A MUSLIM STATE
IN CHRISTIAN EUROPE

The thought of a Muslim state in the center of the Balkans strikes a certain terror in the hearts of most Europeans who remember Western Christendom's millennial-long struggle with the Muslims. To Austrians, Germans and other Western Europeans - if not to Americans - it was not such a long time ago that the "Muslim terror" stretched all the way up to the gates of Vienna and threatened the heart of "Christian" Europe with destruction and ruin.

The American Press (which is secularly and multi-culturally oriented and, as a result, loath to concede the religious dimensions of any issue) refuses to recognize what is all too obvious to the European Press and the "main players" on the ground - namely, the religious range of the war. The American Press has treated the strife in its "racial" dimension, while the European Press and the "players" (i.e., the Serbs, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Bosnians, the Albanians, etc.) see the conflict largely in its religious sweep. And to what extent this is true insofar as the "players" are concerned is clearly demonstrated by a poster in the office of General Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serbs; it depicts green paint symbolizing Islam spilling over the blue flag of the European Community.

Mladic is convinced that Muslim influence is rising throughout the former Yugoslavia and Western Europe - and that it's all part of a coordinated strategy he calls the "green transversal" - the effort by Islamic fundamentalists to regain their lost Balkan possessions, possessions which at one time reached all the way to the borders of Austria.

Mladic and his followers believe that they are the only ones standing in the way of Islamic expansion northward into Europe, and that though they are little understood now, someday "Christian" Europe will thank them for the sacrifices they have made to stop this expansion. And there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that his fear of Muslim expansion into Europe is being echoed by right-wingers throughout Europe - especially in Germany, Austria, Hungary, France and Italy.

Note:

Today, Sarajevo is the capital, as Bosnian Prime minister Haris Silajdzik recently told George Kenny, of a Muslim state. It is only to the outside world that the Bosnian government maintains the fiction of its "multi-ethnic" character for the obvious reason that a multi-ethnic state is more likely to get international aid.

• Please also see George Kenny, "A Forced Peace Is Worth Trying," in "Commentary," Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1994, pg. M-5; and Roger Cohen, New York Times, as quoted in the San Francisco Examiner, April 17, 1994, pg. A-8.