Monday, November 12, 2007

Terrorism, racial profiling and Bosnia


Bosnian national soccer team
David Seaton's News Links
On of the dirty little secrets of the war on terrorism is that much of it is based on racial profiling of the sort that causes black corporate lawyers to be constantly pulled over to the curb in America and asked to show the insurance papers of their BMWs.

I have a Spanish friend, a lady in her late 30s, that travels a lot in her work. She has olive skin, dark hair and large, dark eyes. She tells me that she is frequently subjected to more questioning then the other passengers of the international flights she takes and her baggage is often more meticulously searched. Once, when she complained, the customs officer told her frankly that it was because she "looked like an Arab".

Please study the photograph above of the Bosnian national soccer team carefully before reading the article below from Der Spiegel on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia Herzegovina.... (study, study, study) Hey! These are white people!

That means that while my Spanish friend, a Catholic, is being subjected to a body search by some policewoman, somewhere, anyone looking like the young men in the photograph (or their sisters) could stroll right in, anywhere, wearing an explosive vest. I'm sure the significance of this will not be lost on my gentle readers.
DS

Fundamentalist Islam Finds Fertile Ground in Bosnia - Der Spiegel
Terrorism experts fear Bosnia could become a base for extremists, since many Bosnian Muslims have become radicalized through the influence of foreign combatants as well as the charitable Islamic organizations that spread their beliefs with money. Before the war, women in full-body coverings and men with long beards were a rare sight. Today, though, they hardly turn a head. Wahhabism is quickly gaining ground in the country, with polls showing that 13 percent of Bosnian Muslims support the conservative Sunni Islam reform movement. The movement is financed primarily by Saudi Arabian backers, who have invested well over a half-billion euros in Bosnia's development -- especially in the construction of over 150 mosques. The 8,187 square meter (88,124 square foot) King Fahd Mosque in Sarajevo alone cost €20 million ($29 million), and it's also where radicals go to pray. A notorious mujahedeen commune in the remote village of Bocinje, 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Tuzla in northeastern Bosnia, is considered the birthplace of the religious movement. Shortly before the end of the war in 1995, the mujahedeen unit moved into Bocinje. The combatants occupied the homes of Serbs who had been driven out, and they established a fundamentalist enclave there. Among the high profile visitors who have come to Bocinje is Aymen al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second in command. In 2002, after shooting, fighting and legal injunctions, the missionaries were forced to leave the village. But it is believed that camps still exist in the surrounding woods, where Bosnians are trained as terrorists. READ IT ALL

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bosnia, always gives me thoughts of the Ottomans. I think that the Ottomans never get the credit for the Europe they created.
It was once said that 'the East begins at the gates of Vienna'. There is no conflict in my mind between a 'European' and a muslim. They brought, coffee, fine culture, prime ministers (vizers), Mozart, Beethoven, and Hyden all borowed Jannisary music; the bass drums the tempos to create an idiom that could not be more 'European'.

The 'problem' is not so much that Islam is foreign to Europe, but that SAUDI Islamic political ideology is foreign to Europe.
They are promising somthing to these converts somthing that they cannot deliver. They say that a new Caliphate can be created that will unite the ummah under the banner of the koran, an islamic state focused on where? Mecca, Saudi Mecca!

Yet we cannot counter Saudi propaganda with the truth because our governments are benefiting too much from oil to rock the boat.
Look we all know (if we read anything about the Balkans War) that UBL sent jihadis in. That the Brits actively supported the KLA with al qaeda contacts, and that is was allot to do with pissing off the Russians.
But the blowback was too early. Osama got what he wanted, the US troops left Saudi Arabia in 2001, and two years later the US helped itself to Baghdad as compensation.

Bosnia is not going to be an existential threat to Europe ever. It may one day be an easy connection between say poor working class Islamic areas, where curious young (idle) minds can go to learn wahabbism, instead of going to Pakistan, and the way things are going it may be the case that this Bosnia of the future will be IN the EU!
The problems the EU faces in the future are going to be cultural integration, do we get a day off for Eid and Christmas in future.

The kigs of old used to solve these debates by simply choosing one state religion, paying lip-service to it and tolerating others but marginalised them with taxes and special propery and identity laws.
It seems that the day is coming when people like your friend will be better served by getting a ticket that she knows will get extra searches and delays, so she can plan for it, seems like the logical next step, institutionalise the discrimination.

But that wont stop these Saudi Charities preaching jihad!

anonymous said...

All of over Bosnia there was mass murder, torture in the most horrible way, bombing, rape, and destruction against the Bosnian Muslims. In five days 8,000+ Muslim boys, men, and the elderly were brutally murdered (that’s just one incident) and you have the audacity to call us terrorists. Wouldn’t the terrorists (that came to Bosnia) stopped some of that. If you had half of brain you would have researched this and would have discovered that the number of mujahedeen that came was so insignificant that their affect was close to 0%, but was hyped up by the Serbs. You’re just smart enough to know about racial profiling, but not about RELIGIOUS profiling. That makes you stupid and a hypocrite. I am three times younger than you and I never in my life thought that there could a man of your age as ignorant as you. I can only image the life of hate you must have lived because it’s not terrorists that concern you, far from it. It’s Muslims. Anyone who has any sense at all would not seriously consider an article that looks negatively at the building of mosques. The same article fails to even mention that over half of all of the Bosnian mosques were destroyed or that Serbs forcibly tried to convert Muslims into Christians through torture (to your delight, none converted). That’s what constitutes a terrorist, but not for you. For the writer of your article, the best Muslim is a non-Muslim and I have no doubt it’s the same for you. Since it’s so obvious that you have never in your life picked up a book on the Bosnian history, I recommend that you stay away from it as far as possible for your own good.