WARMONGERING STATEMENTS OF IMAM HODŽIĆ IN ACCORDANCE WITH POLITICS OF BiH ISLAMIC COMMUNITY

BELGRADE, DECEMBER 11 /SRNA/ - War-mongering statements from the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as the recent one by Imam Harun Hodžić at a religious lecture near Zenica, are in line with the politics that the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a wing of the SDA, has pursued over the past decades, historian Aleksandar Raković told SRNA.

He points out that in the early nineties of the last century, the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the wings of the Party of Democratic Action /SDA/, which destroyed Yugoslavia and caused a civil war in Yugoslavia. In this regard, as Raković states, such war-mongering statements are nothing new because there is a 30-year tradition in that structure, which nurtures the ideological understanding of warfare in Islam. "This is quite expected, from time to time it appears in public, but most often we don't even know what is being said in the mosques, and in any case it is in line with the politics that the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a wing of the SDA, has been pursuing for the past decades," says Raković. He notes that those who deal with this issue know all this, but the public "always kind of gets upset when it comes to the media". Imam Harun Hodžić, a former member of the infamous 7th Muslim Brigade, said recently at a religious lecture in Nemila near Zenica that every child should learn to use weapons, and every hunting section should be made into a formation that is ready to defend itself. Hodžić said that the shooting clubs should be turned into an army and every child should be trained to practice shooting, as well as that retired, demobilized members of the BiH Army should be brought into the hunting associations. As part of the infamous 7th Muslim Brigade, the so-called BiH armies there were mujahideen who committed terrible crimes against the Serb people and prisoners of war in Vozuća and Ozren.