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Balkan Islam and the Mythology O F K O S O

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Balkan Islam and the Mythology O F K O S O I S I M NEWSLETTER 3 / 9 9 Regional issues 31 The Balkans MICHAEL SELLS Balkan Islam and The curse below was revived with a vengeance at the 6 0 0t h anniversary commemoration of the death of Serb Prince Lazar at the battle of Kosovo in 1389. Re- ligious nationalists in Serbia accuse not only the Ot- the Mythology toman Turks who fought Lazar, but also the Balkan Muslims of today of being stained with the blood of Christ-prince Lazar.1 Whoever is a Serb of Serbian blood o f K o s o v o Whoever shares with me this heritage, And he comes not to fight at Kosovo, people and request a ‘godfather’ (K u m) cer- million volumes and a hundred thousand national community can support the many May he never have the progeny emony through which blood feuds were rare books) and the Oriental Institute (with who still refuse the ideology of religious His heart desires, neither son nor daughter; healed. When Serb elders reply that the cer- over 5,000 manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, apartheid or it can betray them by ratifying Beneath his hand let nothing decent grow emony requires baptism, the Muslims sug- Turkish, Slavic, and Aljamiado). One goal of ‘ethnic cleansing’. The stakes are high, both Neither purple grapes nor wholesome wheat; gest baptism for the Christian child and ritu- destroying the evidence of shared civiliza- for the moral universe we will inhabit and Let him rust away like dripping iron al tonsure for the Muslim child. The inter-re- tion was to help establish as fact the Serbian for the already delicate relations between Until his name be extinguished.2 ligious K u m ceremony is rejected and the nationalist myth, which holds that Muslims the Islamic world and the West. ♦ Muslims are driven away as ‘Turkifiers’ and and Christians never were ‘one people’ and ‘spitters on the cross’. The play ends with a are doomed to repeat age-old antagonisms. In a Passion play, the actors who kill the glorification of the Christmas extermination Tragically, Western policy makers and espe- martyr (Jesus, for example, or Imam Hus- of the Muslims, the annihilation of all traces cially UN commanders adopted the aggres- sein) exit the stage quickly to avoid being of their existence, followed by ritual com- sor mythology of inevitable age-old hatreds pummelled by the audience. When an excit- munion (without the confession obligatory to excuse their refusal to protect the victims ed crowd rushes the stage to beat the actor, after all killings) for the Serb knights. In the of ‘ethnic cleansing’ or to allow them to de- time is collapsed. The crowd reacts not as an view of the Njegosˇ, the antagonism be- fend themselves. In Kosovo, Serbian reli- audience watching a representation of a tween Christian and Muslim is not only age- gious nationalists have been equally me- past event, but as if they were actually living old: it is eternal, built into the very structure thodical in effacing identity Ð from libraries the original event. While stage re-enact- of the cosmos. The Mountain Wreath w a s and mosques to wedding rings and identity ment was not an important part of the Koso- reprinted and disseminated in 1989. Later, c a r d s .5 vo pageant of 1989, a similar collapse of Serb nationalists celebrated the ‘cleansing’ Bosnian Serb leader Biljana Plavsˇic«, a bi- time was evident. The relics of Lazar were of villages in Bosnia by posting on the Inter- ologist and former head of the Academy of transported around Serbia, arriving at the net verses from The Mountain Wreath c e l e- Natural Sciences in Sarajevo, announced in monastery nearest the battle site on the brating ‘the extermination of the Turkifiers’.3 1994 that: feast day of Lazar (Vidovdan). There they were ceremonially unveiled for the first time […] it was genetically deformed material in history. Slobodan Milosˇe v ic« then mount- that embraced Islam. And now, of course, ed a stage on the battle site and, with a with each successive generation this gene backdrop of Kosovo symbolism and before simply becomes concentrated. It gets worse an excited audience of more than a million and worse. It simply expresses itself and people (some of them waving his picture dictates their style of thinking and behaving, alongside images of Lazar) boasted of his which is rooted in their genes.6 plan to revoke Kosovo’s autonomy. This time collapse was tied to other pow- As shown by Plavsˇic« and her formerly sec- erful symbols: 1) the sacred space of the ularist and communist colleagues, the effec- ‘Serb Jerusalem’ Ð as Kosovo, with its mag- tiveness of the Kosovo nexus of religious nificent monasteries of the medieval Serb and historical mythologies is not dependent kingdoms, is called by Serb nationalists; 2) upon self-conscious beliefs or sincerity. For the historical memory of atrocities suffered leaders like Plavsˇic« and their followers, it Michael Sells, author of The Bridge Betrayed: by Serbs in World War II Ð a memory height- provides an alternative system of logic that Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (University of Burning of the ened by ritual disinterment in the late 1980s makes plausible their sudden conversions California Press, second edition, 1998) is professor National Library of remains of Serb victims amidst calls for and justifies their acts to themselves and o f Comparative Religions at Haverford College, USA. in Sarajevo by revenge and the stereotyping of all Bosni- their audience. Serb shelling in ans, Albanians, and Croats as genocidal; and A Bosnian refugee told me the following N o t e s late August 1992. 3) false claims by Serbian bishops and acad- story: When her Serb neighbours protested 1 . The full argument and documentation for the emics that Albanians in Kosovo were en- against their participating in ‘cleansing’ the following remarks are found in Michael Sells, gaged in mass rape, systematic annihilation This concept of ‘Turkifier’ reflects Chris- Muslims, Serb paramilitaries shot them dead T h e Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia of Serb sacral heritage, and genocide. Reli- toslavism, the notion that a Slav who con- in front of their son and then forced the son (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2n d gious nationalists exploited the mythology verts from Christianity is transformed ethni- into the army. The Muslim woman’s husband edition, 1998) and at the Bridge Betrayed War of Kosovo throughout the ‘ethnic cleans- cally into a Turk. Twentieth-century writers was the K u m (godfather) of the Serb son. Crimes and Human Rights documentary page at ing’. Paramilitaries wore shoulder patches (both Catholic and Orthodox) combined Break the inter-religious K u m bond, which http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports.html depicting the battle of Kosovo, sang songs Christoslavism with racial ideas. Conversion presupposes that Christians and Muslims are 2 . Translated by Milorad Ekmecic, ‘The Emergence of about the Kosovo battle, forced their cap- was simultaneously a race-betrayal and ‘one people’, is the currently the goal, just as St. Vitus Day’, in Wayne Vucinich and Thomas tives to sing songs, and decorated them- race-transformation that left one perpetual- it was in The Mountain Wreath. Proposals to Emmert, eds., Kosovo: Legacy of a Medieval Battle selves with medals named after heroes of ly outside of the ‘people’ and placed one validate that goal and partition the Balkans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), the Kosovo battle. alongside those with the blood of the along religious lines, placing Balkan Muslims p. 335. The nexus of primordial time, historical Christ-prince Lazar on their hands. Ottoman in economically and politically untenable 3 . Bishop Petar Petrovic II (Njegosˇ), The Mountain memory, sacred space, and accusations of rule was portrayed as one of unremitting enclaves (landlocked equivalents of Gaza) W r e a t h, translated by Vasa Mihailovich (1986). present genocide Ð all brought together savagery in which the Ottomans ‘stole the would lead to further violence or Ð if the con- 4 . This essentialist view of Islam has been adopted around the 1989 Kosovo commemoration Ð blood’ of Serbs and Serb culture and de- sistent history of non-Christian ghettos in by the popular writer Bat Ye’or, who bases many was inflamed further by a particularly viru- stroyed the great monasteries of Kosovo. Europe since 1096 is any guide Ð to an even of her generalizations on the writings of Serbian lent form of Orientalism. In the 19t h c e n t u r y , Ironically, the latter claim is often made on worse outcome. Meanwhile, the Bosnian nationalists. Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Serbian nationalists made explicit the por- tours of the monasteries that in fact sur- Muslim family has preserved the home of Christianity under Islam (Madison: Farleigh trayal of Prince Lazar as a Christ-figure: a vived very well the five centuries of Ot- their Serb friends for the return of the son, Dickenson University Press, 1996), p. 239. Last Supper with twelve knight-disciples, in- toman rule.4 for whom they are now searching. 5 . See Andras Riedlmayer, ‘Bosnia’s Cultural Heritage cluding one traitor, and a Mary Magdalene The monasteries also survived centuries After years of propaganda, Njegosˇ- s t y l e and Its Destruction’ (Philadelphia, 1994), figure. The most important work of 19t h c e n- surrounded by Kosovar Albanians. Yet, mo- mythology, and complicity in genocide, Ser- videocassette, and the photo essays on tury Serb nationalism was T h e M o u n t a i n tivated by repeated false claims that the bian society has been radicalized.
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