thanks very much for one more small lifting of the thread hanging off the edge of the shroud.

(i randomly picked your blog to read from amygdala’s list — i must have done something good today to have fallen into harry’s place!)

I wonder how he will attempt to justify his own conduct. There are some fiery speeches to explain away.

The place of Serbian folklore with its portrayal of Balkan Muslims as “christ-killers” and traitors and its call for their genocide is an integral part of understanding Serbian nationalism

The Kosovo Myth: Slavic Muslims Portrayed as Christ-Killers in The Mountain Wreath

In 1389, the Serb Prince Lazar was defeated and killed in a battle against Ottoman Turkish Sultan Murad on the plain of Kosovo. While historians dispute the significance of the battle, in Serbian mythology it entailed the loss of Serb independence, a loss that was represented in cosmic terms. Lazar is portrayed as a Christ figure. He has a Last Supper with his nobles, one of whom, Vuk Brankovic, is a traitor and gives the battle plans to the Turks. During the battle, the Christ-Prince Lazar is slain and with him dies the Serb nation, to rise again only with the resurrection of Lazar. Turks are thus equated with Christ-Killers and Vuk Brankovic, the “Turk within,” becomes a symbol (and ancestral curse) of all slavic Muslims.

Thus the same manipulation of the “Christ-Killer” charge used in persecutions of Jews from the time of the First Crusade in 1096 also formed a rationale for the persecution of slavic Muslims. The classic illustration of this rationale is The Mountain Wreath, written by Prince-Bishop Petar II, known by the pen-name of Njegos, which portrays the 18th century Montenegrin extermination of slavic Muslims (Istraga Poturica).

The drama opens with Bishop Danilo, the play’s protagonist, brooding on the evil of Islam, the tragedy of Kosovo, and the treason of Vuk Brankovic. Danilo’s warriors suggest celebrating the holy day (Pentecost) by “cleansing” (cistimo) the land of non-Christians (v. 95). The chorus chants: “the high mountains reek with the stench of non-Christians [v. 284].” One of Danilo’s men proclaims that struggle won’t come to an end until “we or the Turks [slavic Muslims] are exterminated.” The reference to the slavic Muslims as “Turks” crystallizes the view that by converting to Islam the Muslims have changed their racial identity and have become the Turks who killed the Christ-Prince Lazar.

Recently, the killing in Bosnia has been misrepresented as a “blood-feud.” In The Mountain Wreath, however, the genocide is explicitly placed outside the category of the blood-feud. In tribal Montenegro and Serbia, a blood-feud, however ruthless and fatal, could be reconciled; it was not interminable. The godfather (Kuma) ceremony was used to reconcile clans who had fallen into blood-feud. In The Mountain Wreath, when the Muslims suggest a Kuma reconciliation, Danilo’s men object that the Kuma ceremony requires baptism. The Muslims offer an ecumenical analogy, suggesting that the Muslim hair-cutting ceremony is a parallel in their tradition to baptism. Danilo’s men respond with a stream of scatological insults of Islam, its prophet, and Muslims. With each set of insults, the chorus chants Tako, Vec Nikako (this way; there is no other) to indicate the “act” that must be taken. The play ends with the triumphant extermination of slavic Muslims as a formal initiation of Serb nationhood.

By moving the conflict from the realm of blood feud into a cosmic duality of good and evil, Njegos placed slavic Muslims in a permanent state of otherness. The sympathetic qualities of the Muslims are the last temptation of Danilo. However sympathetic in person, Muslims are Christ-killers, “blasphemers,” “spitters on the cross.” After slaughtering the Muslims—man, woman, and child—the Serb warriors take communion without the confession that was mandatory after blood-vengeance.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/387.html

the poem, one of the defining features of Serb nationalism and required reading in all schools in prewar Yugoslavia, is also notable for its celebration of Bishop Danilo’s ethnic cleansing of Montenegro (the so-called “Christmas Eve Massacre”) in the early 18th Century. [1]

In the poem, the Muslims repeatedly plead for coexistence. One example:

Small enough is this our land,
Yet two faiths there still may be
As in one bowl soups may agree
Let us still as brothers live.

However, these pleas for coexistence are seen by the bishop as merely a satanic temptation, the smile of Judas, which he finally overcomes. So he replies: ‘Our land is foul; it reeks of this false religion’. And, following his command:

No single seeing eye, no Muslim tongue,
escaped to tell his tale another day.
We put them all unto the sword
All those who would not be baptised.
But who paid homage to the Holy Child,
were all baptised with sign of Christian cross.
And as brother each was hail’d and greeted.
We put to fire the Turkish houses,
That there might be no stick nor trace
Of these true servants of the devil!

A very Christian war
http://www.geocities.com/famous_bosniaks/english/serbian_orthodox_church.html

The Churches and the Bosnian War
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/the_churches_and_the_bosnian_war.htm