HOW RADICAL ISLAM INFILTRATES KOSOVO
by Stephen Schwartz
As the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan ended, followed by Eid-Ul-Fitr, the "festival of fast-breaking" that usually involves three days of celebration, this year in KOSOVO, Eid Ul-Fitr was accompanied by an impressive journalistic feat: a team of investigative reporters published a four-part dossier on the country's Muslims, titled "RADICALIZATION OF ISLAM: REAL THREAT OR PHOBIA?"
The first installment appeared in KOSOVO'S
most respected newspaper, Koha Ditore (Daily Times). It was
re-reported by other print media in KOSOVO and ALBANIA, and posted on numerous
websites, producing a considerable debate.
SAUDI-BASED WAHHABI GROUP OPERATING IN WESTERN EUROPE
EXERCISES ALARMING FINANCIAL INFLUENCE OVER THE HIGHEST KOSOVO ISLAMIC LEADERS
Bylined by Artan Haraqija and Visar
Duriqi of the KOSOVO Center for Investigative Reporting, the study vindicated
critics of Islamist ideological incursion in the territory. It found a SAUDI-based
Wahhabi group operating in WESTERN
EUROPE exercises alarming financial influence over the highest KOSOVO Islamic
leaders. KOSOVO'S principal Muslim cleric, Naim Tërnava, has been accused of
affinities with and backing from Wahhabi
elements inside SAUDI ARABIA. The KOSOVO investigative journalists showed that
Tërnava's religious administration approved payments for local mosques by Al
Waqf Al Islami (AWAI – The Islamic Foundation), based in Jeddah.
Background Information: See Extremists
establish foothold in the Balkans http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.com.ar/2012/10/kosovo.html
Six part dossier on Wahhabism
A private Muslim missionary entity
maintained unofficially by figures in the SAUDI government, AWAI has a minor
profile in the U.S. but is well known in EUROPE. The NETHERLANDS General
Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) investigated AWAI in 2002-03 and
linked it to one of the most notorious radical mosques in HOLLAND, the
Al-Fourkaan (Standard of Truth) mosque in Eindhoven. In 2010, the BULGARIAN branch
of AWAI was shut down by the authorities, and in June 2012, thirteen BULGARIAN-TURKISH
members of the group were charged
with illegal Islamist activities.
Representatives of the Islamic
Community of KOSOVO (ICK), the official Sunni religious institution directed by
Tërnava, admitted receiving money from AWAI, when questioned by the KOSOVO
reporters. In the most controversial example, AWAI transferred about $25,000—a
considerable sum in a land where the average salary is $260 per month,
according to the U.S. State
Department—for erection of a mosque in the village of Bajqina near the
northeastern city of Podujeva.
Ahmet Sadriu, director of media and
publishing for the ICK, stipulated, "We have cooperation with Al Waqf Al
Islami." He said the ARAB group's KOSOVO director, a SAUDI doctor named
Abdur Rezak, "allocated the money that was then sent to the Islamic
Community local council in Podujeva. I don't know anything about links to
terrorism. These issues belong to the state," Sadriu said. He added,
"A lot of projects for construction and reconstruction of mosques have
been undertaken with this organization."
WAHHABISM
TRYING TO GET A FOOTHOLD IN KOSOVO
While $25,000 may not seem much, the
subsidy provoked anger among Podujeva Muslims. The Bajqina mosque plan was
temporarily blocked by the Podujeva head of the ICK, imam Idriz Bilalli, an
outspoken moderate, who suspected it was intended as a center for extremist
agitation. The ICK bureaucrats in Prishtina then dismissed Bilalli from his
post. The Bajqina mosque is to be led by imam Fadil Sogojeva, currently
assigned to the mosque in Kodra i Diellit (Sunny Hill), a residential
neighborhood in Prishtina, the KOSOVO capital. Imam Sogojeva confirmed that he
had received money for his Bajqina mosque from AWAI indirectly, through the
Islamic functionaries in Prishtina.
The moderate Bilalli, in an
interview with the journalists, accused Sogojeva of going to the Podujeva
district to "cause division and confusion," leading to
"destructive attitudes in the mosque." Sogojeva, who studied in SAUDI
ARABIA, admitted his retrograde attitudes candidly. He declared that in the
past a KOSOVO woman would not enter a room without permission from her husband,
and stated that he would not shake hands with "any" woman to whom he
was not related. On his Facebook page and in YouTube sermons, Sogojeva opined
that KOSOVO girls should not wear sandals without socks, since "the leg,
as one of the body parts which stimulates emotion, should not be
uncovered."
Sogojeva told the investigative
reporters he did not favor a sudden shift to fundamentalism, but, rather,
"after some time, after having worked with the congregation, in order to
properly explain the religion. ALBANIAN Muslims in KOSOVO currently are in the
first grade," he added patronizingly. KOSOVO ALBANIANS have been Muslim
for more than 600 years, a matter Wahhabis
disregard.
The reporters also reviewed the 2009
assault on Osman Musliu, a moderate cleric in the region of Drenas, known for
its strong ALBANIAN nationalism. Musliu characterized the Wahhabis at the time as "sick, psychotic people, who aim to
destroy the Islamic Community of KOSOVO." The attack on Musliu was one in
a spat of such incidents.
In the second part of their series,
Haraqija and Duriqi noted that KOSOVO was defined as a secular republic in a
legislative decision approved at the end of Ramadan last year. Atifete Jahjaga,
president of the republic, is a woman of Muslim origin who does not wear an
Islamic headscarf (hijab) or otherwise indulge in "religious"
dress. As she told a Warsaw regional summit audience in May 2011, "Islam
is a relationship of the individual with God, and not of the individual with
the state."
IMAM
SHEFQET KRASNIQI AND THE KOSOVO FLAG: "THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD" TO BE
INSCRIBED IN ARABIC ON THE KOSOVO FLAG, AS IT IS ON THE SAUDI NATIONAL BANNER
AND THE TALIBAN EQUIVALENT
Wahhabis, of course, disagree loudly. Shefqet Krasniqi, imam of the
main, Imperial Mosque in Prishtina, and infamous for his vulgar attacks on
Mother Teresa, has called for the Islamic formula "There Is No God But
God" to be inscribed in ARABIC on the KOSOVO flag, as it is on the SAUDI
national banner and the Taliban equivalent. His cohort in KOSOVO complain that,
with KOSOVO governed by a woman who does not wear hijab, the populace is
destined to "hellfire."
Similarly, a radical imam, Mazllam
Mazllami from the major city of Prizren, who was expelled from the Islamic
Community and then reinstated at the order of ICK chief Tërnava, has warned
that men and women should not go to the beach together, since they may
socialize in swimwear.
The third article in the
Haraqija-Duriqi investigative series disclosed that Kastriot Duka, alias
Xhemajl Duka, a self-anointed cleric from Elbasan in Albania proper, had defied
KOSOVO law by returning to the republic after he was deported in 2010. Duka
founded a mosque in the village of Marina near the north-central KOSOVO city of
Skenderaj in 2002 with money from a BRITISH-based Islamist charity, Rahma
(Mercy). Established in 1999, Rahma (Mercy) has targeted ALBANIA and KOSOVO
specifically but is a paramilitary
organization made up of SOUTH ASIAN BRITISH Muslims following Deobandism, the Wahhabi-aligned sect that inspires the Taliban. In Skenderaj, however, 6,000 citizens of the district
signed a petition calling for closure of Duka's mosque because of features
including an Islamic primary school in which small girls were required to wear
the SAUDI-style face-veil (niqab) and full body covering (abaya).
Duka has, nevertheless, re-entered KOSOVO
several times, while Rahma (Mercy) continues to convey money to his admirers,
through bank transfers as well as private couriers. One of Duka's disciples,
identified only as H.K., admitted, "Halil, with an ARAB family name, came
first from ENGLAND. . . . There were times when the deposits passed through the
bank . . . or were delivered in KOSOVO."
KOSOVO JUDICIAL INVESTIGATORS HAVE MONITORED WAHHABI
ACTIVITIES TO PREEMPT TERROR PLOTS
The work of Artan Haraqija and Visar
Duriqi includes a survey of Islamist indoctrination in the "new
style" of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party in TURKEY.
But above all, they have made a valuable and courageous contribution in tracing
the influence of Islamist money in a vulnerable community.
According to the reporters, KOSOVO
judicial investigators have monitored Wahhabi
activities to preempt terror plots, following the assaults on moderate clerics
and other violent incidents over the past three years. The KOSOVO police have
prepared a three-page memorandum, to which the journalists gained access,
warning, "Wahhabis can kill any
Muslim that does not join their sect, and they are spreading across the
republic."
Anti-Islamist action by the KOSOVO authorities
has been blocked by the international community, which has final control of the
legal system. Trials of Islamist conspirators by the Kosovo judiciary are
quashed by the foreign administration. Bajram Rexhepi, the republic's current
interior minister, recalls that in 2003-04, when he was prime minister and
"new and radical currents controlled no mosques and had no
influence," he proposed a draft law against religious extremism.
But, Rexhepi told the reporters
plaintively, "I was told by the Council of EUROPE in Strasbourg we could
be sued for denial of religious freedom. . . . I asked [the EUROPEANS] 'if your
states were to consider their national security at risk because of this
problem, would you maintain such abstract respect for human rights? Probably
not. Then why experiment on us in KOSOVO?' "
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