Mick Hartley

Well this is just what we need – Wahhabis in the Balkans (via Solomonia):

The ominous presence of Wahhabi missionaries, financiers, terror recruiters, and other mischief-makers bespeaks a fresh offensive in that tormented land. From the new Wahhabi seminary in the lovely Bosnian city of Zenica, to the cobblestone streets of Sarajevo’s old Ottoman center, to the Muslim-majority villages in southern Serbia, extremist Sunni men in their distinctive, untrimmed beards and short, Arab style breeches (worn in imaginary emulation of Muhammad), accompanied by women in face veils and full body coverings (a bizarre novelty in the contemporary Balkans), are again appearing, funded by reactionary Saudis and Pakistanis. They aim to widen the horizon of global jihad–witness the revived campaign of terrorism in Morocco and Algeria. In the Balkans, their targets are both Sufis and traditional Muslims.

Within Albania itself, Wahhabi activism remains minimal, concentrated on individual outreach (dawa) in mosques and backed up by fundamentalist literature flooding into the country. In Kosovo, although Saudi Arabia maintains a relief office in the capital, Prishtina, Wahhabis keep an even lower profile, since most Kosovar Albanians are outspoken in their support for the United States and hostile to any indication of Islamist designs. But elswhere, trouble is afoot.

In neighboring Montenegro and districts of southern Serbia, the Wah habi presence is open and even violent. Wahhabis have disrupted religious services, yelling abuse at imams for not following their practices, and have precipitated gunfire between ordinary people as well as fatal confrontations with local police. Most recently, on April 20, a Wahhabi was killed in a clash with police in the southern Serbian town of Novi Pazar. In Bosnia, on April 27, a cache of automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, bombs, ammunition, and related material was seized in the remote north western village of Upper Barska. The owner of the house where the weapons were discovered, 47-year-old Ahmet Mustafic, was described as a Wahhabi by people in the village and in the Bosnian media. The location has been a Wahhabi hot spot for some time.

Author Stephen Schwartz – himself a Sufi Muslim – believes there are forces within Islam ready to oppose the Wahhabis, such as the Bektashi Sufis:

In long discussions with the Bektashis in Tetovo, I was repeatedly assured of their willingness to assist the United States and other democratic nations in rooting out Islamist radicalism in any way they can, from providing intelligence to encouraging greater Albanian involvement in Iraq, where 120 elite noncombat Albanian troops are serving with Coalition forces.

“We want to help, but we need help,” said an authoritative Bektashi figure as he sketched out for me the network of extremist agitation in the region–from revived centers of Sunni radicalism in Turkey to cells hidden unobtrusively in places like Peshkopia, a small, ancient town near glacial lakes in the wild mountains of eastern Albania, to Tetovo, where the Bektashis daily watch their historic institution fall under the control of fanatics bent on their destruction. Although the Bektashis have many humble supporters, few are prepared to disrupt their own lives by taking on the Wahhabis. Thus the export of the Saudi-financed jihad continues unhampered.

Yet the Bektashis are not friendless. Among those willing to assist them, interestingly, are the communities of Turkish and Kurdish Alevi Muslims living in Germany and other Western European countries. Inspired by the legacy of Hajji Bektash and committed to secularism, women’s equality, and popular schooling, the 600,000 German Alevis are a bulwark against Islamist radicalism in their country of adoption or, in many cases, of their birth.

Some young Alevis I interviewed in Cologne said they would gladly go to Macedonia to clean out the Wahhabis if encouraged to do so. But all over Europe, moderate Muslims expect their governments to act. They seem destined to be disappointed. European states are frozen in a posture of accommodation, willful oblivion, ignorance, and simple denial of the reality: The enemy will not be beaten so long as he finds places to rekindle his jihad.

I’m not sure how convincing this tale of moderate Muslims “ready to act” really is. If a religion is based on submission to the word, revealed 1400 years ago, then there’s little defence against the kind of reactionary extremism of the Wahhabis and the like, who can claim to be reverting to the purity of the original revelation.

Here’s another take:

Although the majority of Bosnian Muslims are secular in orientation, there have always been fundamentalist currents with political influence among the Bosnian intelligentsia. Alija Izetbegovic, the first Bosnian President following the 1992 declaration of Bosnian independence, is a case in point. Izetbegovic openly expressed sympathy for Islamist doctrine, even if he did not adopt it as the basis for his policies. He brought thousands of Arab Mujahideen to Bosnia to reinforce his troops, many of them veterans of the war in Afghanistan. “We enjoyed great privileges among both the political and the military leadership in Sarajevo,” Ali Hamad, a former Mujahideen commander from Bahrain, recently told the German weekly Der Spiegel.

The fact that Bosnia has become such a fertile source of new recruits for the Wahhabi sectarians is a legacy of this alliance. Having obtained Bosnian passports, several hundred Mujahideen remained in Bosnia after the war. With the generous financial support of Saudi Arabia, they built up a network of organizations that they are using to attract the next generation of Islamists.