Standing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall in June 1963, at the height of the Cold War, Kennedy said: "There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin."
Years later, in 1987, another US president, Ronald Reagan, also stood in Berlin, pointed at the wall that cut the city in two – foremost symbol of the East-West divide – and challenged the Soviet Union's last leader before its collapse: "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
Today, communism is defeated, the Cold War is over, and all that remains of the Berlin Wall are a few relics and bad memories. However, the Cold War has been replaced by a scorching conflict being waged by radical fanatics whose brand of Islam has replaced communism as the greatest threat to democracies around the world. And while the Berlin Wall eventually came down, a far more formidable one is rising; only this time dividing cultures and civilisations.
Much as Berlin stood as a symbol of resistance against the spread of communism, so too has the former Serbian province of Kosovo – which on Monday declared its independence – proved that there is a moderate form of Islam capable of resisting the attempted spread of radicalism. Kosovo has been struggling against serious odds, trying to mature into an independent nation. Unemployment hovers around a whopping 60 per cent, while some put it as high as 70 per cent. Corruption and crime are rampant. The average income is around 1.5 euros, or one dollar, a day.
As a country in the heart of Europe with an overwhelming Muslim majority, Saudi Arabia and a number of Islamic governmental and non-governmental organisations quickly jumped in after the war in the late 1990s to help out. Among them were groups believed to have links to fundamentalist organisations, as was the case in neighbouring Bosnia. Kosovars however, many people in Pristina say, resisted being enticed into following a stricter Islam, despite financial incentives to do so.
Unlike Bosnia, another Muslim and former Yugoslav republic, Kosovars have refused offers to build madrassas, demanding instead that the donations be allocated towards building hospitals, secular education facilities, and "more useful institutions."
Kosovars have also strongly resisted offers from extremist groups to "behave in more Islamic ways," such as their demand that women adopt the traditional veil and men grow beards, as some groups have tried to impose on Kosovars, according to officials from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
"We are European Muslims," Fatmire Terdevci, a Kosovar journalist working for Koha Ditore, a daily Albanian language newspaper told this reporter about two years ago.
"I am a Muslim, but in my own way," she said. "We belong in Europe. But still, I consider myself a Muslim." Terdevci, and other Muslims in Kosovo, stress they want Islam, but not on hard line terms. One could compare their belonging to Islam in the way a large number of French belong to the Catholic Church. They "belong" but rarely venture into one.
"Religion is part of the identity and culture of Kosovars," said Sven Lindholm a senior Press officer with the OSCE mission in Kosovo at the time, "but it is not always practiced."
"Unlike in Bosnia, outsiders have had very minor success here," added Lindholm. "In Buzim, a village in Bosnia," the OSCE executive said, "(financial patrons) have built no less than five mosques. They have printed postcards showing the five mosques." The Kosovars have gone a different way.
Indeed, one is more likely to see veiled women and bearded men in the streets of London, Amsterdam and Paris, than in Pristina. Kosovar Muslims — who handle their religion with ease and total lack of inhibition — offer hope that the barrier being erected by fanaticism will also one day crumble, as did the Berlin Wall.
*Published in the UAE's KHALEEJ TIMES on February 22, 2008. Claude Salhani is Editor of the Middle East Times and a political analyst in Washington, DC. He may be contacted at claude@metimes.com. |
