From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: MUSLIMS AWAKE (THE TIMES, London, 22 December '92)
Date: 28 Dec 1992 12:47:14 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

 MUSLIMS AWAKE

 Who isn't going to Sarajevo this year?

 A Christmas visit  by John Major to the British  troops in Bosnia
 would come  as no suprise;  such a meeting makes  political sense
 and  would be  a decent  Christian gesture.  It should,  however,
 provoke  some thought  about  other leaders,  notably those  from
 Islamic states, who  have not been seen anywhere  near the Balkan
 war zone.

 Islamic states  are in confusion, unable  to act as an  'umma' or
 concerted Muslim  nation. The war  in Bosnia is  highlighting the
 powerlessness of Islam to respond  to a conflict that threatens a
 whole  Muslim  community. So,  despite  strident  calls for  arms
 shipments to be sent to  the Bosnian Muslims, despite the appeals
 for a 'jihad', no Arab leader ventures close to Sarajevo.

 The Bosnian crisis directly affects two million European Muslims.
 If it spreads, to Kosovo and  Macedonia, if it drags in Bulgaria,
 Albania and even Turkey, then tens of millions of Muslims will be
 at war  against a Serbian army  that draws on the  imagery of the
 Orthodox church.

 Mosques and minarets are already  targets in the Bosnian war; far
 worse can  be expected.  Yet the Islamic  Conference Organisation
 (ICO)  had generated  few ideas  towards resolving  the conflict.
 Supplying guns to  the Bosnians - as the  Islamic states threaten
 to do  from January 15  - is unlikely to  change the tide  of war
 unless it  is part  of more  comprehensive strategy.  The Islamic
 volunteer brigade in Bosnia is  a tiny ragamuffin group of Afghan
 veterans of no significance.

 Money  is flowing  to house  Muslim refugees,  but few  have been
 offered homes in  Islamic states. The impotence of  Islam is also
 evident outside the Balkans.  When 20,000 Indian Hindus ransacked
 the mosque of  Ayodhya, there was a lukewarm  response, even from
 Iran,  which merely  appealed to  the Indian  government to  make
 "wise  and calculated  decisions". The  famine in  Somalia should
 have pressed Islamic  states into urgent action.  The country is,
 after all, a member of both the Arab League and the ICO.

 The inability  of the Muslim governments  to develop multilateral
 solutions to  the problems  that affect Muslim  communities plays
 into  the  hands of  fundamentalists.  The  coincidence of  three
 crises, Bosnia, Somalia and India -  and the slow progress on the
 future  of  the  Palestinians,  is  breeding  new  generation  of
 fundamentalist militants.

 Every day, small  humiliations add to the anger that is currently
 directed not so much against  the Christian West as against those
 moderate Arab governments  that raise barely a  squeak when their
 fellow believers  are ill treated. The  competition for influence
 in the Asian  republics of the former Soviet Union  is typical of
 the exhausting, self defeating nature of Islamic policy abroad.

 There  is  a  division  between  Sunni  and  Shi'ite  spheres  of
 influence in central Asia. In  Bosnia, Turkey is playing a useful
 role in  trying to keep  Islamic pressure within the  confines of
 the overall  UN peacekeeping strategy.  But Iran is  straining at
 the leash. Its  ambitious arms procurement programme  seems to be
 enhancing its status as a regional  power and it is eager to test
 its influence.  Certainly, it  will be the  first of  the Islamic
 states to ship  guns to Sarajevo if the January  15th deadline is
 ignored.

 Those Serbs who already claim  that they are fighting a religious
 war will promptly declare a propaganda victory. The time has come
 then to try  to draw the Islamic states more  closely into global
 decision-making, to make  more demands of them.  They should help
 pay for  the Balkan refugees  who are  putting so much  strain on
 Germany, Austria and Croatia. They  should be encouraged to treat
 the Somali famine as a matter  of the most urgent concern for the
 Islamic world. And it would do no  harm at all if a Saudi prince,
 following in the steps of  Christian leaders, were seen in Bosnia
 with a convoy of food aid.

 THE TIMES, London, 22 December 1992
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