Wednesday, Sep 08th
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Books
More than 8,000 books and over 3,000 titles are available for visitors again at a major historical landmark in Banja Luka.
A library founded originally by the Bosnian Sanjak-bey Ferhat Pasha Sokolovic has been re-opened at a site belonging to the city's Muslim community. "We finally experienced a moment when a part of history, tradition and culture of the people from this area has been recovered," Imam Muriz Effendi Spahic said.
In a short book of four chapters (170 pages including an appendix), Richard Bulliet presents a compelling vision for what he calls an Islamo-Christian Civilization. Bulliet—professor of history at Columbia University, former director of The Middle East Institute, and executive secretary of the Middle East Studies Association—seeks to transcend the all too common ways of seeing and talking about the relationship between the Islamic and Western worlds.
by Norman Cigar
With the Jewish Holocaust etched in people's memories, how could genocide happen again? Does fierce nationalism necessarily lead to mass murder?
In this study, Norman Cigar provides the first scholarly study of genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, arguing that it is neither the unintentional result of civil war nor the unfortunate by-product of rabid nationalism. Genocide is, he contends, the planned and direct consequence of conscious policy decisions made by the Serbian establishment in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Its policies were carried out in a deliberate and systematic manner as part of a broader strategy intended to achieve a defined political objective the creation of an expanded, ethnically pure Greater Serbia.
From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by "The New York Times," and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" ("The Boston Globe"), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.
Srebrenica, the name of a town that I can hardly pronounce, is now etched deeply into my heart. We all remember 9/11, the eleventh of September, 2001 because on that day two aircrafts crashed into the twin towers of the New York World Trade Centre. 3000 people met a horrifying death. But at Srebrenica more than 13,000 Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by the Serbs virtually in full view of the Dutch United Nations troops stationed there to protect them.
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