424
PARTISAN REVIEW
smashing the 17th century gravestones in the garden of Peja's
ancient Defterdar Mosque, angry local residents beat them up and
chased them out of town. I was shown the damaged gravestones,
beautifully carved with floral motifs and verses from Qur'an. That
was in the late summer of 1998. Six months later, in the spring of
1999, Serb paramilitaries came and burned down the mosque.
Unlike the fundamentalist missionaries, they were not interested in
the gravestones.
This sort of hard-shell outlook can scarcely appeal to the nationalistic
Albanians, who, like their Serb adversaries, consider their graves to be
proof of their claim on Kosovo. But fundamentalist proscriptions go on
and on. They do not like music, except for the drum. They do not accept
Sufism, or mysticism, as a part of Islam. Both of these strictures run
counter to Balkan Muslim traditions.
Balkan Muslims are especially devoted to a practice that drives Wah–
habis to fury:
mawlid,
or, as it is locally called,
mevlud,
the commemo–
ration of Mohammed's birth. To the fundamentalists, celebrating the
prophet's birthday smacks of the Christian-style worship of Jesus.
Abdussalam Chouia, a leading spokesman for the so-called Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a body which has spent consider–
able time harassing the American media over the very use of such terms
as "Islamic fundamentalist," professed not even to know what
mevlud
is.
"It
isn't part of Islam," he insisted.
CAIR members are, to put it delicately, masters at twisting words.
The very idea of an organization concerned with "American-Islamic
relations," as if all Americans agreed on Islamic issues, as if Muslim cit–
izens of the U.S. were not Americans, and as if the Islamic world were
united in a supposed confrontation with America, is absurdly presump–
tuous. But CAIR has succeeded in intimidating numerous American
newspaper editors into a form of political correctness that involves cod–
dling Palestinian and other extremists under the pretext that"American
bigotry" threatens Muslims .
In Bosnia-Hercegovina, many Islamic officials dislike fundamentalist
activities but are reluctant to denounce them. The Bosnians are avid for
the money. Only a few local Sufis have strongly criticized Wahhabi mis–
sionizing, arguing that the long presence of Sufi spiritualism in the
Balkans is incompatible with fundamentalist fanaticism. In the end,
Balkan Muslims are desperate to be viewed as European, and submis–
sion to the will of the Wahhabis will certainly do nothing to advance
that agenda.
