Bosnian daily: Islamic Community's condemnation of Wahhabism came too late
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - January 9, 2007 Tuesday

Text of commentary by Zdenko Jurilj: "Why is the Middle East worried about Wahhabism in B-H?" published by Bosnian edition of Croatian newspaper Vecernji list on 7 January

Sarajevo - "I fear the strengthening of Wahhabism in Bosnia-Hercegovina and I think it is not good for the future of Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina," Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, the most prominent Shi'i religious leader in the Middle East, told this newspaper, among other things. Thus he brought back into focus the problem that the B-H Islamic Community last year had been forced to deal with. It is evident from the ayatollah's statements that Wahhabism - a radical Muslim movement founded by Saudi religious leader Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab as a response to the colonization and occidentalization of the Muslim countries in the 18th century - poses a serious threat to the functioning of the secular B-H.

The Islamic Community issued a public proclamation opposing the spreading of the Wahhabi movement in B-H under the slogan "Return to Pure Islam". Europe has also become worried about the teaching that promotes a conservative, anti-historical, dull, and static interpretation of Islamic tradition. A couple of commentaries published in the British daily The Guardian, France's Le Monde and Spain's El Pais have only confirmed the belief that activities of the Wahhabis in B-H contribute to creating a negative image of Bosnian Muslims and this country in the world.

Contemporary Europe has often used radicalism as an excuse to make decisions that pushed Bosnia-Hercegovina towards some sort of isolation as well as towards the "political and civilization phenomenon of defiance," about which Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish author and Nobel Prize winner, wrote in his latest novel "Snow." Yet it was only when they realized that the 'authentic' interpreters of the original Islam might cause divisions among Muslims that the B-H Islamic Community and its head, Reis-ul-Ulema Mustafa effendi Ceric, decided to oppose the spreading of Wahhabism, threatening it with total isolation and even expulsion.

Professors at Sarajevo's Faculty of Islamic Studies agree that the Islamic Community head's reaction has come too late. Professor Esad Silajdzic said that they [Wahhabis] had infringed on his basic rights as a Muslim and an heir to the centuries-old Islamic tradition and the recognizable forms of its expression in B-H. A harsh condemnation of Wahhabism came from the Islamic Community and Reis Ceric at the moment when, besides the danger of division, Ceric's efforts to create an image of B-H Muslims as being tolerant towards other religions are seriously jeopardized. That image, however, was already badly shaken with the arrival of Mujahidin, and with them, the Wahhabis.

Source: Vecernji list (Bosnia-Hercegovina edition), Zagreb, in Croatian 7 Jan 07

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