From: minhaszt@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Zafar T Minhas)
Subject: delegation meeting report summary from bosnia-herzegina
Organization: University of Cincinnati
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 04:41:20 GMT

salam alaikum va rahamatullah for whom it is appopriate to and for others,
hello. For the benefit of the people of soc.culture.yugoslavia and 
soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna, my name is Zafar Minhas. A few days ago, I attended
a meeting organized by the Islamic Association of Cincinnati, Muslim Students 
Association, Muslim Arab Youth Association, Somali Relief Committee, and other
organizations to update people on what has been going on in Bosnia and Somalia.
This article I will give a summary of the report on Bosnia given by Mr. Nabil
Sadoun, a member of the MAYA delegation. Hopefully I will have an ASCII
copy of the report within the next 2 weeks.

--------------------------------BEGIN--------------------------------------
We went to Bosnia over a month ago, it was at one time a very beautiful place
to be, however not anymore, brothers and sisters. we see in these slides 
Bosnia during the winter Olympics, these here are the slides of Bosnia when
our team went to assess the situation. Brothers and Sisters, Bosnia is your
country, it is an Islamic land. If you look at this next slide the area covered
by our camera, covers not much more than say 10,000 sq. ft., but look at hte 
number of masajid in just this area. There are 5. And beyond the area of the 
slid, there are many more. This is typical of other cities in Bosnia...
Here is a hotel in the city of Split, look at teh condition of it. In this
hotel, 500 hundred Muslims were rounded up and put inside, 20 minutes after
they were herded in, the shelling of the Serbs began. The hotel is completely
destroyed brothers and sisters and there were no survivors. This is what our
brothers and sisters are dealing with in Bosnia...
This is a picture of our team with the Bosnian President, Amir Alijah Ali
Izzetbegovich. He is a very good Muslim (for those of you who do not know
he is the author of two major books, Islam Between East and West, where he
predicts the breakup of Yugoslavia as it was once known. And Islamic Manifesto,
in answer to the Communist Manifesto of Marx). He told us to send this message
to America, that we ask for nothing out of the Government but to lift the 
embargo. He also sent this message for the Muslim brothers and sisters of
the world, Bosnia is a country of your brothers and sisters, please don't
forget us in your duai. If you want to help us, please send money, and
medical aid and food, there is no need to send arms, we have the capability
to get the arms if we have the money, please do not come to fight. We want to
defend in the way we know best, we can not afford to train ammatures. Inshallah
"Nasrun-min-allahi wa fathun qareebun". And brothers and sisters he said this
Quranic phrase in Arabic....
This is a picture of the grand mufti of Sarajevo, Nasir Saric. He is a very 
knowledgable Muslim. Before, he said, I used to come to the minbar and just
talk about things we need to do in every day life to be good muslims, brothers,
now it is enough for me to just recite the quran, this gives me, and the 
people spiritual healing, it is not that we don't want to do anything, but
we are so tired, we need this to give ease to our minds so we can go back and
defend our lands and our families.
We used to be a people, brother Nabeel, far away from Islam, we thought if we
hide, not necessarily deny, our Islamic identity, then we could get the 
benefits of being in community with Europe, but Europe has proven to us that
they don't care....
Brothers and sisters, mufti sarich is right, Europeans do not care, not because
we practice Islam; we do not practice Islam. Simply because Bosnian Muslim
said "la-ilaha illa-allah, muhammadan rasul-allah" that is all. And brothers
and sisters if a group of people is attacked for that reason, then you are 
attacked as well. The muslim nation is one nation, there is no pakistani, no
lebanese, no turkish, no saudi, no malay, no iranian, no indonesian, in
the muslim nation. we are one qaum, one millat....
this is what happened to some people we met....
this is an old lady, as you can see she is crying, her tears hurt me even now.
she said that all of her sons are missing in the concentration camps. she
doesn't have any idea where they are and what is there condition if they are
still alive.
this is a picture of a boy who escaped somehow from the concentration camp.
his body is sickly, he was there when the news cameras reported of the 
conditions, when the news cameras came the serbs gave plenty of food, when
the cameras left they took all of the food and told them to pretend it was
ramadan....
this is a picture of seven children you can see in the background the lady
is crying, her husband is killed. now these little orphans have no father.
imagine what that will do to them, imagine the condition of the children in
a few years with no father and a war going, think how it will affect there
psyche...
this is a concentration camp for women, when we came out of our car, they
swarmed us demanding to know of the condition of a brother or a father or
husband or son, we did not have any information, we did not know what to 
say. we told them we will help them by telling others of what is going on,
and then eeach of htem had a story to tell, i don't want to go into all of 
them but each of them hurt our hearts, brothers and sisters....

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This is all I can remember right now, I am going to get an ASCII copy
and post it on the various nets. I am sorry for the abrupt cut off, but
more info will be given soon inshallah. 
salam alaikum

zafar minhas 

ps. for those interested in some detailed information, please send me some
e-mail, i am trying to start a large event in cincinnati, please contact
me through e-mail.