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By Miroljub Jevtic, Ph.D.
Negotiations regarding the future status of Kosovo have begun and it is increasingly clear that the overwhelming majority of the world media, not to mention the government of the United States and its allies, favor giving independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo, which since the 1999 war has been administered by the United Nations under NATO military control. In effect, the western world is in favor of detaching Kosovo from (Christian) Serbia by fiat of power and making it into an independent Muslim state.
The main argument of those supporting this scenario - notably in the United States, where advocates of the Muslim Albanian cause are very well funded - is that by doing so America would repair its image in the Islamic world and show that Americans do not have anti-Islamic inclinations. This, they think, would co-opt the influence of Islamic "extremists" and thus spare another possible 9/11 type attack.
Such sentiments can be found in the official report by the 9-11 Commission where it is recommended that America "defends, Muslims against tyrants and criminals in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. If the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us."
In addition, proponents of the independent Muslim Kosovo argue that the Muslim leadership in that province is moderate and that through nation building could create a prosperous, multiethnic democracy, which will, while still remaining sufficiently Muslim, serve as an example of how one can remain a Muslim and be secular at the same time.
This policy is founded on several grave misconceptions.
The first is that in the last five years of Muslim domination in Kosovo, that province has become monoethnic and monoreligious with Christians under pressure to flee the province or lose their life.
Second, by granting independence to Kosovo Muslims, hatred of America in the Islamic world will not be mitigated but would increase because the Islamic world and especially the violent jihadists will read this as a sign of weakness and West's capitulation at the demands of Muslims. Granting independence to an Islamic Kosovo will mollify many Muslims across the globe in their belief that their violent ways are indeed superior to the infidel American and would strengthen their conviction that such policy should be exported across the globe and most notably against Israel.
Misreading the Hatred
A large source of hatred for America comes from Islam's inability to conquer Jerusalem and claim as theirs their third most holy place, the al-Aqsa mosque that is built on the site of the Temple of Solomon. The fact that al-Aqsa is under a democratic regime and that America supports that democracy is the source of hatred that seethes through Islam. Therefore, from the Islamic point of view, the infidel America can give Muslims Kosovo; we can give them Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, New York and Paris... they will not be reconciled as long as they do not have control of Jerusalem.
Both "moderate" and "extreme" Muslims agree that Jerusalem must be part of a Muslim Palestinian state and should Islam relinquish this idea, be it in their dreams only, Muslims would, as Islamic clerics insinuate, eternally burn in hell.
"Muslim rage" before which the entire world quakes over few cartoons may burn even hotter if Kosovo become independent because if America can give Kosovo to the Albanian Muslims, Muslims will then believe that America can certainly give Jerusalem to the Palestinian Muslims and since Washington will not do that, the independence of Kosovo would be a catalyst for even more hatred of America by the Muslims.
In the psychology of pious Muslims, anyone who is against conquest of Jerusalem is an enemy, whether they are willing to say it openly or not. Moreover, a pious Muslim believes that it is not normal for Christians and Jews to reason any other way but the Islamic way which first and foremost seeks to demonstrate the superiority of its faith.
The fact that in traditionally Christian countries the number of Christian believers, as well as the number of Christian places of worship, is on the decline, whereas the number of Muslims and mosques is on the increase, is seen as the triumph of the true faith over the false faith - that is the triumph of Islam over Christianity.
So, instead of seeing the presence of the Western military power in Kosovo as proof of commitment to religious tolerance, the Albanian Muslims, and Muslims in general, see it as a proof of the fact that Islam is the true faith, superior to others by virtue that others are being destroyed before the very eyes of infidel soldiers who patrol these ruins and have no guts to do anything about it.
Granting independence to Muslims of Kosovo would therefore validate these generally accepted convictions that predominate in Islam and would strengthen the political hand of extremists because they will advocate more violence and point fingers at the Muslim success in Kosovo as an example to the superstitious masses that such policies produce results.
We are already witnessing an increasing affinity of the Muslim electorate towards these hawkish doctrines and as violent Jihad scores successes across the globe such as in Kosovo, the more "moderate" Muslim element may begin to doubt their moderation by increasing their antagonism for their "moderate" Islamic regimes. As recent Palestinian and Egyptian elections have shown, there is a real political perestroika happening in the Muslim world that is shifting towards jihadist ideology and is undermining moderate and even minimally pro-western governments.
Western democracies can clearly aid this Islamic political shift towards radicalism by handing them a victory in Kosovo because once Muslim Kosovo is granted independence, the extreme political elements of the Islamic world will stop campaigning on empty rhetoric and have a real example where violent jihad pays off.
Iran is already instituting these hawkish ideas into its foreign policy. The Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants a nuclear bomb in order to destroy Israel and the West and his position is not delusional as some argue in the West but rather rational from the Islamic perspective because it is a foreign policy platform that pursues fundamental Islamic aspirations to demonstrate superiority of Islamic faith by transforming a confrontation with the West into a global Islamic victory.
Iran was the big backer of Bosnian jihad in the 1990s and has sleeper cells across the Balkans including Kosovo. Iranian authorities recently held a rally to recruit "Martyrdom Seekers" and in all likelihood these existing sleeper cells will be reinforced.
Once and if Israel is ever forced to relinquish control of Jerusalem, it will be wiped off the map and the pretext for such imposed solution on Israel may in fact be an imposed solution on Serbian Kosovo where we already hear arguments that it is, supposedly, a special case. If Kosovo is proclaimed a special case under which to grant it independence, Muslims across the globe, already willing to die in suicide attacks, can make any conflict even bloodier and therefore even more special in order to detach more land from democratic countries and not just Serbia or Israel.
The advocates of an escalating militant Islamic reproachment with the West have not an iota of doubt regarding its humanness even if to the Western mind such religious-based murder is despicable. The moral underpinning is derived from a notion that killing an infidel cannot be done out of hatred but rather, it is an act of love.
However shocking this may seem to us Westerners, the Islamic doctrine is clear that non-Muslims live in sin and do things prohibited by Allah. As examples they often point to Western consumption of alcohol, pork, recognition of homosexual marriages, toleration of scantiness of female attire... perhaps taboo issues here but powerful enough to fanaticize the Muslim street. All these are sins punishable by death according to Islamic Sharia law if the transgressors continue to sin in spite of Godís warning as expressed in the Koran. The killing of these sinners simply ensures for them a more clement treatment on Judgment Day, because, if they are not killed for these sins, who knows what other sins they might yet commit?
This was the reasoning of Muhammad Atta and his comrades in terror when they killed on September 11. This will be the reasoning of an ever increasing number of Muslims who are not yet ready to see the West as a serious force that shouldn't be taken lightly.
West: Weak & Contemptuous
In the eyes of Islam, this image of the West, weak and contemptuous, will intensify once Kosovo become recognized as the third Muslim state of Europe because it will represent a thorough capitulation of the Western civilization in a small European province that has eradicated every trace of Christianity, and at that, eradicated with the help of countries which claim to be Christian.
In spite of our Western obsession with laws, the mores of intimidation and fear rule Kosovo's Islamic roost, and no one there cares what the European law says. Kosovo Muslims are ever ready to write any European type law for the books, but we never see any of them practiced because there is no majority of ordinary Muslim Albanians that promote diversity, nor does the Muslim media in Kosovo promote religious tolerance, not in their sentence structures nor in their paragraphs, and one is wanton to find any Kosovo Albanian rights groups promoting religious diversity and freedom of religious expression let alone campaign and condemn destruction of churches, raping of nuns, burning of crosses... not one Islamic legislator of Kosovo has ever seriously attempted to stop an unruly Islamic mob from wiping excrement over holy images of Christ in churches that, even an atheist Europe, should be proud of because it is the expression of its nascent, early civilization.
An independent Kosovo can be considered a base for jihad aggression against Europe simply by the fact that it will keep European and American forces tied in the Balkans providing favors to Muslims in the Europe's own back-yard. As such, a Muslim Kosovo is already serving as the base for Jihad because it has perfected it under the noses of the Europeans, and if it was possible under the European noses why not try to replicate that in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome...
Secretary Rumsfeld is, therefore, correct when he wants to pull the American troops out of Kosovo pending political solution, but a political solution that will grant independence to Kosovo may, as the case of Bosnia shows, never get the American troops out of there.
A way to enhance the position of the West in the Islamic world is not to grant independence to Kosovo.
After demonstrating its tough-minded policy in Iraq where the Islamic world is the first hand witness of the American might, vitality and determination to win, the logical step for Washington is to project its power by supporting ideals dear to the Western civilization - religious freedom, protection of minorities and rule of law. Granting independence to Kosovo will not further these American ideals because that province has clearly demonstrated, in the last five years, that it is more interested in pogroms, ethnic cleansing and monoculturalism versus the values that West deems important.
Instead of having the Serbian state be the ever vigilant one against the Islamic insurgency into Europe, it may perpetually be America that has to police the Balkans in order to provide safety to their loved ones in New York, Miami and elsewhere across America. This is a poor and inefficient use of allies that have mutual interests. Serbia and America were allies in WWII and it is the modern Serbian intelligence that eventually did catch the Islamic mastermind of the Madrid bombings.
To grant independence to Kosovo is to reject the advantages of a democratic country, Serbia, that can be an efficient ally in the war on terror. Such rejection is an illogical and morally brutal punishment for being a Western-minded democracy and, geographically, the frontal terrorism shield that safeguards the broader Europe.
Recognition of independence of Kosovo also smacks history of democracy in the Balkans on its head because Serbia is the first Balkan country that did institute democracy after overthrowing the Muslim rule. Prior to WWI, Serbian democracy was feared by European despots as the most liberal one in Europe and it is the Serbs that brought this democracy to Kosovo after they liberated it from Muslim tyranny in the early 1900s.
Having Kosovo go back to Islam, having it independent, is to have one's child sold to the brutal past.
To integrate Kosovo within a democratic Serbia is to further the American century there. President Bush should help this happen.