ADN KRONOS INTERNATIONAL (ITALY)

Belgrade, 6 Nov. (AKI) - Wahhabi Muslim fundamentalists over the weekend provoked a shooting in a mosque in the southern Serbian city of Novi Pazar in which three people were wounded and two arrested. The incident took place late on Friday, when a group of Wahabists disrupted religious services in Novi Pazar's Arab-mosque, attacking a local imam and trying to impose their 'pure' form of rites. The police said one of the faithful attending services, Habib Fijuljanin, 33, pulled out a gun and fired two warning shots in the ceiling. Another worshipper, Izet Fijuljanin, 37, then opened fire on three Wahabists in front of the mosque when they attacked him and started demolishing his car, police said.

While accounts of the course of events varied, police said both Fijuljanins were detained, and there were traces of blood inside and outside the mosque.

The police didn't release the names of the three wounded, believed to be Wahabists, but said charges were pressed against 16 individuals who took part in the incidents.

Novi Pazar is cultural and business centre of the predominantly Muslim-populated Sandzak region, and has only in the past few years felt the presence of Wahabists. Sandzak mufti Muamer Zukorlic has said the numbers of Wahabists are still negligible, though incidents such as that in the mosque this weekend have been on rise.

The wahhabist movement got a foothold in the Balkans during Bosnia's

1992-1995 civil war when thousands mujahadeen or fighters from Muslim countries came to give military support to local Muslims. Hundreds have remained in the country, indoctrinating local youths with radical Islam.

Wahabists can easily be recognised by their breeches and long beards, and their insistence that women wear a face veil. The number of their followers has slowly but steadily been on the rise in Bosnia, in Muslim areas of Serbia such as Sandzak and Kosovo, as well as in some parts of Montenegro.

FROM PRESS IN ALBANIAN LANGUAGE:

Article from [the Albanian language daily] Express, Pristina, October 15, 2006

Radical Islam:

Wahabism a Danger to Kosovo’s Independence!
by Genc Morina

Pristina, October 15 – For an independent country to define its civilizational identity, it needs to fulfill the following criteria: the existence of will of the political and economic elite for changes, the readiness of the community to redefine its identity and the will of civilizational expectation.

Does Kosovo satisfy these criteria? What civilization will draw or accept Kosovo under its wing?

Considering that it is at the crossroads of civilizations as a culturological amalgam, Kosovo is confronted with the challenge of civilizational and state identity. The Islamic renaissance is appearing among us, too, as an effort to present Islam not just as a religion but also as a way of life.

A broad culturological, social and political movement is occurring in the Islamic world that is dominating over increasingly pale secular positions. The indicators of Islamic awakening among us are increasing attention toward religious rituals, prayer in the mosque and outside it, fasting, distribution of publications with religious content, orientation toward the Islamic manner of address, increasingly great request for the introduction of the Islamic manner of life in public life, such as the request for (Muslim) prayer in public institutions, the introduction of religious instruction in schools, etc. All media without exception as well as political subjects in Kosovo are trying to attract the public offering a completely oriental atmosphere. Local television stations are foremost in this.

Since the liberation of Kosovo, our collocutors on various issues, friends of others, from the most ordinary of topics to negotiations on final status, have among other things acquired a darkened picture regarding certain elements of this civilization. In addition to faults in the government, deficiencies with respect to offered competencies as well as lack of courage and will to intervene because of poor administration by UNMIK, institutions and the Albanian political class are pretending to turn a blind eye to the most recent influx from the East. This has necessarily raised the price of confidence for the recognition of statehood with all attributes.

The identity of Kosovo is seriously challenged. Peoples of Muslim religion in the Balkans converted to Islam due to Ottoman pressure and violence and on that occasion accepted the most pragmatic, most rational and most logical version as well as the mystical or the psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam.  Thus the residents of Kosovo, together with all the other Islamicized residents of the Balkans, accepted and nurtured the Islam of the Hanafi school, i.e. Sufi – Talaswuf Islam.

“The warriors of pure Islam” as the Wahabists like to call themselves, began their activity in Kosovo and the beginning of the 1990s, completely unhindered by the sisterly neo-Nazi fascist ideology of Milosevic. To this day they explicitly oppose every external cultural influence, imposing exclusively the teaching of their completely unhindered presence at funerals, circumcision rituals and other (social) gatherings, refuting scientific theories regarding natural and social phenomenal, offering as a substitute interpretations from the Sheriat or the Koran, like the young Elvis Goga, famous as our chief, domestic mujahid, is doing in Pec. In general, what was Arfan Qadeer Bhatti, a Pakistani with Norwegian citizenship, doing in Pec?

The NGOs still active under the auspices of the Saudi Joint Committee for the Relief of Kosovo and Chechnya, which came to Kosovo after the most recent 1999 war, are profiting from poverty in the suburbs of Kosovo cities but also to a large degree in the surrounding villages. And all this, according to the view of the Saudi government, “is not for a few months or years but as long as there is an existing need...”

The modus operandi of the Wahabi movement in Kosovo is religious indoctrination of the poverty-stricken Albanian, Bosnian Muslim population, as well as Egyptians and Ashkalis. Such examples are most apparent in Shipol (Sipolje), a settlement in the suburbs of Mitrovica; in the settlement of Kodra Timave, formerly Vranjevac, i.e. in the suburbs of Pristina; in Prizren, Pec, in Radevac near Pec, in Junik Voksi, Urosevac, Kacanik, and so on and so forth.

Those who have been recruited from anti-Kosovo centers (Saudi Arabia and Serbian State Security) are opening the path to globalist forces of international Islam in the attempt to conquer tolerant Islamic tradition, which is generally speaking diverse and opposes the centralization and hegemonism of “the Islamic community” directed from Belgrade before and after World War II. This is the very Center that revitalized the Agreement of Tito-Kyprili for sending 300,000 Albanians into the desert regions of Anatolia.

Arab Wahabism, with the support of the Serbian secret service in Kosovo and on the trail of “the Islamic community” is attempting to change Kosovo society and interpersonal relations at full gallop. And it is succeeding in this to a certain extent because citizens have started to treat them with disrespect or to be afraid of them.

One a sea of cases demonstrating the infiltration of “global Islam” deep into the heart of so-called “intellectuals” is the burial of the famous Kosovo actor Muharem Qena. We have nothing against the religious freedom of expression of his family but this was done with too much pomp: a coffin wrapped in a green flag with a inscription in Arabic with the event itself covered by all relevant media in Kosovo.

On the basis of data presented on an official Saudi Internet site, the Islamic Education Foundation (IEF) is offering Kosovo children “an education” in over 30 Koranic schools throughout Kosovo. The children are being offered 50 euros to learn certain ayats and suras from the Koran by heart. In schools built with funds from the Saudi Joint Committee for the Relief of Kosovo and Chechnya and with the assistance of the Islamic Education Foundation, work is being done to create a new generation of loyal Muslims – not (loyal) to Kosovo but to the Islamic internationale. Ever in the service of this project in mosques identified as “theirs” Wahabi activists have opened Internet cafes to attract children of various ages so that after using the Internet they can listen to salihats against Skenderbeg and the Albanian national renaissance, against Western civilization and against Kosovo’s traditional Islam.

On top of the above-cited facts mujahideen activists have also targeted other parts of the Kosovo population. Widows, people fired from their jobs, peasants, unemployed youth, some “intellectuals” are receiving financial means (150 euros and other kinds of assistance) to lead a completely Islamic manner of life in its most radical form.

On the web sites of the biggest political parties in Kosovo and on the personal web sites of Albanian intellectuals such as Dr. Milazim Krasniqi and Co., among the links is an icon called “Religion” which when opened automatically launches an oriental ilahia sung by Adem Ramadani (see AlbaNur.net) while by disrespect and ignoring of local institutions and political parties as well as international NGOs in Kosovo anti-Kosovo political circles offer the European and global community a portrait of “an undesirable people” accompanied by propaganda about “the danger of driving a Muslim stake into the heart of Europe”.

Political and state culoars of Serbia together with others in close collaboration with domestic and international mujahideen are foreseeing and preparing a possible “revolt” on the threshold of the resolution of Kosovo’s status. Characteristic Wahabi personalities from Islamic civilization will attract with lightening speed the cameras of the major world medias.  And the “undesirables” will bury for a long time their long dreamed dreams of living in freedom and without fear in harmony and tolerance long established in this part of Europe. Domestic and international institutions, political parties and NGOs should send clear messages with regard to this suicidal manifestation in Kosovo.

Suret Ash-Shura – Heading of Agreement, Ayat 40. The punishment of evil is carried out through evil in the same degree, whereas if forgiven or reconciled, his agreement is with Allah. He truly does not love aggressors.

The author is with the Faculty of Philosophy at Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg.