will continue to enable the Serbs to retroactively portray their onslaught against Bosnian Muslims as an almost “war on terror” and thus to justify their genocide of Bosnian Muslims by putting forward claims that they were fighting Islamist extremists.

Thirdly, in the wake of an ever more unstable Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Bosnia’s Republika Srpska led by Milorad Dodik continues to block state reforms, EU and NATO accession talks and which more often than not inflames the political scene by threatening to secede, an ever more Islamophobic Europe and their representatives in Bosnia might grow increasingly sympathetic towards Bosnian Serbs and at worst give them the green light to secede, while at best be indifferent to their secession.

Thus, all of Europe’s Muslims will nevertheless be affected by the growing intolerance towards Islam, but put in comparison, Western European Muslims -- while remaining eternally Europe’s “other” -- will still continue to have access to functioning institutions for safeguarding their rights and will not face direct threats to their lives and property.

As for Bosnian Muslims, especially the returnees in Republika Srpska, who have been terrorized and some even killed for daring to return to their pre-war homes, their lives will continue to be in jeopardy, their basic rights will continue to be violated and they will continue to face pressure to leave.

So as shocking as the Swiss banning of minarets may be, what’s more shocking is that the Serbs, who committed the first genocide in Europe since the Holocaust and who were treated as pariahs during the early ‘90s, have just discovered that the Europe that once criticized them for their killings and persecution of Bosnian Muslims is turning out to have more and more in common with them. And that’s not good news.

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