Free Republic

It was a strange scene. Over 3000 followers of the radical Wahhabi current of Islam had come to the northeast Bosnian town of Tuzla to bury their leader Jusuf Barcic, who had recently died in a traffic accident. The coffin in front of the mosque was draped in a green cloth. Men with long beards chanted "Allahu Akbar": "God is great." As press photographers tried to photograph the scene, they were first cursed and then beaten. The police did nothing. "We did not expect there to be so many people," an officer told the newspaper Oslobodjenje. Religious fundamentalism is on...

BANJA LUKA -- Bosnian Federation police director Zlatko Miletić said the Wahhabi activity posed a threat to the whole country. Miletić did not wish to confirm whether the Federation’s MUP was undertaking an investigation into the sources that financed the group of Wahhabis lead by Jusuf Barčić in Kalesija, saying only that the Wahhabi issue in Bosnia was “interesting in the broader context of the fight against terrorism.” “We are cooperating with other police and intelligence services,” Miletić told Banja Luka daily Nezavisne Novine. Asked whether in some instances physical conflicts between Wahhabis and local Muslims reported recently could escalate,...

We are forbidden to play music, they make our women cover themselves up, they call us infidels, say the fearful locals. photo: Nezavisne novine In the seemingly peaceful village of Barcici near Kalesija, several dozen families live in fear of the Wahhabis who gather in the village slaughterhouse, and whose leader is Jusuf Barcic. Around thirty followers of Barcic's teachings bow in the slaughterhouse every day, while other locals go to the mosque, located several kilometres in the direction of Kalesija, for religious service, report Nezavisne novine. Locals claim that several dozen Wahhabis from Travnik, Bocinja, Mostar, Ilijas, and other...

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Last week, Sarajevo's Jesus Heart cathedral was packed for Christmas mass. This week its King Fahd mosque is filled ahead of the Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice. The Bosnian capital is still a mix of Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and Islam. Since the Bosnia war ended in 1995 the Muslim faith dominates, but not all adherents are happy with the increasing numbers of people following the puritanical Sunni Muslim Wahhabi sect. "Wahhabism has seriously divided children and parents, spiritual leaders and priests, professors and students, neighborhoods," says lecturer Adnan Silajdzic, who teaches comparative religions at Sarajevo...

Jasmin Merdan, who heads a Bosnian nongovernmental organization (NGO) opposed to Islamic fundamentalism, told RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service on December 8 that such beliefs pose a threat to Bosnia-Herzegovina by providing encouragement to terrorists and by undermining the more tolerant form of indigenous "traditional Islam." Merdan is 26 and has a degree in Arabic language and literature from a university in Jordan. There he became acquainted with the Saudi form of fundamentalism widely, if not always accurately, known as Wahhabism or Salafism. The term Wahhabism itself has become somewhat pejorative in many postcommunist countries and in Russia...

An indication of what lies ahead for the Balkans occurred recently in Novi Pazar, when Wahhabi fanatics successfully destroyed a concert held by a renowned Balkan ethno-music orchestra that appeals to people from many countries and ethnicities. The violence was brazen and highly alarming, according to Belgrade’s B-92 which described the occurrence thus: “…ten young men donning long beards, short pants and white hats broke up a concert of the Balkanika orchestra. The hooligans were dressed like members of the vehabit [sic] movement. They climbed up onto the stage and threw around the instruments that were set up for the...