Can you imagine how Euro-fascists such as Vlaams Belang and Geert Wilders will react to this? We are witness to a historical moment in Europe that highlights the inner contradictions on the continent: in the Balkans, long thought of as a region of European intolerance we have a hijab wearing Muslim woman elected as Mayor, whereas in nations such as the Netherlands and France you have politicians who actively seek to ban the hijab.

Europe’s first hijab-wearing mayor to take office in Bosnia

VISOKO: A new woman mayor in Bosnia who is the first in her country and the continent to wear the hijab headscarf, said on Tuesday her election was “a model for Europe and Islam.”

“This is a great victory of democracy. My fellow citizens showed a great open spirit because they elected me first as a woman but also as a woman who wears a veil,” respecting Islam, said Amra Babic, elected Sunday in the town of Visoko.

“This is a model for Europe but even beyond, for the East and the West which meet here in Bosnia,” she told AFP at the local branch of her party, still plastered with her campaign posters.

Babic, 43, who regularly wears the hijab, won 30 percent of the votes in the mayoral race in Visoko, a town of some 40,000 people near the capital of Sarajevo.

Two days after the vote, Babic, wearing a scarf covering her hair, ears and neck, was busy receiving by telephone congratulations for her victory. Others were coming in to bring her bouquets of flowers.

“Islam is very clear regarding the woman. It reserves for her a place in the public life and all those who interpret it correct know that this is the way it is,” said Babic, who belongs to Bosnia’s main Muslin party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA).

However, she is confident that the place for her country is “among modern European states.”

“I believe that my headscarf should not be a hindrance…. Europe will understand that it has to do with people who respect their own identity, but who are tolerant enough to respect the rights of others,” she said.

Babic, a mother of three and an economist, served as finance minister in the central canton of Zenica prior to running for mayor.

Muslims are the biggest religious group in Bosnia, making up some 40 percent of its 3.8 million population. Orthodox Christian Bosnian Serbs account for 31 percent while the traditionally Roman Catholic Croats represent 10 percent.

Bosnian Muslims are Sunni Hanafi and mostly supporters of a moderate Islam, introduced in the Balkans in the 15th century by the Ottomans.

The hijab was banned under communism when Bosnia was part of the federal Yugoslavia from 1945 until the early 1990s. A number of Muslims in Bosnian nowadays wear the hijab, although most women do not cover their heads.

“I will never abuse politics for religion. If I have the strength to protect my own rights, I will find the strength to protect the rights of others,” she said.

Having lost her husband in the 1992-1995 inter-ethnic war in Bosnia, Babic has for years led an association of families of Muslim fighters killed in the conflict.

“I put on the veil after my husband’s death,” she recalls, adding that the religion had helped her to overcome the loss.

“My religion tells me that everything that happens is God’s will. It helped me to concentrate my energy and survive. My sons are my greatest motivation,” she said.

Original post:

The magnanimity of Bosniak war veterans

Amazing, bewildering (h/t: Dino S.):

Bosnian bailout: War vets send cash to former foes

KOCINOVAC — They were bitter enemies on opposite sides of the front line during the horrors of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. Now, one side is bailing out the other in an act of once-unimaginable generosity.

In 2010, soldiers above 35 years old were forced to retire as Bosnia tried to rejuvenate its army. But the checks never came — and hundreds of them fell into poverty.

Slavko Rasevic, a Bosnian Serb veteran, was one of them. Things got so bad he had to siphon electricity from a neighbour’s home because he couldn’t pay the bills. He couldn’t even afford bus fare to get his three kids to school.

Then, just as he was about to tell his 17-year-old daughter she’d have to drop out of school, he got a bit of unexpected news. The men he used to fight against were sending him part of their pensions.

“High praise to those people over there,” he told The Associated Press.

It’s the latest example of former enemies edging closer together in a country still scarred by the legacy of Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II, one of a series of conflicts that grew out of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Since then, Muslim Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs have banded together in railway strikes and now serve together in the army. But this is the first time people from one side have reached into their pockets to help the others.

Rasevic joined the Bosnian Serb army 20 years ago to fight against Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in a war that killed 100,000 people and turned almost 2 million, including him, into refugees.

The violence ended with a 1995 peace agreement that carved the once-multiethnic part of Yugoslavia into two ethnic mini-states — a Bosnian Serb republic and a Bosniak-Croat federation.

A decade later the three wartime ethnic armies melded into one. As a professional soldier, Rasevic found himself sharing army barracks with his former enemies. That was a major move toward reconciliation for a country that still struggles with ethnic mistrust and is held together by an international administrator.

In 2010, parliament forced older soldiers to retire but failed to allocate pension funds in the budget. Then the six parties that won Bosnia’s national election were unable to form a government because of disputes over which ethnic group will run which ministry — and the country has been rudderless ever since.

With no government, there’s no budget — and no pensions for retired veterans.

Pressed by veteran protests, the government of the Bosniak-Croat region agreed to pay some 160 euros ($210) per month from its own budget to retired soldiers in its territory for as long as it takes to pass the national budget. However, the Bosnian Serb region refused to do the same for its veterans.

So Bosniak and Croat soldiers banded together to create a lifeline for their less fortunate former foes — contributing 5 euros ($6.50) each to a Bosnian Serb veterans’ fund.

Instead of spreading the first collection of about 5,000 euros ($6,500) thinly over hundreds of people, Bosnian Serb veterans decided the most desperate would get substantial chunks of money.

This month, Rasevic was singled out as one of the first to benefit. His family and another one will get 500 euros ($650) each, while 55 other struggling Bosnian Serb vets will get 60 euros ($78) each.

Anger over how politicians are treating veterans has generated a wave of solidarity among former foes in this country with 30 per cent unemployment.

Bosnian Serb veteran Rade Dzeletovic is in charge of distributing the money.

“It was a shock,” Dzeletovic says of the campaign. “We shot at each other once and now this comes from them.”

In Gorazde, on the other side of Bosnia’s ethnic boundary, Bosniak Senad Hubijer is amazed at how politicians are unwittingly contributing to ethnic reconciliation.

“When we were 16, politicians gave us guns and forced us to kill each other. Now their ignorance is forcing us to help each other,” he said.

During the war, Hubijer could not have imagined setting foot in the nearby majority Bosnian Serb town of Rogatica. Now he drives through it when he goes to Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, to protest against the government together with Bosnian Serb veterans.

Veteran Nihad Grabovica, a Bosniak, can’t help but laugh at the historical irony.

“I am now helping the people who shot at me so they can feed their children,” he said.