Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina

I was reading the transcripts surrounding the Bosnian genocide, and the profile of Biljana Plavšić, the vice president of Republika Srpska, stood out because of how coldly she justified the violence.

She was a former biology professor, and she publicly claimed that the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims was a natural phenomenon.

She actually referred to them on the record as genetically deformed material.

It is terrifying how pseudoscience is consistently dragged out to provide an intellectual veneer for mass murder.

About a hundred and forty thousand Serbs were killed.

The Bosnian Muslims, including their present leader, enthusiastically formed a Waffen-SS division.

Let me read that again for you.

The Bosnian Muslims, including their present leader, enthusiastically formed a Waffen-SS division.

So what did the Serbs do? Well, that's the magic.

Within a few days after the Yugoslavian government surrendered, the Serb people rose up, overthrew that government, and told Hitler's legions in effect, "No.

... that's it, it...

And it's, it's historically this, like, the most quarrelsome part of Europe in the early modern era, right? And a big reason for that is that because of geography, the Balkans are the major European battleground for most of the fighting between, like, the Muslims and the Christians, right? When you get the Ottoman Empire trying to make their way into Europe, there's, they take a lot of the Balkans, and for a lot of Like, the early modern period much of the Balkans is, like, governed from Constantinople, right? It's, like, part of the Ottoman Empire and-

Mm

... that doesn't, that, that leads to a lot of fucking conflicts, right, because people in, like, modern day Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia are subjects of the Ottoman Sultan for a very long time.

And some of these people convert to Islam, and of course a lot of Muslims from Anatolia and elsewhere migrate to the Balkans, uh, particularly Bosnia, right? They, they, Bosnia develops a very sizeable Muslim population.

They're called Bosniaks.

Those are, like, the Bosnian Muslims.

Um, and obviously there's also a lot of C- Christians, quite a few Serbian Christians specifically say fuck you to the idea of serving a sultan, uh, and the mountainous highlands, particularly around Montenegro, the term they use is, like, a shatter zone, right? It's this area on the edge of an empire and in between other empires or kingdoms where usually it's very mountainous and so it's hard to, like, govern in the pre-modern period.

So you've got all these Rambos running around in the woods supporting the fight for their people.

Some of them were fighting for the Serbs, the Bosnian Muslims and the Croatian army.

So it was hard to discern who's who.

There's a lot going

And people need to understand that within Bosnia, it doesn't matter who else it was by the Serbs, if they got their hands on them, they were dead.

So I think a lot of this discussion has been centered on genocide against the Muslims because there was a lot of Bosniak Muslims that were killed.

Obviously, that was the largest group.

But they also killed...

Catholic Christians, the latter groups as well.

So this idea that this was only really aimed at some kind of a clash of civilizations thing of Orthodox Christians versus Muslims is patently untrue.

They were murdering Catholics across Croatia all of 1991.

And then they were killing them also in Bosnia where, you know, Over 4,000 ultimately Croats were killed as well, just the civilians.

And people need to understand that within Bosnia, it doesn't matter who else it was by the Serbs, if they got their hands on them, they were dead.

So I think a lot of this discussion has been centered on genocide against the Muslims because there was a lot of Bosniak Muslims that were killed.

Obviously, that was the largest group, but they also catholic christians the latter groups as well uh so this idea that this was only really aimed at is some kind of a clash of civilizations thing of of orthodox christians versus muslims it's patently untrue they were murdering croat the catholics across croatia all of 1991 and then they were them also in bosnia where you know Over 4,000 ultimately Croats were killed as well, just the civilians.

So, yeah, I mean, there was, you know, his sort of attitude towards the end of the war suggests that this guy was a megalomaniac, to put it mildly.

And at some point, like in the case of Jelicic in Brčko, Jelicic called himself the Serb Hitler.

He told others to call him the Serb Hitler.

He publicly announced he wants to kill all the Muslims.

He admitted to his own genocide, but the court said, no, he didn't commit genocide.

So naturally he died and was buried in Alexandria, but the Venetians claimed him as their own because apparently one time he visited Venice, and these two merchants hatched a very clever plan.

They went to Alexandria on business, stole Saint Mark's body, and then hid it in a shipment of pork, which the Muslims didn't check very carefully because, you know, they were disgusted by it.

You can actually see a version of this on the mosaics in the Basilica of St.

Mark, complete with the Muslims shouting an Arabic version of like, ew, gross.

And then forever after, the Venetians were like, listen, we have to trade with these guys.

We use it as a secret way to ferry saint bodies out of Egypt.

No, Stan, the house, yes, oh my gosh.

The Ottomans were greatest in the 15th and 16th centuries under two famous sultans.