By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
When Aleksandar Vucic claimed that the murderer Alija Balijagic – who eats bacon and walks around the world carrying a bottle of brandy, from which he toasts to everyone he meets, starting from hunters to wolves and bears – is actually a radicalized “Islamic extremist”, it must have been clear to everyone that another false flag operation by Serbian secret services in Montenegro started.
And in a blink of an eye – in the proud Njegos’s country, there are protests against the construction of mosques and messages that Muslims will not be allowed to worship in the future. That message was delivered during the blockade of the bridge, which was clearly a demonstration exercise for the real thing – barricades, if necessary. That message was communicated, admittedly, with primitive rhetoric, because the speaker has not mastered speech, nor does he need speech to express what he thinks, that is, what he thinks he thinks. It was clear what he was trying to say: that now there are new circumstances, a new age of new winners, and that the Muslims who built and worshiped in Montenegro will build and worship no more. The most important thing is the following: the one chosen to speak on behalf of those who blocked the bridge repeated Vucic’s claim and announced resistance to “Islamic extremism”.
If you claim that all people, all nations and all religions in Montenegro are equal and protected by the Constitution, and that there is no religious or national discrimination here, I have a question for you: how long do you think a man would remain free if he said that Orthodox Christians would no longer baptize and build churches in Montenegro? Right: everyone is equal, aren’t they?
Here, however, another question is crucial. The one from the title. So: What does Islam mean to Montenegro?
Let me tell you right away what it does not mean to it. It is not as defined by Mandic’s idea of ”traditional”, by which the duke-speaker means: Orthodox Montenegro.
Mandic’s concept of “returning to Njegos’s Montenegro” is not only anti-Islamic, but it also has anti-Montenegrin features and, most importantly, the anti-civilization ones. It implies a return to the state in which Islam in Montenegro is a foreign body that needs to be removed. The idea of a “pure, native culture” is a practical call for assimilation and ethnic cleansing. This idea implies that there is something that makes the original culture “dirty”. A dirty thing should be cleaned. However: there is no pure culture, nor a zero, “natural” state of culture and identity. What is one moment a foreign influence, the next is an integral part of our identity. That is the difference between a tribe and a civilization. When he calls for the return of “Njegos’s” Montenegro, Mandic knows very well that he is calling for a state of defence against Islam and for Montenegro as a military fortress with full combat readiness.
Islam in Montenegro is not a foreign body, which will sometimes be tolerated and sometimes attacked. No: Islam, after all these centuries since Montenegro’s traumatic encounter with it, is an integral part of the Montenegrin identity. Islam significantly enriched Montenegrin culture – in a million ways. The operation to “remove” Islam from the identity body of Montenegro can only be violent – those who fantasize about it should know that.
If Montenegro really wants to be multicultural, it implies a melting pot of religious and national traditions. What we have today in Montenegro is the German concept of Leitkultur, the dominant culture, to which newcomers have to adapt.
But Montenegrin Muslims are not newcomers. They are where they belong. And the time when they had to adapt must be behind us once and for all.
It’s very simple, my dears: all rights to all, not rights to the minority when the majority decides it, as they wish. Rather, all rights to all, always. If Montenegro is truly civil, then there is no minority or majority in it. There are only citizens. Which are equal in everything.
Finally. It is a special kind of political blindness not to see, or pretend not to see, how the Belgrade narrative about Montenegro and Montenegrins, which is carried out here by the parties in power and the most powerful institution in the country – the Serbian Orthodox Church, contains numerous elements of anti-Semitic propaganda, accompanied by claims most similar to the indictment resulting from Serbian nationalism against Muslims, Bosniaks. The result of that indictment was, among other things, the genocide in Srebrenica.
In that narrative, the guilt of the Montenegrins, as well as the Bosniaks, is not racial, it is not the kind that Nazism attributed to the Jews: because both are, it is claimed, of “Serbian descent”. Their sin is betrayal and treachery: abandoning one, “original Serbian” identity and accepting another.
The narrative goes like this: Montenegro is a Serbian country. Serbs live in it.
Part of those Serbs committed treason by accepting Islam and becoming Bosniaks. Metropolitan Ampfilohije defined them as false people of false faith. Another part of the Montenegrin Serbs, says the following narrative, committed treason by forming the Montenegrin nation with the help of the communists. For Montenegrins, who are the most numerous ethnic group in Montenegro, Metropolitan Amfilohije claimed that they are “communist litter or bastards”.
Montenegrins, the Narrative says, betrayed tradition and their own ancestors. It is claimed that they also betrayed Njegos. In Montenegro, where Njegos’s “Mountain Wreath” is a kind of holy book, probably even more influential than the Bible, the accusation “You betrayed Njegos” has the force of the accusation “You betrayed Christ” – the one that was told to the Jews.
Montenegrins, the accusatory narrative continues, are, just like Bosniaks, not only traitors to the nation, but also traitors to the faith: they, it is claimed, betrayed Orthodoxy. According to the indictment, the Montenegrins planned to “take temples from the Church” and open hotels and shopping centres in them – i.e., to desecrate the holy places, all in the name of money, which is, according to the anti-Semitic standard, the “God of the Jews”, but also of the Montenegrins. Montenegrin political leaders are smugglers, tycoons, capitalists, criminals, financial speculators, bloodsuckers who rob the people. They seized power: they faked the independence referendum, stole all the elections. The government and Montenegrins are usurpers and desecrators of “traditional”, “Njegos’s” Montenegro. They are, besides, as Metropolitan Amfilohije never failed to point out, communists and godless people. These are all extremely serious accusations, created to disturb the citizens of Montenegro and cause hatred. It’s not just about hate speech. It’s not just about a speech, but much more than that: a narrative of hate.
Such an ideology necessarily leads to the statements we heard during the bridge blockade. And it leads, by the way, to things that are much more terrible, and necessarily follow from the said rhetoric. Because the narrative not only follows, but also produces reality. After you normalize the extremist narrative, the next step is to make it happen.
It’s easiest to sweep things under the carpet and slander me on obscure portals and social networks. It is profitable to repeat phrases that mean nothing: those about “civic”, “multicultural” Montenegro.
A responsible and free human being will do otherwise. They will look for structures of hatred in tradition, history and culture. So, they will try to reinterpret and recontextualize them so that their malignant effect is reduced. It has its price. Which I am happy to pay.
(The opinions and views of the columnist are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
