Bosnia's Muslims? A fundamentalist threat?

Serb nationalists are convinced that the Muslims of Bosnia are fundamentalists intent on establishing a radical, Iranian-style Islamic republic--one in which all women would be veiled and all Christians oppressed. Since 1992, say the Serbs, Muslims have been conducting a jihad, a holy war, against Serbia, in the pursuit of which they have castrated young men and crucified babies. If the war against Serbia succeeds, they warn, the Muslims will be in a position to threaten the rest of Europe.

Some important political leaders in Europe, while dismissing the more paranoid aspects of the Serb nationalist vision, share their dread that Bosnia might become an Islamic beachhead in the West. In France, Gaullist leaders admit they fear "the emergence of a kind of Gaza strip in the midst of the Balkans. . . . There's a widespread view that an isolated Muslim entity would not prove viable and that a drift to radical Islamic politics would follow."

Lately, anxiety about "Bosnian fundamentalism" has begun to spread. Some of Bosnia's western partisans, including Margaret Thatcher, have inadvertently stoked these fears by arguing that if the West does not intervene forcefully to protect Bosnia--a prospect that no longer seems likely- embittered Bosnians will be driven toward fundamentalism, forming an "Islamic timebomb" in the soft underbelly of Europe.

It may be understandable for Westerners to project onto Bosnia concerns that originally developed in their confrontation with the Middle East. But, as a closer look at Bosnia's Muslims will show, it is also a mistake--with potentially disastrous consequences.

Fundamentalism vs. Islamism

The term "Islamic fundamentalism," lately a buzz-word for journalists and officials alike, makes many experts on the Middle East uncomfortable, for it lumps together tendencies within political Islam that are not only quite distinct but even antagonistic. In the early 1980s French scholars sought a more sophisticated terminology to distinguish among different currents of Muslim political thought. They reserved the term "fundamentalism" for the doctrine that Muslims should draw inspiration solely from the Qur'an and the Sunna (the example of Prophet Muhammad) and reject all non-Islamic traditions and values accumulated over the past 1400 years. That doctrine appeals to urban elites, particularly merchants and the bourgeoisie, who view it as an affirmation of their values against more popular and rustic variations of Islam common among the lower classes, particularly recent arrivals from the countryside. Fundamentalism has been embraced with particular ardor by the ulama, Islamic religious scholars. Politically, fundamentalists tend to favor regimes that strictly enforce Islamic law, the shari'a--as interpreted, not surprisingly, by the ulama. Fundamentalism is now state doctrine in both Iran and Saudi Arabia, despite the Sunni-Shi'a dispute between the two. There are no fundamentalists in Bosnia. There are, however, small numbers of Islamists.

While Islamists and fundamentalists might appear similar to an American, to Muslims themselves the differences are striking. Islamism appeals to intellectuals and professionals who have had Western-style educations or lived abroad. Islamist ideologists invoke some of the medieval clerics who inspire the fundamentalists, but also draw on Western anti-modernist philosophers, such as Spengler, Heidegger, and Althusser. Emulating Leninism, they emphasize the need for a vanguard party organized into cells that can mobilize the masses. Their style of governing is totalitarian, using the power of the modern state and electronic media to prod Muslims to lead Qur'anic lifestyles.

Islamism is a post-modernist doctrine, an attempt to reconstruct a new communitarian ideology by men (and an occasional woman) who have been exposed to, and grown disenchanted with, modernity. Far more than fundamentalists, Islamists have been able to attract a following among the urban poor, a broad and volatile …