Bosnian Serb Secessionists Wield Islamophobia to Gain International Support for Their Cause

(Ben Gerstein – Just Security) A Russian-backed Bosnian Serb separatist leader ousted from office in Bosnia last year for defying the country’s international overseer has nevertheless extended his hostile campaign against Bosnia’s Muslim community, increasingly in league with far-right figures across Europe and in the United States. His rapidly escalating rhetoric has so alarmed leaders of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina that they issued a statement last month condemning the proliferation of hate speech and inflammatory narratives about Bosnia’s Muslim community, also known as Bosniaks. The Islamic Community’s statement was sparked by the recent deployment of aggressively anti-Muslim language by Milorad Dodik, the ex-President of Republika Srpska, the majority-Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other Bosnian Serb leaders in remarks to audiences in Israel and the United States. The Islamic Community’s response compared the heightened rhetoric to the hate speech and ethnically charged propaganda that inflamed tensions in the runup to the wars amid the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. – Bosnian Serbs Wield Islamophobia to Gain Support for Secession