ZAGREB, April 10, 2018 – Bosniak political parties and associations, together with the Islamic community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, strongly believe that the country can function only as a secular state and resolutely deny accusations that their real plan is to establish an Islamic state – this is the key message of a meeting the chair of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency Bakir Izetbegović held in Sarajevo on Tuesday with prominent Bosniak officials and leaders of cultural and non-governmental organisations and the leader of the Islamic community Husein Kavazović.
“Bosniaks are permanently committed to preserving and strengthening the integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a democratic, multi-ethnic, European, secular and civic state founded on the rule of law, as a member of the European Union and NATO. We also resolutely reject evident attempts to reduce the status of Bosniaks to a religious group by emphasising their Islamic identity. Islam has had an important role in the development of Bosniaks’ modern ethnic identity, but they are above all a European people with all the rights that belong to them,” read conclusions published after the meeting.
The leaders described claims about plans to create an Islamic state in Bosnia and Herzegovina as “brazen, insulting and completely unfounded”, a reference to earlier statements by the Croat member of the presidency and HDZ BiH party leader Dragan Čović, and repeated statements by Serb political leaders such as Milorad Dodik.
The Bosniak officials most strongly denied as unfounded claims of the “radicalisation and thriving of violent extremism among Bosniaks,” assessing that such xenophobic and Islamophobic claims were designed to poison the global public by falsely depicting Bosnia and Herzegovina and its Muslim citizens as an alleged security threat and in that way to politically delegitimise them.
The Bosniak leaders also jointly condemned the “glorification of joint criminal enterprises” which Bosniaks were exposed to in the past war and which resulted in judgments by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as well as the glorification and decoration of convicted war criminals. They called on the authorities of the Republika Srpska entity to stop with the systematic discrimination of returnees to that entity.
