Posted on 01/10/2007 9:40:42 AM PST by ScaniaBoy
You are right on the money.
That is the popular theory, but it is dead wrong.
While it is true that the "average Bosnian Muslim" didn't have much contact with radical Islam until the 1990's, Bosnia's Muslim elite has had contact there for a long time. Back in Tito's time, while the half-finished St. Sava's Christian Cathedral in Belgrade was used by the communists as a parking garage, mosques were going up all over Bosnia quicker than McDonalds -- "gifts" from ME benefactors for Yugoslav government business deals. It was Tito who orignally gave the Bosnian Muslims a political identity as a distinct ethnic group, and he didn't do it out of "the goodness of his heart" -- Tito did it because it was politically advantageous to be able to parade around a " Yugoslav Muslim ethnic identity" in his dealings with ME countries. And he empowered those same Bosnian Muslim leaders to deal directly with the ME to "spread the seeds of goodwill between countries", when in fact the only thing that was being spread was a mobilization of Islamic politics in Bosnia.
Where did the 1985 Achille Lauro mastermind, Abu Abbas, hide out after the attack? Yugoslavia -- and do you really think that it was the Serbs who were hiding him out? Some radical Islamic group had to be there to recieve and protect Abbas, even back in 1985 -- seven years before the war began. And they hadn't just sprung up overnight.
Izetbegovic, a longtime radical Islamist, did not come to power on his own. He's had ME contacts for a long time -- and it was he who drug his people into war. Bosnian Muslim moderate, Fikret Abdic, had already negotiated a peace deal with the Serbs, but instead of backing Abdic (who was duly elected), for some unfathomable reason we backed the Izetbegovic coup -- with disastrous results.
Point is that the seeds of radical Islam were planted in Bosnia long before the 1990's war -- although it certainly spread most quickly among the common people during and after the war when those original ME "banefactors" were allowed free reign to spread their evil in "rebuilding Bosnia".
ON THE NET...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1761584/posts?page=639#639
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761584/posts?page=622#622
excellent post.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.