From: Michael Sells Subject: Re: Europe vs. Muslim Bosnians Organization: Haverford College Lines: 58 Distribution: world NNTP-Posting-Host: 130.58.172.17 X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d20 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