Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Negative Role of Religion in the Balkans, continued.

Considering the fact that hatred of gays seems to be the only thing the leadership of Bosnia's main three religions can agree on, a violent incident involving spiteful, violent and stupid young men chanting religious slogans was almost inevitable at Sarajevo's first Gay Festival. And sure enough, some 70-odd Wahabbi thugs made sure that God's word would not be ignored:

Violence Mars Start of Bosnia Gay Festival

The fact that these were Wahabbi Muslims will, of course, provide plenty of ammunition for the revisionists and flat-out bigots eager to seize on any post de facto "proof" that Serbia was fighting against Islamic terrorism in the Balkans. While this troubles me and I will of course counter any such charges I come across, for the moment this inevitability is not my main concern.

I cannot help but point fingers at the "moderate" religious leaders of all three main religious organizations in Bosnia, who joined together in bigotry and intolerance, creating an atmosphere in which this outburst of medieval religious hysteria was almost inevitable. Hateful, homophobic, bigoted religious fundamentalists should be the ones who are fearful of being outed.

The Wahabbi thugs of course bear primary responsibility, but the rest of Bosnia's religious community is by no means off the hook.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suspect that neither will appreciate the metaphor but Dragan Grcic's report at Blog de veille sur les droits humains en Serbie appears to suggest that Wahabis in Sarajevo are eagerly jumping into bed with nationalist-fascists in Belgrade.
http://serbie-droitshumains.blogspot.com/2008/09/queer-beograd-2008-un-festival-tourment.html

Anonymous said...

When I saw Sarajevo hooligans behaving same as Belgrade hooligans, I was disgusted. I am very "angry" that primitive groups of hooligans would disrupt Gay Festival in Sarajevo.

What two adult men do in the privacy of their homes is their own business. There is absolutely nothing wrong with homosexualism. It's as normal as saying "Hello!" I am a strong supporter of Gay rights, because they are human rights.

Horrible. Horrible. I am disgusted at what happened in Sarajevo. I am absolutely disgusted and it makes me puke.

Anonymous said...

OFF TOPIC: Radovan Karadzic faces two separate counts of genocide.

Anonymous said...

owen, they have common cause and they will behave like hitler and stalin whenever they identify a common ennemy

Anonymous said...

Sarah, have you seen Dragan's latest post about the neo-fascist parade in Belgrade on 11 October? http://serbie-droitshumains.blogspot.com/2008/09/marche-serbe-marche-de-la-haine-le-11.html
You might need to look closely but there's a pretty unpleasant presence in the shadows up in the top right corner of the poster.

Anonymous said...

daniel, I feel the same way...it's disgusting indeed.

the goal were not the bosnian gays, but the bosnian society as a whole, because the wahabis used this to become more visible, and thus link the image of Bosnia's Muslims with radical Islam.

For people like myself who systematically tries to demystify the stigma of radical islamism that serb nationalism managed to glue on the Bosnian Muslims,

this is very frustrating, and I am very angry at moderate bosnians who failed to protect and support the Gay festival.

security measures should have been taken by the legitimate authorities to make sure that radical wahabis would not have such a chance.

in 2001 a similar situation occured with the gay parade in Belgrade. Obraz used it to make its entry in the serbian political scene. The wahabis are doing the same.

Anonymous said...

thanks for the link owen...

I

Katja R. said...

I have stuff I need to blog, because I was there until shortly before the events, both on wahabbithugs, and gay people in BiH. Suffice it to say, I agree that the moderate religious leaders should have done something to prevent it, and that it was disgusting behavior to attack people for being gay.

Kirk Johnson said...

I am very curious to read what you have to say on this, YG.