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on the ground in Kosovo, nearly half was spent to sponsor
388
religious
"propagators" (i.e., missionaries), with the intent of converting Koso–
vars to Wahhabi fundamentalism.
Another six hundred thousand riyals went for the reconstruction of
thirty-seven mosques, and two hundred thousand riyals was spent on
two schools. The amount of money involved was fairly modest (four
million riyals is a little more than a million U.S. dollars), except when
one considers that the Saudis had only been on the scene in Kosovo for
a little over two months at that point. It was characteristic that a greater
proportion of Saudi aid was spent on fundamentalist "propagators"
and on mosque building than on broader humanitarian needs.
Mosque architecture is not the Wahhabis' only interest. Walking the
streets of Sarajevo, one might think they have gained considerable influ–
ence. Many young men wear "Islamic" beards, and numerous young
women have adopted head and shoulder coverings, or
hijab.
The cam–
pus of the University of Sarajevo is especially notable for this habit, and
a women's store with the amusing name "Hijab Boutique" opened near
the old Ottoman market.
As the defaced plaque at the Alipasha mosque demonstrates, the fun–
damentalists are definitely unpopular with Balkan Muslims. In Sara–
jevo,
hijab
may be more a fad than anything else-and it certainly has
not caught on in Kosovo, although many women wear Balkan head
scarves.
There are other things that Balkan Muslims favor, but which Wah–
habis disapprove. One is veneration of the dead. In Saudi Arabia itself,
fundamentalists have, over the past two hundred years, destroyed all
the tombs of the companions of the prophet Mohammed. In Kosovo,
the Saudis offered to rebuild several mosques in the area of
VushtrriNucitrn, which were destroyed during the
I998-99
fighting.
They promised the new mosques would be "better and more Islamic."
But first, they said, the Albanian Muslims would have to uproot the
Ottoman graveyards nearby.
Andras Riedlmayer, a Harvard University librarian and expert in this
field, recalls an incident that took place in the Kosovar town of Peja/Pec.
I was told about an incident in
I998,
when, as the villages in
the surrounding Kosovo countryside were in flames, a group of
Wahhabi missionaries-both Arabs and their Kosovar acolytes–
came to town and tried to impose their own way of praying (the
locals said it involved some "odd" body movements).
When the Wahhabis took out sledgehammers and set about
