From: schoinas@fox.cs.wisc.edu (Yannis Schoinas) Subject: Re: Europe vs. Muslim Bosnians Organization: U of Wisconsin Madison - Computer Sciences Lines: 68 Michael Sells writes: >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." You are somewhat close to truth. But you shouldn't forget that nationality is a recent invention of the western europe. In the days of the Ottoman empire, the religion was the main point of difference between social classes. The Ottomans didn't recognize Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Serbs... Just christians, muslims, jews... So, for all the interested parties in the Ottoman society the bosnian muslims were "Turks". After all, there aren't many "real" (ethnic) Turks living even in Turkey today. Even in Europe, it's the culture that defines the ethnicity and religion is part of one's culture. >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. Can you support this? Bye, Yannis.