The Atlantic: Want to Cultivate a Liberal European Islam? Look to Bosnia

What is too little noticed, however, is that a tolerant European Islam has already existed for centuries—on the southeastern part of the continent, where Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, Turks, and others see themselves as fully Muslim and fully European. A 2013 Pew Research Center study shows that they’re among the most liberal Muslims in the world. For example, only tiny minorities of surveyed Bosnian Muslims, known as Bosniaks, think adulterers must be stoned and apostates executed, in contrast with large majorities in favor of both stances among Pakistani and Egyptian Muslims.[...]

The majority of Bosnians gradually accepted Islam after the Ottomans brought it to the region in the 15th century. They ruled until 1878, when they lost Bosnia to a longtime rival: the Austro-Hungarian empire. Many Bosniaks at that point felt uncomfortable under their new rulers, not least because classic texts of Muslim jurisprudence had banned living in territory ruled by non-Muslims. From 1878 to 1918, an estimated 150,000 emigrated to Turkey.

But prominent Muslim intellectuals voiced arguments that helped stem the tide of Bosniak emigration. Among them was Grand Mufti M. T. Azabagić, who argued in the 1880s that a Muslim can in fact live happily under a tolerant non-Islamic state “where he is neither abused nor insulted for his acts of devotion.” In response, Bosniaks accepted Austro-Hungarian rule and began to organize themselves under the secular state. [...]

The Islamic Community cites the “requirements of time” (in the words of Bosnia’s top Islamic legal scholar) as one of the principles animating its religious interpretations: Islamic thought can and should offer Muslims answers on how to practice Islam here and now. The result is that “the institutions are given an element of flexibility, while maintaining Islam’s timelessness.” The same institution today asserts its credibility to “serve as a constructive partner for other Muslim communities and EU institutions.”

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Politico: Angela Merkel: No Balkan border changes

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić last month floated the idea of partitioning Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008. The most commonly discussed scenario would involve the north of Kosovo being recognized as part of Serbia. Another often-discussed possibility is that a mainly ethnic Albanian part of southern Serbia could join Kosovo. [...]

For years, international officials have strenuously rejected further border changes in the Western Balkans, which was torn apart by war in 1990s as Yugoslavia collapsed into smaller states. Any change to Kosovo’s borders would prompt secession demands from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb Republic and likely spark calls for other boundary changes in the region. [...]

The United States has so far stayed out of the renewed debate, prompting speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump could be open to brokering a partition deal.

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openDemocracy: We must not forget Srebrenica

Along that way, they have found some measure of each. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has determined that genocide was committed in Srebrenica and convicted some of the war criminals that orchestrated and took part in it. And grass-root organisations are overcoming great obstacles to starting the difficult journey to reconciliation. [...]

They demand that their loved ones be found: but the slow identification process can only inflict additional suffering. They demand health care to treat their trauma, and they get substandard therapy. They demand accountability, but many war criminals still go free and unpunished. They demand recognition, but their suffering is ignored, vilified or denied. [...]

Mono-ethnic schools and the “two-schools-under-one-roof” system still characterises education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.It is also characterised by the ignorance of the past and manipulation of the facts about the recent war. [...]

Like the Holocaust and the Rwanda genocide, the Srebrenica genocide was not an accident. It began well before it occurred.

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Political Critique: Breaking the Silence: The New Media Revolution in Turkey

The Turkish media is facing the wrath of a government that is using a coup attempt to root out the opposition. Under the cover of an ongoing state of emergency, journalists are being hounded and locked up, media outlets are being closed and the free press is gradually being bought by government-affiliated businesses. Yet, out of this despair comes a glimmer of hope, a silent revolution of new media, finding ways around the repression to get the message out. And it’s not just in Turkey. Eighty-seven percent of the world’s population lives in a country without a free press. As media censorship spreads across Europe, resilient journalists are bypassing the mainstream to raise their voices from brand-new platforms. [...]

Turkey has long suffered from state interference in the media, but matters have taken a steep downward spiral since the attempted coup of 2016, when a faction within the Turkish armed forces tried to wrest power from government institutions. This worrying trend continues in 2018, as a crisis in the judiciary weakens the media still; in January, two high-profile journalists remained in prison even after Turkey’s constitutional court ordered their release. Between January 20 and February 26, 648 people were detained because of their posts on social media. Under mounting international pressure, German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel was finally released. But he had been held in pre-trial detention for 367 days, without any charges. In another crushing blow, 13 journalists who worked for an opposition newspaper were sentenced to prison on April 26 for “aiding and abetting terror organisations without being a member”.

Another worrying trend is the state seizures of media outlets, which are subsequently bought by pro-government businesses, creating what has been termed a ‘pool media’ – newspapers all churning out exactly the same pro-government stories. In what some see as a death blow to Turkish independent media, in March, the Doğan media group, owners of the last credible opposition newspaper and television channels, was bought by a business conglomerate with government ties. In reaction to this trend, one young Istanbullite told me that she now avoids the news, as she considers it all to be government propaganda; trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. [...]

Media oppression has swept across European borders, an insidious creep into the new normal. As the prospect of EU enlargement fades and it focuses on achieving stability over internal reforms, its influence is waning in much of eastern Europe, while Russian influence is on the rise. At the same time, fake news websites increase media noise, and as well as the usual political and financial pressures, reporters are having to deal with being labelled as spies and foreign mercenaries.

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Reuters: How young Bosnian men are learning to separate masculinity from violence

At 15, Dragan Kisin was beating kids up, drinking, and getting in all sorts of trouble. His father had left home to avoid gambling debts, and his mother was in despair. Then Dragan joined the Be a Man club in Bosnia and Herzegovina's Banja Luka. He is now a community leader and non-violence advocate.

A delicate balance of Muslims, Serbs and Croats, Bosnia was torn apart as federal Yugoslavia dissolved. Up to 100,000 people were killed in the 1992-1995 war and an estimated 35,000 women were raped.

Recognising that the widespread sexual violence perpetrated in the war had given rise to a culture of violence and bullying among youth, the Be a Man club brings young men and women together to fight stereotypes and become role models for their peers.

Be a Man is part of CARE International’s Young Men Initiative in the Balkans. The programme, aimed at boys between 13 and 19, was set up to promote gender equality and non-violent relationships in a region still struggling with the legacy of war. 

Political Critique: European Union LGBT activism in the Western Balkans: a regional fight for rights

One of the fundamental conditions for a gay and lesbian movement to emerge in the region was the decriminalization of homosexuality, which first occurred in Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina, in 1977, as part of wider legal reforms in Yugoslavia. [...]

The first notable LGBT activism in the region was organized in Ljubljana in April 1984, when the students’ cultural center, SKUC Forum, put on the Magnus Festival that included films, exhibitions of gay publishing, and lectures and discussions on gay culture. Later that year, a group called Magnus, which embraced both gay men and lesbian women, was constituted as a section of the SKUC Forum, becoming the first LGBT group in the region. [...]

“When the war started some women backed away for personal reasons, some because of the wartime conditions,” Pamukovic said. “It just wasn’t possible to pursue that kind of political activism.” [...]

EU mechanisms that have been used in the precession phase such as insistence on reformed legislation have also been accused of putting form before substance, as once a country has joined the EU the rights of LGBTI persons are left to the whims of its government.

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Al Jazeera: The Ratko Mladic disease infecting Europe

This verdict will not change anything in the lives of people in Bosnia, or those living in the diaspora around the world. But at least we can comfort ourselves that some kind of justice does exist in this world and that those who are responsible for such horrific crimes, sooner or later, will end up in prison. [...]

A new Europe was born and people were promised to live in unity and solidarity, under the rule of law, in respect of human and civil rights. However, that Europe was not wise or brave enough to find a way to prevent, or, at least, to stop the killings in its very heart. [...]

Instead, they were trying to find a way to negotiate with murderers, while using gentle terms to describe what was going on in Bosnia, like "ethnic cleansing", "conflict", or "civil war". It took them a long time to even recognise that war crimes were committed. Then, it took them almost four years to act and stop the war, four years that cost us over 100,000 lives and more than 2 million refugees. [...]

If the Karadzic's and Mladic's of the Balkans had been stopped on time, and their ideas proclaimed dangerous, it could have been a clear message to all those who support ultranationalist and fascist ideas. But, everybody forgot the lesson we should have learned in the 1990s in Yugoslavia - that fascism is like a disease; it spreads easily and can infect anyone.

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Political Critique: Back in the SFRY: Yugo-Nostalgia and Dreams of Communism

Perhaps these columnists had failed to win over the trust of those they spoke to. Perhaps it was they who were the ones uncomfortable with the topic. Perhaps things have changed. Or perhaps they were simply wrong. But, with the noteworthy exception of men around the age of 45-55 – those most likely to have personally fought in the conflict – I found during my time in the region that talk of the war, politics, Yugoslavia and the past is rarely far from the surface. Nowhere is this more true than in Bosnia, the Balkans’ most multi-ethnic region and one still perpetually hamstrung by an immensely complex patchwork of government organisation hammered out to bring the war to an end: three presidents, three postal services, three electricity companies, three of everything, each divided up between the three main ethnic groups, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croats, and Serbs.

Not only are people willing to talk of the past, but their viewpoints are remarkably similar. The ethnic hatred of the 1990s – still so emphasised in the contemporary press – is nowhere to be found. And nowhere is any great remorse at the ‘failed communist experiment’ our schoolbooks teach us about. Yes, Luka is slightly more pro-communist and pro-Tito (the Yugsolav president from the end of World War 2 till 1980) than your average Bosnian. But only slightly. And his words chime with opinions I heard over and over again. [...]

Nor are such observations merely anecdotal. In May of this year, the polling company Gallup posed the issue in the form of a simple, direct question. “Did the breakup of Yugoslavia benefit or harm this country?” About 60% of the region answered stating they believe it’s done more harm than good. Only 25% think the opposite.* Numbers are even more stark in poorer, non-EU states like Bosnia, where 77% regret the break up and only 6% support it, and Serbia, where the ratio is 81%-4%. The only fully independent state where the majority thought their country had benefited (by a 55%-23% margin) was Croatia. Kosovo, still locked in a seemingly endless sovereignty standoff with Serbia, also backed the separation. Overall, however, opinion is clear. The populations of five of the six republics of former Yugsolavia wish, to some degree or another, that it had never disappeared at all. [...]

All of this does not excuse the very real oppression that occurred under Tito. Yugoslavia was, throughout its communist history, a one-party dictatorship. While economic and political democracy existed on a low level, influence-peddling, corruption, and backscratching were the only real root to power. Many may find the ethnic nationalism and religious conservatism of the right objectionable. However, Tito and his successors’ methods of imprisonment, as well as the suspected state-sponsored assassination of several expat dissidents, is far from a reasonable response. Suffering was real. This is no panacea and should not be treated as such.

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Politico: Bosnia’s Serb Republic leader: No breakaway vote next year

Many politicians, diplomats and analysts believe an independence declaration by the Serb Republic would trigger a new conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and more violence elsewhere in the Balkans as other ethnic groups attempt to redraw national borders. International officials have repeatedly warned Serb Republic leaders against secession, making clear it would be regarded as illegal and would not be recognized by Western powers. [...]

Dodik made clear, however, that he was not taking the prospect of secession off the table. “Whether some of the forthcoming years will raise that issue, we’ll see, I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m sure that we are following that path — the path to independence.” [...]

The possibility of the Serb Republic seceding is one of several challenges to stability in the Balkans, along with continued disputes between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and Serb leaders in Belgrade, disputes over the rights of Albanians in Macedonia, and allegations of Russian attempts to foment trouble in Montenegro. [...]

Surveys suggest that the majority of the entity’s population favors independence, which some see as a precursor to union with Serbia.

Banja Luka already has the feel of the capital city of a small country, with public institutions lining boulevards, monuments to war dead in the parks, and the Serb Republic’s flag — similar in appearance to Serbia’s — widely on display. Bosnian national flags and symbols are far less common.

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The Atlantic: First He Became an American—Then He Joined ISIS

In 2013, six Bosnian immigrants in the United States allegedly sent money, riflescopes, knives, military equipment, and other supplies to jihadists in Syria and Iraq through intermediaries in Bosnia and Turkey. According to the U.S. government’s allegations, individual ISIS fighters would make specific requests—mostly for money and military equipment—and the group would then raise funds and send supplies to Syria. The requests included what was surely an unexpected revelation of nostalgia—packets of Swiss Miss hot cocoa. By sending the cocoa mix and other supplies, federal prosecutors argue, these U.S.-based Bosnians provided what is known as “material support” to terrorists, in violation of the Patriot Act. [...]

Whichever side Pazara was on during the Bosnian War, understanding his experiences during those years is critical to making sense of his radicalization. After the civil war ended in 1995, and after Pazara and his father completed their alleged tour of duty for the VRS, they were still not allowed to return to their hometown of Teslic. Staying in Teslic or refusing the VRS would have surely resulted in imprisonment and torture. Ultimately, Pazara and his father were subject to the same ethnic cleansing inflicted on the rest of the Bosnian-Muslim residents. And so, Pazara carried the baggage of the Bosnian War to his new home in the United States. [...]

It is impossible to know with certainty what led Pazara to radicalize. The distance from his homeland, his professional failures, and his divorce all likely played some role. Certainly, a turn toward conservative religiosity in a period following personal loss is a well-documented phenomenon in the literature on radicalization. What is known is that Pazara found solace on social media, where an online community of Bosnian Salafists created a philosophical echo chamber. Within that echo chamber, the Islamic State’s ideology reverberated, exploiting personal grievances, laying out a narrative of victimhood (“Muslims are under attack”) that seemed to excuse Pazara from responsibility for his failures, and offering a new chance at success and redemption.

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Politico: The race for EU membership

While national governments would like to ensure political stability in the EU’s neighborhood, they have no appetite to let those countries join before 2025. For some countries, such as Turkey, there’s almost no chance of ever joining. The European Parliament and countries such as Austria are already trying to suspend membership negotiations with Turkey. [...]

Shada Islam, Europe director at Friends of Europe, is pessimistic. “I think we need to stop pretending and accept that there will be no new enlargement for many years — and that all these countries have a long way to go before they meet any of the key membership criteria,” Islam said, adding that given six to 10 years of continuous effort, the six Balkan nations may have a chance at membership. [...]

All other prospective EU members in the Western Balkans suffer fundamental complications. For Macedonia, it’s as simple as Greece refusing to even recognize its name. Allowing Montenegro and Kosovo to join without Serbia alongside them could create a security risk for both countries. Bosnia and Herzegovina is in the worst position of all and may hold these countries back if the EU insists they join in bloc formation. [...]

No country has even turned around a membership application in less than five years (Finland is the current record holder), and for former Warsaw Pact and Yugoslav states, 10-15 years is typical.

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Al Jazeera: Srebrenica tense as Bosnian Serb poised to become mayor

He seems poised to become mayor of a Bosnian town that was marked forever by the events of three days in July 1995, when ethnic Serb fighters massacred about 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys and dumped their bodies in mass graves.

Since Bosnia's war ended later that year, Srebrenica has always had a Bosniak mayor. But Grujicic is a Serb, and like many of his ethnic kin he insists that the massacre was not genocide and the number of its victims is overstated.

While Bosnian Serbs celebrate Grujicic's apparent victory in the October 2 local election, some Bosniaks are angered at the thought of being governed by a genocide denier and vow to do all they can to keep him from power - triggering a new crisis in a state that is still divided and dysfunctional after two decades of fractious peace.

Preliminary results on election night prompted Grujicic's supporters to gather for a victory party at this same cafe on the main street of Srebrenica, which is now a Serb majority town of about 7,000 residents. [...]

Grujicic says he will not interfere with the annual July 11 commemoration of the massacre, but also insists that it is time to focus on boosting the town's ailing economy and improving prospects for its residents.

It is a view shared by many Serbs and Bosniaks in Srebrenica and also, Grujicic says, by Dodik, who has told him that he hopes to visit the town soon.

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Jakub Marian: Number of public holidays by country in Europe

A public holiday, also called national holiday or legal holiday, is a special holiday established by each country’s (or autonomous region’s) law. Public holidays are usually non-working but paid, which means that they serve as additional paid holidays with dates fixed by law. Alternatively, workers usually receive a higher hourly wage if they work during a public holiday.

One notable exception is the United Kingdom, where observing public holidays is not obligatory for employers, and employees are not entitled to an enhanced pay rate. This is partially compensated by the fact that British workers are entitled to 28 days of annual leave, which is more than in any other European country, and when an employer observes a public holiday, it counts towards the minimum.

The following map shows the theoretical maximum number of non-working days as defined by law. However, the real number of non-working days changes from year to year depending on the number of holidays falling on a weekend (which, however, may be compensated by an additional non-working day during the workweek in some countries). When a range of numbers is given, the actual number depends on a municipality or religious affiliation.

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Al Jazeera: Bosnia's Serbs vote over disputed national holiday

Bosnia's ethnic Serbs have begun voting in a referendum over a disputed national holiday, defying a ban by the country's highest court and Western pressure to call off a process that risks stoking ethnic tensions in the divided Balkan country.

The referendum, on whether to mark January 9 as "Statehood Day" in the Serb Republic part of Bosnia, on Sunday is the first since a 1992 vote on secession from then-Yugoslavia that ignited three years of conflict in which 100,000 were killed. [...]

The Sarajevo-based Constitutional Court has ruled that the holiday would be illegal because it coincides with a Serbian Orthodox Christian holiday and so discriminates against Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats living in the Serb Republic. The court also banned the referendum.

January 9 is the date when Bosnian Serbs declared independence from Bosnia in 1992, precipitating the country's devastating war marked by mass killings and persecution of Bosniaks and Croats in Serbian territory. It was Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. [...]

The Serb region's administration has said it would comply with the court's ruling on the "Statehood Day" and make changes to its law on holidays to ensure it was not discriminating against other peoples - but only after the vote.

The Serbs celebrate the holiday by hanging out Serb flags and holding Orthodox Christian ceremonies in public institutions, which non-Serbs say is aimed at excluding them.

Western diplomats warn that the referendum violates the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian war.

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