One of the comments on the July 14 post at Srebrenica Genocide Blog was from a certain Sarah Franco, who had modestly requested "Please do not publish this comment, otherwise it may look like I am using this blog to promote my own." Fortunately, Daniel ignored her request and published her comment anyway, because her blog deserves to be promoted:
Cafe Turco.
Ms. Franco participated in the 13th anniversary memorial trip to Srebrenica, so her viewpoint and observations are particularly welcome. Considering the depressing news out of Republika Srpska recently, it is refreshing to discover another comrade in the fight for justice and truth.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Republika Srpska Police Protect Serbs From Floral Assault
There have been some troubling signs lately that Dodik is a genuine menace to peace and reconciliation in Bosnia, but the latest news--that over 100 Bosniak women were barred from laying flowers at a warehouse in Srebrenica--suggests that he has decided that the international community and the High Commissioner will allow him to keep pushing his luck.
The following story only briefly mentions this incident, focusing instead on the new, nationalist anthem and "national" symbols recently adopted by Dodik's quasi-state:
Muslims furious at anthem and symbols adopted by Bosnian Serbs
I have a copy of "Bosnia Daily" in .pdf format (no link, sorry) with slightly more information, including this tidbit:
Republika Srpska police yesterday
stopped relatives of victims of
the 1995 Srebrenica massacre
from visiting a site where more than
1,000 Bosniak men were shot by
Bosnian Serb troops. Police said the
presence of 100-odd women in the eastern
Bosnian village of Kravice posed a
security risk because local Serbs did not
want them there. Republika Srpska
Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said the
gathering was a "direct provocation".
That is the behavior of a regime which feels confident that the international community is ready to wash its hands of Bosnia and leave it to the locals. I cannot express how deeply I hope he is miscalculating.
The following story only briefly mentions this incident, focusing instead on the new, nationalist anthem and "national" symbols recently adopted by Dodik's quasi-state:
Muslims furious at anthem and symbols adopted by Bosnian Serbs
I have a copy of "Bosnia Daily" in .pdf format (no link, sorry) with slightly more information, including this tidbit:
Republika Srpska police yesterday
stopped relatives of victims of
the 1995 Srebrenica massacre
from visiting a site where more than
1,000 Bosniak men were shot by
Bosnian Serb troops. Police said the
presence of 100-odd women in the eastern
Bosnian village of Kravice posed a
security risk because local Serbs did not
want them there. Republika Srpska
Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said the
gathering was a "direct provocation".
That is the behavior of a regime which feels confident that the international community is ready to wash its hands of Bosnia and leave it to the locals. I cannot express how deeply I hope he is miscalculating.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Srebrenica Memorial Quilt at the Bosnian Embassy
I was able to attend a function at the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Washington, DC this evening. There was a photographic exhibition entitled "Srebrenica: Remembering for the Future" as well as a display of the Srebrenica Memorial Quilt.
I completely forgot to bring my camcorder, and I was twenty minutes late as well so I missed the introductions and much of the public speaking, but the photographs were moving and it was good to see the memorial quilt in person. Unfortunately, I noticed is that the quilt is not as big as I think it should be to make a strong impression. I will be making another donation this week; I would encourage those of you who haven't already donated to consider doing so--this worthy project cannot be alllowed to languish.
Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica. Please set aside a quiet moment during the day to honor the victims.
I completely forgot to bring my camcorder, and I was twenty minutes late as well so I missed the introductions and much of the public speaking, but the photographs were moving and it was good to see the memorial quilt in person. Unfortunately, I noticed is that the quilt is not as big as I think it should be to make a strong impression. I will be making another donation this week; I would encourage those of you who haven't already donated to consider doing so--this worthy project cannot be alllowed to languish.
Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica. Please set aside a quiet moment during the day to honor the victims.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
On "Islamophobia"
In a recent post at his blog Greater Surbiton, Dr. Marko Attila Hoare considers the question Is Islamophobia equivalent to racism or anti-Semitism? His focus is on the Balkans, but I believe that the reason why, as he puts it
"There is some resistance among liberal intellectuals to the term ‘Islamophobia’..."
has little to do with the region. While he does conclude that sentence by correctly noting that
"...it is assumed that Islam is a religion, therefore an ideology, and it is questioned if one can be prejudiced against an ideology."
the larger debate in the West over Islam and the unfortunately named (if necessary and worthwhile) "War on Terror" inevitably frames most any public discussion of Islam and its adherents.
I do not wish to make more of this than necessary since I do agree with Dr. Hoare's larger point, but at the risk of seeming callous or unsympathetic (and I would hope that after over two years of relatively steady work and advocacy on this blog I would be safe from such accusations), I am compelled to point out the unfortunate, reflexive use of the word "Islamophobia" by individuals who are less interested in fighting bigotry than in curbing or diverting useful, or even merely pointed, criticism of the practice of Islam in certain places, certain cultural or social practices within the Muslim world, and so on. I would not at all be surprised if some of the voices being raised in dismay at the current endorsement of sharia law in Great Britain were not met with indignant claims of bigotry against non-Western cultural practices and Islamophobia.
As a staunch secularist, I hesitate to endorse giving sanction and legitimacy to a word which, from a certain perspective, seems tailor-made for the purpose of stifling criticism of religious belief or of any religious institution. At the same time, I recognize and abhor the signs of genuine bigotry, hatred, and fear directed towards the Muslim world and individual Muslims wherever I encounter or learn of them. That there exists genuine bigotry against Muslims because they are Muslims seems irrefutable. Serb and Croat nationalists and their apologists wouldn't go to such great lengths to appeal to such sentiment if it didn't exist.
So is Islamophobia a better term than, say, "Muslimophobia"? It is somewhat less awkward, no doubt, but is it more fitting, since our concern should be with the existence of bigotry directed at individuals because of their religious affiliation rather than with the religion itself?
Ultimately, I would say yes. Muslims are not a race, an ethnic or national group (speaking globally, rather than in the narrower, pre-Bosniak Yugoslav context); they lack linguistic and culturally unity. The only thing which the 1.2 billion or so Muslims have in common is their religion (putting aside the great diversity of sects and schisms within Islam, and of course the varying degrees of personal piety). Islamophobia preaches hatred and intolerance towards the Muslims of the world because they are presumably all unquestioning followers of an implacably hostile and unwaveringly anti-Western/anti-Christian belief system. Islamophobia is premised on a crude, nuance-free, and deliberately confrontational misrepresentation of one of the largest religions on the planet. In order to justify the bigotry against members of a group who are only identifiable as followers of a belief system, it is necessary to both demonize that belief system and to believe that all adherents are unquestioning followers of said systems dictates and teachings.
"There is some resistance among liberal intellectuals to the term ‘Islamophobia’..."
has little to do with the region. While he does conclude that sentence by correctly noting that
"...it is assumed that Islam is a religion, therefore an ideology, and it is questioned if one can be prejudiced against an ideology."
the larger debate in the West over Islam and the unfortunately named (if necessary and worthwhile) "War on Terror" inevitably frames most any public discussion of Islam and its adherents.
I do not wish to make more of this than necessary since I do agree with Dr. Hoare's larger point, but at the risk of seeming callous or unsympathetic (and I would hope that after over two years of relatively steady work and advocacy on this blog I would be safe from such accusations), I am compelled to point out the unfortunate, reflexive use of the word "Islamophobia" by individuals who are less interested in fighting bigotry than in curbing or diverting useful, or even merely pointed, criticism of the practice of Islam in certain places, certain cultural or social practices within the Muslim world, and so on. I would not at all be surprised if some of the voices being raised in dismay at the current endorsement of sharia law in Great Britain were not met with indignant claims of bigotry against non-Western cultural practices and Islamophobia.
As a staunch secularist, I hesitate to endorse giving sanction and legitimacy to a word which, from a certain perspective, seems tailor-made for the purpose of stifling criticism of religious belief or of any religious institution. At the same time, I recognize and abhor the signs of genuine bigotry, hatred, and fear directed towards the Muslim world and individual Muslims wherever I encounter or learn of them. That there exists genuine bigotry against Muslims because they are Muslims seems irrefutable. Serb and Croat nationalists and their apologists wouldn't go to such great lengths to appeal to such sentiment if it didn't exist.
So is Islamophobia a better term than, say, "Muslimophobia"? It is somewhat less awkward, no doubt, but is it more fitting, since our concern should be with the existence of bigotry directed at individuals because of their religious affiliation rather than with the religion itself?
Ultimately, I would say yes. Muslims are not a race, an ethnic or national group (speaking globally, rather than in the narrower, pre-Bosniak Yugoslav context); they lack linguistic and culturally unity. The only thing which the 1.2 billion or so Muslims have in common is their religion (putting aside the great diversity of sects and schisms within Islam, and of course the varying degrees of personal piety). Islamophobia preaches hatred and intolerance towards the Muslims of the world because they are presumably all unquestioning followers of an implacably hostile and unwaveringly anti-Western/anti-Christian belief system. Islamophobia is premised on a crude, nuance-free, and deliberately confrontational misrepresentation of one of the largest religions on the planet. In order to justify the bigotry against members of a group who are only identifiable as followers of a belief system, it is necessary to both demonize that belief system and to believe that all adherents are unquestioning followers of said systems dictates and teachings.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
"Christ Killer, Kremlin, Contagion" by Michael Sells
The other essay from the collection The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy by Michael Sells which explicitly addresses the Bosniak Muslims is by Michael Sells, author of The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia, which I have previously considered in this blog.
At the beginning of this essay, Sells recounts the massacre of Srebrenica, and the sordid history of ethnic cleansing which led up to it, and asks the obvious question--why did the international community, knowing what it knew, stand by and do nothing? One reason, he posits, is the widespread acceptance of the myth of historical inevitability. He writes:
"...there is an interior logic to such madness. That interior logic begins with the myth of age-old antagonisms: Muslims and Christians inBosnia have been killing one another for centuries we are told. It is not only that there have been tragic conflicts in the past in Bosnia but that the root of those conflicts are inscribed into the fabric of the culture: the conflict is inevitable, and it would be a form of cultural imperialism for anyone to interfere with it. Serb and Croat militants turned this myth of age-old antagonisms into an ideology to motivate and justify their attempt to create religiously pure and homogenous Orthodox Serb and Croat Catholic states. A wider circle of writers from outside the Balkans, writing for a different audience, have advanced their own version of essential Balkan incompatibilities."
The first several pages of this essay cover the influence of The Mountain Wreath and other nationalist mythology in contemporary Serb nationalist discourse; this material would essentially be a rehash of my review of his book so I won't dwell on his excellent summary.
When he then goes on to discuss the anti-Islamic writings of Giselle Litmann, alias Bat Ye'or, and Jacques Ellul, who have essentially collaborated in the development of a particular strand of explicitly Christian anti-Islamic thought, one which proposes that Islam has at all times and all places one unchanging nature, and a violent and oppressive one at that. While Christianity allegedly can and has changed over the centuries, Islam cannot, and furthermore it is a totalitarian system which maintains sway over all its believers. Islam is incapable of peaceful coexistence or compromise. The presence of Muslims automatically means the presence of Islam, and Islam is always and everywhere a sworn foe of Christianity, Judaism, and Western cultural and political values.
While neither "expert" seems to have explicitly called for genocidal violence against Muslims, it would be expecting too much for others not to draw the obvious conclusions from such extremist rhetoric. Yet their simplistic, implacably contentious analyses have managed to obtain a certain level of visibility and legitimacy; we can thank Bernard Lewis for bringing Bat Ye'or the wider audience she had previously lacked.
The final Western "expert" on Islam Sells considers is Robert Kaplan, author of Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, the book that famously convinced President Bill Clinton that turning his back on the Muslims of Bosnia was a sound foreign policy decision. I have only read excerpts from the book, so I was a little surprised to discover how much of this highly-praised and oft-quoted text is focused on the smells and alleged poor hygiene of Muslims in the former Ottoman Empire. It is one thing to declare that Islam is to blame for the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe (who knew?), but quite another to dismiss the entire region as an irredeemable pigsty full of surly, untrustworthy people who, well, smell bad. Of course, Kaplan might have spent so much time on the appearance and odor of places like Pristina since, like Bernard Lewis, he seemingly couldn't be bothered actually talking to any of the millions of Muslims he derides. Clearly, I need to read this book more comprehensively.
Sells concludes his essay with a discussion of the different variations of prejudiced, based on the essay "The Anatomy of Prejudice" by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, which defines three different character types:
"The obsessional type is characterized by an ideology of filth and cleansing...The hysterical type is charactered by fear of impotence and castration...the narcissistic type is typified by sexism, homophobia, and the constricted societies they reflect and help construct."
All of the texts Sells has discussed fit each of the above characteristics; the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Serb nationalists and their Western enablers is naked bigotry of the basest kind, even when dressed up in the progressive language of "incompatible cultures" such as when the allegedly anti-feminist nature of Balkan Islam was used as a justification for a war in which the gang rape of Muslim women was a premeditated tactic of terror.
Sells concludes his essay with this powerful passage:
"When, after the Srebrenica massacre, NATO finally intervented, what it found was something less romantic than embattled Christian soldiers under perennial attack from the perennial enemy Islam. Behind the mask of civilizational clash, evil empire, and Muslim contamination it found the common tragedy of human history: victims who, contrary to expectations, had done nothing to deserve their fate and had threatened nobody. And perpetrators building their identity through a vain attempt to reject an other who was, in fact, a part of themselves."
At the beginning of this essay, Sells recounts the massacre of Srebrenica, and the sordid history of ethnic cleansing which led up to it, and asks the obvious question--why did the international community, knowing what it knew, stand by and do nothing? One reason, he posits, is the widespread acceptance of the myth of historical inevitability. He writes:
"...there is an interior logic to such madness. That interior logic begins with the myth of age-old antagonisms: Muslims and Christians inBosnia have been killing one another for centuries we are told. It is not only that there have been tragic conflicts in the past in Bosnia but that the root of those conflicts are inscribed into the fabric of the culture: the conflict is inevitable, and it would be a form of cultural imperialism for anyone to interfere with it. Serb and Croat militants turned this myth of age-old antagonisms into an ideology to motivate and justify their attempt to create religiously pure and homogenous Orthodox Serb and Croat Catholic states. A wider circle of writers from outside the Balkans, writing for a different audience, have advanced their own version of essential Balkan incompatibilities."
The first several pages of this essay cover the influence of The Mountain Wreath and other nationalist mythology in contemporary Serb nationalist discourse; this material would essentially be a rehash of my review of his book so I won't dwell on his excellent summary.
When he then goes on to discuss the anti-Islamic writings of Giselle Litmann, alias Bat Ye'or, and Jacques Ellul, who have essentially collaborated in the development of a particular strand of explicitly Christian anti-Islamic thought, one which proposes that Islam has at all times and all places one unchanging nature, and a violent and oppressive one at that. While Christianity allegedly can and has changed over the centuries, Islam cannot, and furthermore it is a totalitarian system which maintains sway over all its believers. Islam is incapable of peaceful coexistence or compromise. The presence of Muslims automatically means the presence of Islam, and Islam is always and everywhere a sworn foe of Christianity, Judaism, and Western cultural and political values.
While neither "expert" seems to have explicitly called for genocidal violence against Muslims, it would be expecting too much for others not to draw the obvious conclusions from such extremist rhetoric. Yet their simplistic, implacably contentious analyses have managed to obtain a certain level of visibility and legitimacy; we can thank Bernard Lewis for bringing Bat Ye'or the wider audience she had previously lacked.
The final Western "expert" on Islam Sells considers is Robert Kaplan, author of Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, the book that famously convinced President Bill Clinton that turning his back on the Muslims of Bosnia was a sound foreign policy decision. I have only read excerpts from the book, so I was a little surprised to discover how much of this highly-praised and oft-quoted text is focused on the smells and alleged poor hygiene of Muslims in the former Ottoman Empire. It is one thing to declare that Islam is to blame for the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe (who knew?), but quite another to dismiss the entire region as an irredeemable pigsty full of surly, untrustworthy people who, well, smell bad. Of course, Kaplan might have spent so much time on the appearance and odor of places like Pristina since, like Bernard Lewis, he seemingly couldn't be bothered actually talking to any of the millions of Muslims he derides. Clearly, I need to read this book more comprehensively.
Sells concludes his essay with a discussion of the different variations of prejudiced, based on the essay "The Anatomy of Prejudice" by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, which defines three different character types:
"The obsessional type is characterized by an ideology of filth and cleansing...The hysterical type is charactered by fear of impotence and castration...the narcissistic type is typified by sexism, homophobia, and the constricted societies they reflect and help construct."
All of the texts Sells has discussed fit each of the above characteristics; the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Serb nationalists and their Western enablers is naked bigotry of the basest kind, even when dressed up in the progressive language of "incompatible cultures" such as when the allegedly anti-feminist nature of Balkan Islam was used as a justification for a war in which the gang rape of Muslim women was a premeditated tactic of terror.
Sells concludes his essay with this powerful passage:
"When, after the Srebrenica massacre, NATO finally intervented, what it found was something less romantic than embattled Christian soldiers under perennial attack from the perennial enemy Islam. Behind the mask of civilizational clash, evil empire, and Muslim contamination it found the common tragedy of human history: victims who, contrary to expectations, had done nothing to deserve their fate and had threatened nobody. And perpetrators building their identity through a vain attempt to reject an other who was, in fact, a part of themselves."
Saturday, June 28, 2008
"The Nationalist Serbian Intellectuals and Islam: Defining and Eliminating a Muslim Community" by Norman Cigar
One of the two essays from the book The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy that explicitly addresses the plight of the Bosniak Muslims. Cigar is also the author of the essential work Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing and comes to the subject with a wealth of knowledge and a clear perspective.
The gist of Cigar's essay is most likely familiar to most readers of this blog, as the influence of Serbian intellectuals and writers like Cosic, Draskovic, Karadzic, Raskovic, Plavsic, and many others is well-known to even a casual student of the last Balkan wars. Here (in line with the theme of the book), Cigar focuses on the demonization of Islam and ethnic Muslims by Serb nationalists; the opening sentences of his essay:
"Recent events in Bosnia-Herzegovina provide significant material for a case study on the impact that external images of Islam can have on Muslims as a community and as individuals. Perhaps there was no more striking aspect in this process of creating images than the role that Serb intellectuals played as they exercised their craft of developing and disseminating knowledge and engaged in political activity."
Cigar goes on to show that Serb nationalist intellectuals were consistent in creating an "in-group/out-group" mentality regarding the Serbs versus the "others." What is of note in the context of this book is how Serbs tried to play to outside (particularly Western) sensibilities by playing off stereotypes about and fears of Muslims and Islam. What is also striking is how ridiculously crude and irrational much of this "intellectual" rhetoric was. Consider this quote from writer Dragos Kalajic, speaking of the allegedly "unmanly" nature of the (allegedly "Serb") converts to Islam after the Ottoman conquest:
"..it is appropriate to point out that effeminacy and symbolic or actual homosexuality are not the only means by which to escape from a manly nature that is threatened with violence, terror, or death. The Serbian experience shows that there are many other ways of avoiding duty and responsibility stemming from too onerous a fate, which history has imposed on the Serbs. Historically, the first and easiest path of avoidance from unavoidable fate was actually opened up by the Ottoman occupation...[and] drove many Serbs along the road to treachery"
This is, of course, a load of nonsense, but it's the sort of nonsense that people like Diana Johnstone and Julia Gorin take very seriously. To say nothing of the quote from Radovan Karadzic wherein he tries to distinguish which Muslims could still be converted to Orthodoxy--apparently, religious conversion is a matter of genetics:
"When it is a question of the Serbs of the Islamic faith, there was always a great divide that determined whether they were to be more Muslim or more Serb. Those in whom the religious element predominated, and orientation toward Islam's fundamentals, were lost forever to the Serbian nation."
It goes on, but even that short quote is enough to make the obvious parallels to the Nazi efforts to determine which people in the occupied East had sufficiently "Aryan" characteristics; Cigar rightly notes that in this day and age nationalist extremists know better than to express their beliefs in explicitly racist terms, but there is really no other way to interpret Karadzic's gibberish about collective memories and achieving "that level of development to become Serbs while also having the Islamic past of their families." These are the words of a man described with no little warmth by the 39th President of the United States as I noted last fall.
Cigar's analysis is keen, but it is difficult to do this essay full credit without all the quotes he includes; the above passages are typical, but hardly exhaust the range of crackpot theorizing, pseudo-science, mytho-romantic pontificating, and sheer psychopathic lunacy on display here. Cigar convincingly demonstrates that among Serbia's intellectual elite there was a strong tendency to portray Islam as a corrosive, and thoroughly evil force which fully defines all followers of that faith; Muslims are at all places and all times defined primarily if not exclusively as members of a vicious, violent, and implacably anti-Western (and anti-Serb) movement. No wonder Samuel Huntington was so popular among them.
The gist of Cigar's essay is most likely familiar to most readers of this blog, as the influence of Serbian intellectuals and writers like Cosic, Draskovic, Karadzic, Raskovic, Plavsic, and many others is well-known to even a casual student of the last Balkan wars. Here (in line with the theme of the book), Cigar focuses on the demonization of Islam and ethnic Muslims by Serb nationalists; the opening sentences of his essay:
"Recent events in Bosnia-Herzegovina provide significant material for a case study on the impact that external images of Islam can have on Muslims as a community and as individuals. Perhaps there was no more striking aspect in this process of creating images than the role that Serb intellectuals played as they exercised their craft of developing and disseminating knowledge and engaged in political activity."
Cigar goes on to show that Serb nationalist intellectuals were consistent in creating an "in-group/out-group" mentality regarding the Serbs versus the "others." What is of note in the context of this book is how Serbs tried to play to outside (particularly Western) sensibilities by playing off stereotypes about and fears of Muslims and Islam. What is also striking is how ridiculously crude and irrational much of this "intellectual" rhetoric was. Consider this quote from writer Dragos Kalajic, speaking of the allegedly "unmanly" nature of the (allegedly "Serb") converts to Islam after the Ottoman conquest:
"..it is appropriate to point out that effeminacy and symbolic or actual homosexuality are not the only means by which to escape from a manly nature that is threatened with violence, terror, or death. The Serbian experience shows that there are many other ways of avoiding duty and responsibility stemming from too onerous a fate, which history has imposed on the Serbs. Historically, the first and easiest path of avoidance from unavoidable fate was actually opened up by the Ottoman occupation...[and] drove many Serbs along the road to treachery"
This is, of course, a load of nonsense, but it's the sort of nonsense that people like Diana Johnstone and Julia Gorin take very seriously. To say nothing of the quote from Radovan Karadzic wherein he tries to distinguish which Muslims could still be converted to Orthodoxy--apparently, religious conversion is a matter of genetics:
"When it is a question of the Serbs of the Islamic faith, there was always a great divide that determined whether they were to be more Muslim or more Serb. Those in whom the religious element predominated, and orientation toward Islam's fundamentals, were lost forever to the Serbian nation."
It goes on, but even that short quote is enough to make the obvious parallels to the Nazi efforts to determine which people in the occupied East had sufficiently "Aryan" characteristics; Cigar rightly notes that in this day and age nationalist extremists know better than to express their beliefs in explicitly racist terms, but there is really no other way to interpret Karadzic's gibberish about collective memories and achieving "that level of development to become Serbs while also having the Islamic past of their families." These are the words of a man described with no little warmth by the 39th President of the United States as I noted last fall.
Cigar's analysis is keen, but it is difficult to do this essay full credit without all the quotes he includes; the above passages are typical, but hardly exhaust the range of crackpot theorizing, pseudo-science, mytho-romantic pontificating, and sheer psychopathic lunacy on display here. Cigar convincingly demonstrates that among Serbia's intellectual elite there was a strong tendency to portray Islam as a corrosive, and thoroughly evil force which fully defines all followers of that faith; Muslims are at all places and all times defined primarily if not exclusively as members of a vicious, violent, and implacably anti-Western (and anti-Serb) movement. No wonder Samuel Huntington was so popular among them.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Said, Trumpbour, and others on Huntington and Lewis
In order to take the time to do justice to the arguments gathered against the Huntington/Lewis "Clash of Civilizations" thesis in the volume The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy edited by Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells, I would first need to spend a considerable amount of time considering the questionable thesis that Huntington and others have laid out. While that might take me quite far afield from Bosnia, I don't think it would be at all irrevelant to some of the larger topics this blog hopefully touches on from time to time.
Much of the debate on the Balkan wars was framed in just such false dialectics--indeed, Huntington's book was publicly embraced by Franjo Tudjman and at least some Serbian nationalists. In the hands of such theorists seeking to fit events into predetermined grand narratives, the Bosnian war was removed entirely from its specific, local context (which was, more often than not, distorted beyond recognition at any rate through the lens of "ancient hatreds") and interpreted purely as yet another enactment of a largner, ongoing 'struggle' or 'clash.' Reductive theorists like Huntington allow Western elites to justify a dispassionate, removed approach to atrocity situations because the tragic particulars of a genocide in Bosnia or Rwanda or Sudan, while painful to watch, are little more than the inevitable symptoms of a global conflict. And Huntington and his ilk tend to regard the victims of Bosnia, for example, as being on the 'wrong side' of that greater war.
If I someday find the time, I will most certainly consider a more extended consideration of, at the very least, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Huntington. In the meantime, it was important to acknowledge the larger debate Qureshi and Sells' book represents before going on to review to the two or three essays which are more explicitly concerned with Bosnia.
Much of the debate on the Balkan wars was framed in just such false dialectics--indeed, Huntington's book was publicly embraced by Franjo Tudjman and at least some Serbian nationalists. In the hands of such theorists seeking to fit events into predetermined grand narratives, the Bosnian war was removed entirely from its specific, local context (which was, more often than not, distorted beyond recognition at any rate through the lens of "ancient hatreds") and interpreted purely as yet another enactment of a largner, ongoing 'struggle' or 'clash.' Reductive theorists like Huntington allow Western elites to justify a dispassionate, removed approach to atrocity situations because the tragic particulars of a genocide in Bosnia or Rwanda or Sudan, while painful to watch, are little more than the inevitable symptoms of a global conflict. And Huntington and his ilk tend to regard the victims of Bosnia, for example, as being on the 'wrong side' of that greater war.
If I someday find the time, I will most certainly consider a more extended consideration of, at the very least, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Huntington. In the meantime, it was important to acknowledge the larger debate Qureshi and Sells' book represents before going on to review to the two or three essays which are more explicitly concerned with Bosnia.
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