When the Nazis occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) in 1941, a group of Bosniak leaders, led by the Muslim scholars, raised the voice against the Nazi mistreatment of the "unwanted" groups of people, mainly Serbs, Jews, and Roma ("Gypsies").
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In a recently published book, which I co-edited with @hikmet_karcic and Ferid Dautovic, we collected the "Muslim resolutions," as they are known, translated them into English, and added several essays to provide a context. Excerpts included at the link. 2/ contemporaryislam.org/muslim-resolut…
The Nazi-puppet regime, the Independent State of Croatia (or, NDH), instituted their version of "racial purity" laws which deemed the populations above unacceptable. They practically ruled BH during WW2 and instigated inter-ethnic violence and hatred.
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Alarmed by this, and combined by the Serbs' massacres of Muslims in Eastern Bosnia, the Bosniak (Muslim) population raised their voice against the inter-ethnic violence and the discrimination instituted by NDH.
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The Bosniak leaders - Muslim scholars, merchants, bureaucrats - wrote resolutions, i.e., public declarations, demanding an end to such discriminatory laws and to the inter-ethnic violence it promoted. These statements came to be known as the "Muslim resolutions."
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So far, ten resolutions are known, two of which have been discovered during the preparation of this book. Each resolution was written and proclaimed in a different city/town in BH. It shows that it was a widespread phenomenon in Bosniak circles, not limited to a small area.
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The resolutions were started by a group of mostly Muslim scholars, and later on adopted by a wider section of Bosniak notables. It is one of the few such examples in Europe, maybe the only one, at the time.
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Some of these resolutions clearly state they were motivated by Islamic teachings. The Sarajevo Resolution was issued on 27th Ramadan 1360 AH (18th October 1941), an auspicious date in Islamic calendar, indicating Laylatul-Qadr (The Decree Night).
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The Mostar Resolution states, "The countless crimes, injustices, lawless acts, and forced conversions committed and still being committed against Orthodox Serbs and other fellow citizens are entirely repugnant to the soul of any Muslim. Every true Muslim, ennobled by the...
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... exalted tenets of Islam, condemns these crimes, from whatever quarter, fully cognizant that the Islamic faith considers the murder and torture of the innocent, looting of other people’s possessions, and conversion under conditions that exclude free will, amongst...
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...the worst of sins. The handful of so-called Muslims who have committed such transgressions have by that very fact transgressed against the exalted tenets of Islam and will inevitably face God’s punishment and human justice."
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The Resolutions provided a much needed voice against the brutality of Nazi/NDH occupation. Their legacy is complex and complicated. The post-WW2 Communist government downplayed or ignored the Resolutions because they didn't fit into their narrative.
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It was only fairly recently that they became a common knowledge, due to the work of @markoah and many others, including Bosnian researchers. Our book is a first full-fledged study of this topic in English. It is only $20, please consider buying it.
The role of the Serbian Orientalists in justifying genocide against the Bosniak population of Bosnia is not well known. Norman Cigar wrote an excellent paper in which he analyzed the way in which the Serbian scholarship on Islam enabled genocide.
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The Orientalists used every trope known to an Islamophobe in order to justify genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In some ways, they have created a playbook from which the Islamophobes freely draw until today. 2/
The nationalist rhetoric created in Serbia against the Balkans Muslims, but especially the Bosniaks, set the stage for the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, and for the ensuing ethnic cleansing and genocide campaigns. 3/
The horrors of the genocide in Srebrenica (in Bosnia and Herzegovina in general) are becoming more vivid as more and more survivors share their stories. For some of them, it took more than two decades to finally be able to speak publicly.
Omer Dudić was a young man, living in Srebrenica, when the war started. Srebrenica was attacked by the Serb forces in 1992. By 1993, the humanitarian situation was unbearable. In April 1993, Srebrenica was designated a "safe area" by the UN.
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The Bosnian army (largely Muslim) surrendered its weapons. In return, the UN would protect Srebrenica and the Serbs would not attack it. By 1995, the Bosnian Army was growing stronger in other parts of Bosnia. The Serbs decided to finish what they started in 1992.
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"Dictatorship is immoral even when it prohibits a sin, democracy is moral even when it permits it. Morality is inseparable from freedom. Only a free behavior is a moral behavior."
"By negating freedom, and with it a possibility of choice, dictatorship in its very premises contains a negation of morality. Hence, in spite of the appearances, dictatorship and religion are mutually exclusive."
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"Just like in the spirit-body dilemma religion always chooses spirit, so will the choice between will and behavior, between intention and deed, always opt for will and intention, regardless of the result or the consequence."
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