Posted on 01/27/2008 11:04:22 AM PST by Bokababe
When government officials in Macedonia recently proposed rebuilding a church that once stood on the city’s central square, they received an abrupt warning: for the Islamic Community (IVZ), the recreation of Sveti Konstanin & Elena, destroyed in the 1963 earthquake, should guarantee them their own right to build a mosque in the prominent downtown area.
According to a report from A1 Television, among its other ambitions the IVZ is most keen on rebuilding the Burmali Mosque, destroyed in 1925, a year after the official dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but 12 years after the Ottomans were finally expelled, following a long period of bloody crackdowns on the Christian populations of Macedonia. A Royalist Yugoslav army house was built over it. Today the area is near a pedestrianized street where modern cafés cater to locals and international guests, considered to be one of the nicest modernization efforts in the city in recent years. Resurrecting a mosque in the area would certainly change the ambience.
Interestingly, it appears that the whole building frenzy is part of the larger issue of creating an “urban plan” for Skopje. The government has announced it will put forward an international tender for coming up with a “solution” to this issue, which it says will involve architects, planners and officials from the Ministry of Culture. However, the religious dimensions of the urban upgrade means that the authorities are playing with fire. While building an Orthodox Church is largely an exercise in decoration in a country where few attend church regularly, building a mosque, frequented five times a day by groups of Muslims likely to be “commuting” across the bridge from the “other” side of the river, is not. Considering current demographic and social trends, such religious one-upsmanship cannot lead to a long-term victory, to put it mildly, for Christendom in Macedonia.
This is not the first time that Muslim officials have raised their voices on this issue; it has been a hot topic for several years now. And in interviews and public statements, the ambitions of the Islamic leadership to restore the Ottoman-era landscape have been clearly seen. The A1 article quotes an IVZ official who states that the Islamic Community had put forward the request to rebuild the Burmali Mosque “one year ago.” Communist Yugoslavia did away with other some surviving mosques, converting them into spaces for public use, as had its Royalist predecessor.
The post-Communist denationalization process has seen considerable assets and property returned to their former owners. Nevertheless, in the competition to win back as much largesse as possible from the state, Muslims are particularly resentful. Later this year, the Macedonian Jewish Community will finish work on a new Holocaust Memorial Center, to be built over the location of Skopje’s former Jewish quarter, which adjoins the city’s main Muslim stronghold and overlooks the northeastern bank of the Vardar. “The government did everything it could for the Jews, and for the Christians,” one high IVZ official complained in early 2006. “But they don’t want to give anything back to the Muslims- they fear our power.”
It is not exactly true that the Muslims have been frozen out, though they probably have gotten relatively less back than the Orthodox Church, which after all speaks for almost 70 percent of the country’s inhabitants. The election of businessman Trifun Kostovski to the post of Skopje mayor in 2005 brought someone who, while having been widely criticized for insufficiently improving urban life, has made church officials happy. Kostovski, who had already personally funded repairs to the famed Sveti Jovan Bigorski monastery near the western village of Debar, then commissioned the creation of a large new church on the ‘other’ bank of the Vardar- something that had some Muslims seething.
Forces at work within Macedonia’s Muslim community have therefore sought to take power into their own hands. Unlike the Skopje officials who merely proposed rebuilding the central church, Muslims have simply gone ahead with the philosophy of build first, ask questions later. A Macedonian journalist interested in asking builders about a mosque that was being constructed in a Christian majority neighborhood of Skopje two years ago was threatened at gunpoint. Islamic officials controlling funds from letting properties and for building works have been associated with the radical Wahhabi movement in the past, and tend to be very secretive.
The suspicion that much of the new mosques are being built with Saudi money is evidenced in places such as the village of Saraj, just west of the capital, where one garish mosque adorned with Saudi-style double minarets stands besides the highway; another is currently under construction adjacent to it. When asked about the source of funding for the former mosque, a local imam stated that it had all been accomplished through local donations- the usual, and impossible to verify, response in such cases.
However, a currently serving European intelligence officer surveyed about the newer mosque under construction in Saraj, which will give the village a total of three, suspected a more long-term goal at work: “the location right along the highway, where all the drivers are passing on to go out of the city, is not picked by accident. It makes a statement,” he said. “This is also part of the plan to consolidate Saraj with Kondovo across the highway, eventually.”
Sprawling Kondovo, backed by wooded hills leading north toward the porous Kosovo border, is the site of the country’s main madrassah. The 40km highway from Skopje to Tetovo, flanked by these and several other Albanian Muslim villages, is one of the most heavily trafficked stretches of road in the country and the route that most tourists take when going to the tourist destination of Lake Ohrid. Stocking this span of highway with mosques, as has already partially been accomplished, is a priority for Islamists looking to ‘mark their territory’ in a way that will be visually overpowering. The IVZ’s desire to rebuild the Burmali Mosque in the center of Skopje mirrors, and even exceeds this goal, given that it will be both highly visible, audible and also frequented by observant Muslims, dramatically changing the general experience of the city center for locals and tourists alike.
That Islamic groups are not interested just in reviving Ottoman architecture has been witnessed in numerous ways. A mob of Muslim youth, officially criticized by the IVZ, protested against the Danish cartoons of Mohammed back when that controversy was playing out across Europe in February of 2006. More recently, on 10 January Muslim women petitioned successfully for the right to wear head scarves in official photographs. According to Balkan Insight, an obscure women’s association, ‘Islam and Science’ had filed a complaint in November 2007, claiming that “the ban violated the right to freely express religion.”
Further, as was witnessed in 2006, local sources in Struga, on Lake Ohrid in Macedonia’s southwest, recently stated for Balkanalysis.com that a Wahhabi ‘beach party’ in July, “twice as big as the year before,” brought around 100 bearded men and youth to the beach for a day of football, conversation and casual religion. While undercover police snapped photos, however, the bizarre occurrence was not reported in the media.
The issue of building a single church in Skopje cannot, therefore, be removed from the larger context of heightened religious, rather than ethnic oppositions in society at large. In the end, while some commentators surveyed by the Macedonian media see the center-right government as merely promoting its own political interests in the plan to rebuild Sveti Konstantin & Elena, it may ironically be, in the long-term, the interests of the Islamic Community that end up being served, as the quiet struggle for the future of a country with both a Byzantine and Ottoman past heats up.
Sounds like around here: no new church without adequate parking.
Hmmm ok then can we have no new mosque without a church in Saudi Arabia??
Stand up to ‘em or back down to ‘em.
The line has been drawn in the sand.
And folks....that there is THE understatement of the year 2008. Bar none and all to come.
“A Macedonian journalist interested in asking builders about a mosque that was being constructed in a Christian majority neighborhood of Skopje two years ago was threatened at gunpoint. Islamic officials controlling funds from letting properties and for building works have been associated with the radical Wahhabi movement in the past, and tend to be very secretive.
The suspicion that much of the new mosques are being built with Saudi money is evidenced in places such as the village of Saraj, just west of the capital, where one garish mosque adorned with Saudi-style double minarets stands besides the highway; another is currently under construction adjacent to it. When asked about the source of funding for the former mosque, a local imam stated that it had all been accomplished through local donations- the usual, and impossible to verify, response in such cases.”
Well, BB, if that running dog of Albanian irredentist Mohammedanism, the vile McCain, is elected president, they will be able to openly brag that the money comes from idiotic American taxpayers who, having bought into Bush’s “Islam is the Religion of Peace”, then went on to elect the best friend of Mohammedan terrorism the Balkans have ever seen.
"peaceful, moderate Albanian Muslims" -- my behind!
McCain and Clinton, two sides of the same coin and actually should be "running mates". Both Clinton & McCain facilitated this ever-expanding Wahhabism in Eastern Europe. And yet, most people are focused on Obama being "too Muslim-friendly". What a joke!
Methinks the Serbs had the right idea back in the nineties.
Looking back now, I wouldn’t call it ethnic cleansing. No, today I’ld have called it pestilence control.
Either in this regard, and I suppose a number of others, would make fitting successors to Bush.
"And yet, most people are focused on Obama being "too Muslim-friendly". What a joke!"
Why would American political zealots, so very convinced of their own exceptionalism, ever want to listen to people who have dealt with this for 750 years? Fools.
Eh. That wouldn't be a good idea. I'd be hauled before the International Cangaroo Court, charged with hate crimes against...ahem..."humanity" and summarily executed.
All within 24 hours.
I saw PLENTY of new mosques in Macedonia when I was there. The Orthodox are only trying to rebuild the churches that were damaged or destroyed in the 1963 earthquake. When I was staying with relatives in Struga, I was awakened every morning by the “call to prayer” of the nearby mosque. Struga is a beautiful city, but there is only one small, rocky beach where non-Muslims are permitted to swim.
Yep, that’s some peaceful religion there!
The weird part is that when I was in Egypt back in the mid-1980's, I used to think that this Muslim call to prayer was a strangely beautiful thing -- how everyone stopped what ever they were doing, took out their prayer rugs even in the middle of the street, and prayed to God. Amazing devotion.
But now, after having studied what Islam really is re child-molesting, lying to non-Muslims being OK, the political angle, etc, and seeing all the strife with others adherents of a non-Moslem religion wherever Muslims are in sufficient numbers, it makes me sick.
In spite of that, we had a (non-Balkan) secular Muslim at out table at Serbian Christmas -- he was the best friend of my best friend's son. He is a very sweet kid who couldn't get enough of "Christmas", stood with us as we said our prayers and has suffered much abuse since 9/11, so how could I be anything but kind to him?
Last time I checked,There is no moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam.
Mosques should not be built anywhere in the civilized world.
Not specifically sure what you are referring to. As a Christian, I am called to be decent and loving to all in spite of differences -- and that is not always easy. I wasn't at war with that kid. And my first trip to Egypt was before I understood Islamic teachings -- other than knowing Islam's bloody history in the Balkans.
Let them build a mosque so it can be burned to the ground.
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