Thursday, March 27, 2008

About Kosovo

On March 19, a month after Kosovo declared independence, Bulgaria recognized it together with Croatia and Hungary.
The reaction of mainstream Bulgarian media is shown e.g. in this editorial of Standart daily: title We surrendered, subtitle We stabbed Serbia because of Brussels, the neigbours (Serbs - M.M.) slam the door in our face. The widespread warm feelings of Bulgarians to their Serbian "brothers" is strange, considering the fact that Serbia is a historical enemy of Bulgaria and has never missed an opportunity to "stab" it. You also see that Bulgarian journalists still cannot learn to separate reporting events from commenting them.
However, Bulgarians aren't alone in expressing hostile reactions to the newborn state. People located at a safe distance from the Balkans and expected to keep their heads calm are calling Kosovo Islamism's New Beachhead and First Step For Islam's Balkanization of the World.
Well, I am also not very happy about the emergence of another Muslim state. And I know that Kosovars, as people, aren't any nicer than Serbs. When NATO in 1999 first gave them the opportunity to be masters in their own house, what did they do? They started genocidal attacks against their Serb minority. If a person in a crowd of Kosovo Albanians was suspected to be a Serb, he would be encircled and killed. A Bulgarian working for the UN became victim of such lynching. Somebody asked him in the street in Serbian what time it was. After our man replied in the same language, he was murdered on the spot.
I also remember the words of the widow of a prominent Kosovar killed by the Serbs: "What makes me particularly sad is that he was buried by Gypsies." You cannot hear such a phrase in a civilized country, can you? We may rightly hate political correctness, but this is because we have too much of it; having too little is equally bad.
However, the question isn't what sort of people Kosovars are. The question is what sort of people we are.
Are we people who stand for a civilization based on universal moral principles, beginning with the Golden Rule? Or are we people of hypocrisy and double standards? You who are against the independence of Kosovo, would you ever agree to live under Serbian rule? Honestly? And if you wouldn't, why do you say that Kosovars should?
Do we believe and stand for human rights, or just for rights of people whom we like and who resemble us? If we deny rights to people because they are different from us and likely to be a threat to us, aren't we guilty of the same sins in which we accuse our Muslim opponents - supremacy, tribalism and us-versus-them mentality?
How can we appeal to Muslims to join our civilization, if we renounce its principles ourselves at the very moment when this seems convenient?
Are we ready to defend our society and culture against Islamism, or we consider this a troublesome and dirty job we'd better leave to Serbian war criminals?
And while putting on our special hats for thinking in order to answer the above "difficult" questions, let's give Kosovars our congratulations and best wishes for the future of their state. It doesn't matter if this is only in lip service. As I said, political correctness isn't 100% bad.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I feel much the same, Maya. I don't like the idea of another Muslim state in Europe, but it's there and I don't expect Kosovars to co-exist with Serbians peacefully (or willingly) considering the history.

Maya M said...

Thank you! I am glad that you think the same.