Once again, we Muslims find ourselves between the Devil and the deep blue sea. We are glad that something is being done about Milosevic and his evil plan to cleanse Kosovo of all Muslims. But we are not sure about the new role of Nato. A host of images, from the crusades to the Gulf war, the Holocaust and the carpet-bombing of Baghdad, hurling towards us at great speed, have numbed our senses. If our endorsement of Nato action has been muted, we have hardly been vocal in speaking out on behalf of our brothers and sisters in Kosovo.
There is absolutely no doubt in the mind of any Muslim that what is happening in Kosovo is an intended pogrom, an incipient holocaust. Europe has a long history of turning against Muslims and this history has been repeating itself in cycles since the crusades. The purpose of crusading was to cleanse the earth and purify the blood of the nation. It was St Bernard who first saw Christ glorified in the death of a Muslim. Slobodan Milosevic quite evidently is made in the St Bernard mould, a modern-day crusader. But what is different this time is that Muslims are not the outsiders, the barbarians at the gates of Vienna. They have now replaced the Jews as the feared and hated internal Others.
Muslims are dreaded and loathed not just in Serbia, but throughout Europe. In France, they have been dubbed “blood-thirsty savages” (by Brigitte Bardot, no less) and an aromatic affront to civilisation (by Jacques Chirac). Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front has fought two elections on a singularly anti-Muslim ticket. The designer fascism of the Deutsche Alternative party in Germany is fuelled by anti-Muslim sentiments. The Progressive Party of Denmark openly campaigns on a “Denmark with no Musselmen” ticket, as does the Swedish New Democratic Party.
If Milosevic emerged as a victor, for whatever reason, the consequences for Muslims throughout Europe could be devastating.
Muslims do not see just one man as the enemy of peace in the Balkans, the sole perpetuator of ethnic cleansing. It is the entire system he presides over and all those who participate in its operation. Fascism may be an inflated term but the Republic of Serbia has all the characteristics of the real thing – death squads, concentration camps, extensive paramilitary and police forces and an extreme clerical-nationalist ideology. It is this system we fear; and it is this system that we want to see rooted out.
But the new role of Nato also sends shivers down Muslim spines. The next time the bombs drop it could easily be on a Muslim people. Many Muslim countries are actively suppressing their minorities. Think of what Turkey, Iraq and Iran are doing to the Kurds or of the brutal suppression of East Timor by Indonesia. Secessionists are everywhere in the Muslim world; and everywhere they are being ruthlessly suppressed. If Nato succeeded in protecting a minority in Serbia, would it not be motivated to extend its tentacles to other parts of the world?
This was the question uppermost on the minds of its members when the contact group on Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), the Muslim UN, met last week in Geneva. The meeting was grudgingly organised by the current OIC chairman, President Khatami of Iran, after he was pressured by Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to consider all aspects of the Kosovo situation. With the sole exception of the Pakistanis, who described the Nato action as “sincere in purpose”, the OIC contact group refused to back the bombing. Indeed, the OIC seems to abdicate its Islamic responsibility to rally to the support of their “Muslim brethren” in Kosovo.
This would not come as too much of a surprise to ordinary Muslims in Europe. They know better than to look to the political leadership of Muslim nations for support. Muslim regimes have been specialising in moral bankruptcy for generations. And if they know anything at all of the politics of public opinion in the west, they know better than to raise their voices on any issue. Such people are not only ineffectual to their friends but are more likely to aid their enemies.
Muslims in Britain and elsewhere in Europe have therefore been deliberately following a quiet, two-pronged strategy. First, the community has mobilised an enormous relief effort, through such organisations as Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief, and is silently lobbying for Nato to send ground troops to Kosovo. Second, they have been presenting Kosovo not as a Muslim issue but an intrinsic European problem. Europe, they have argued, bears a heavy burden of responsibility for the dynamics that brought Milosevic to the fore. When Helmut Kohl persuaded a reluctant European Union to recognise the independence of Croatia, the Milosevic effect was set in train. The European Union has the duty to end the barbarism it helped to unleash before it catches fire in the ghettos of mainland Europe.
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