OPINION
—
We are yet to see the day when radical imams espouse French or English nationalism from their minbars. The rise of Islam in Paris, London and other urban hubs of the West tends to be viewed as a foreign phenomenon rather than a movement of our own society; essentially the result of immigration or former imperial policies.
But the minarets east of Vienna sprout from a different root-stock. There, Muslim societies endure from the time of the Ottoman occupation, taking their cues as long established masters rather than ground breaking pioneers. In the Balkans, Islam can can be used to stir nationalism within new, uncertain, European states. And we have ignored those states’ warnings for too long.
When Branko Grims worked for the Slovenian secret service, he warned about taking Qatari money to build a new €34m mosque in Ljubljana.
“There was,” he said – “no such thing as a free lunch.” Now an MEP in Brussels, Grims mulls over the response he received: “I got threats to me and my family,” he says. “Many people do not see that as a problem. Maybe… some of them because they are getting some money from the source.”
Islamism evades scrutiny for the assumption that it is simply a matter of faith. German MEP Denis Radtke put the problem thus:
“If the imam gets his order what to preach about on Friday from the embassies on Thursday, is this freedom of religion as we understand it? No – this is politics! And we have to deal with it in politics.”
The power vacuum left by the collapse of Yugoslavia made the Balkan peninsula easy prey for any foreign power able to identify with native sectarian interests. It runs against Western principles of tolerance to question whether the involvement of Islamic states like Saudi Arabia or Qatar, in targeting aid at Balkan Muslim communities, may also be securing a political beachhead in Europe.
But where do Balkan imams take their cues from, and what political truth does their divine revelation serve?
As the secular world shaped the former Yugoslavia into ordered constitutional nations, they fretted over fine lines between humanitarian and military interventions. Meanwhile, oil-rich Arabian states sprang to the aide of their Balkan co-religionists in regions where nationalism and religion were previously un-linked and even proudly separated. Could anyone really expect such an obvious back-door for political interests go un-used?
At first, some aid was overtly military. Jihadists from Chechnya, Central Asia, Arab countries and the Persian Gulf were grouped together in the El-Mujahid unit during the siege of Sarajevo, lending support to the Bosnian army as an international Islamic brigade of around 4000 to 5000 men. Many remained in Bosnia and, where liberal Hanafi school Islam was practiced, Wahhabi communities have sprung up. The burqa is now a regular sight on the streets of Sarajevo.
Spreading through the region to Albania and Kosovo (once firmly secular societies), Middle Eastern states worked closely with Islamic NGOs, using proselytism to establish loyalties. Madrassa schools proliferated through rural areas where loyalties could be bought for firewood and sacks of flour while, despite no religious demand from the Kosovar population or administration, the number of Mosques in Kosovo leapt from about 200 in 1999 to over 800 today. These societies – which do not conform neatly to national borders – become less peaceful as their benefactors pay for the cost of the damage they inflict in the first place. The same state-backed Qatar Charity which built the Al-Rahma Mosque in Pristina has taken care of about 550 Kosovar war orphans and widows, but its charitable sentiment rings a little hollow when you consider the role which Qatar and others played in stirring up local conflicts in the first place. Meanwhile, reportage of these issues in the area is dominated by Qatar’s own Al Jazeera – whose Balkan channel has become one of its most successful foreign outlets.
As the secular leaders of these emerging republics attempt to tread the path of secularism, the authorities in Pristina monitor the activity of foreign Islamic NGOs similarly to the way in which Western Police monitor terrorist suspects. No wonder, perhaps, as a proportion to its population, Kosovo became the leading exporter of jihadists for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
From this base, Catholic areas of the Balkans are now facing the same treatment as Bosnia-Herzegovina. As Gulf financed minarets once again lance the Adriatic skyline, Branko Grims’ native Slovenia is not the only – nor the first – European society to come under the threat of the foreign Islamic expansion. Stephen Nikola Bartulica, an MEP from neighbouring Croatia, shared similar concerns about the Qatar-backed mosque built in Rijeka, describing it as ‘Islamic colonialism.’ In London, such a phrase would draw derision, but the terminology sounds very different in the mouth of a Croat.
Once the frontier of the Ottoman Empire, these nations may justly consider themselves the continuing victims of colonial oppression. How long will it take the rest of Europe to acknowledge this political threat in our midst?
