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Sandžak: identity and recent past
that the Muslim intelligence failed to perform its historic task “to turn a community,
genuinely separated from Serbs and Croats in Yugoslavia, into a national
community, a laymen community unpropelled by religion.”²⁰ Participation
of Mujahedins in the war in Bosnia was also used as the crown evidence of the
aformentioned thesis, and the emergence of Wahabis in Sandžak was depicted
as a potential Islamic fundamentalism danger for security of Serbia. Spinning of
hysteria by dint of the Serb media, mostly via statements of former state security
and counter-intelligence agents led to the arrest of a group of Wahabis who then
faced charges of “attempts to undermine the integrity of Serbia.” Due to lack of
evidence all Wahabis were released. Media stopped covering that case, but the
damage has been already done.
The second phase of radicalization of Sandžak involves intentional fragmentation
or breaking up of the Islamic community. Tensions and conflicts in which
the Islamic Community was recently engulfed should be viewed in a broader
context, for at play were, on the one hand, violations of the freedom of religion
of citizens of Serbia, and on the other hand, a periodic wave of anti-Muslim and
anti-Islamic actions, to which the state institutions failed to adequately respond.
What happened was not only an intra-Muslim division in Sandžak, but rather
the effect of an orchestrated state policy which obstructed the constitution of
the Bosniak community, in which the Islamic Community should have played a
crucial role.
Reductionist tack to Islam, from the angle of fundamentalism, is cognitively
narrow-minded and lacking, for it disregards the need of excluded groups to be
integrated and involved in the society’s mainstream.²¹ By extension it is politically
dangerous for Bosniaks and the region in which the majority of them live,
for thus they acquire a markedly negative connotation. When in the 90’s, after
the setting in motion of Belgrade’s war machinery, Alija Izetbegović appealed to
Turkey for help, aforementioned Darko Tanasković wrote down: “The person
most akin to a Bosnian Serb, is a Bosnian Muslim, but the political bosses of the
latter, are now appealing to Turks to help them weather the current problems
and difficulties... And Turks are presented as a threat to Serbs, though Serbs with
contemporary Turks have long established excellent relations. To Serbs such a
threat is even more ominous than the one of Germans. If Turks for Serbs once
again become the Turks from the epic poems cycle, Muslims are not likely to
remain for Serbs the South Slavic, Balkans and European brothers, with whom
they are supposed to peacefully, constructively and democratically look for the
way out from the joint problems and put in place a new formula of harmonious
SANDŽAK: IDENTITY AND RECENT PAST
17
20 Ibid. page . 81.
21 Tarik Kulenović, “Political Islam”, VBZ, Zagreb, 2008.