From: cza@troy.cc.bellcore.com (C. Akgun)
Subject: Re: NPR: Bosnia Faces Aggression now from Croats
Organization: BCR, NJ-USA
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 22:48:28 GMT

In article <C19t2s.Hru@apollo.hp.com> goykhman@apollo.hp.com (Red Herring) writes:
>In article <1jmqsa$hld@agate.berkeley.edu> boyle@kirkuk.berkeley.edu (Joseph Boyle) writes:
>>In article <C17t4G.Iyx@apollo.hp.com> goykhman@apollo.hp.com (Red Herring) writes:
>>>    The media often refers to the Bosnian goverment as "Muslim-led".  
>>>    To me, this sounds neither "secular", nor "democratic".
>>>
>>>    Are we talking about the same goverment?
>>
>>I think so.  The Bosnian government and armed forces include Croats and
>>Serbs as well as Muslims, and has consistently supported a pluralist
>>democratic state through the whole conflict.  ...
>
>    Waffen SS incorporated numerous ethnic "divisions", does this
>    mean it was a pluralistic institution?
>
>    Mr.Izetbegovic recently attended the Islamic Conference in Baghdad.
>    Do you think he went there because the majority of Bosnians 
>    (~41% Muslim) had voted to build an Islamic state in Bosnia?
>
>    Also, could you name a single Islamic "pluralist democratic"
>    state?  Turkey?  Isn't that a country where the Kurds are
>    denied the right to speak their own language (imagine 
>    prohibiting Hispanics from speaking Spanish)?
>

Aren't you Alex Goykhman that I've encountered before because of 
snobby slurs against Azerbeycanis by calling them animals?  
If not, my appologies from A. Goykhman.  Otherwise, the alias- Red 
Herring (or yellow-snapper for that matter) cannot disguise your Muslim 
xenophobia.  I waited until now that you can easly blurt it 
out the gems above.  People like you must be ecstatic watching
the Serbian onslaught on Muslims in Bosnia.

Based on my experience, Bosnians are much more open minded than any 
avarege secular muslims like Turks and very modern people as far as any 
religious hangups and conservatism are concerned.
Painting them as religious zealots and fundamentalists to justify what 
is happening to them and/or trying to excuse those inhuman treatments
that they receive because of what they are is another 
shameless act of those self-serving gutless scums.

Soon or later these types of insensitivities against human suffering 
demonstrated by the UN and the leading powers of this world will bring
this issue to the Christians vs Moslems level.  And, there would be no 
turning point when this point is reached.  Once the fundemantalists
seize the controls, asking the help of moderates to defuse the problem 
will be too late like Iran's case.  

BTW: Muslim Kurds and christian/jew minorities were free to speak 
their own language centuries over centuries under the Turkish rules.  
In 1980 coup banned Kurdish (although Kurds in the street are freely 
talking Kurdish because this is the only language that they knew) 
during their control of the country.  Today, there is no such a ban on 
any language or religious freedom in Turkey.  There are many Kurdish 
dailys that one can find in newsstands.  Turkey will still long way to 
go to provide freedom of speech and publication.  It is working on it.

C. Akgun
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,alt.news.macedonia,soc.culture.misc