Islamophobia likely to surge in Balkans

Balkans - Islamophobia is likely to increase in the near future in the Balkans, experts noted, as a result of a political and media environment prevailing in many countries in the region, Balkan Insight news reported.

Notably the situations in Croatia and Serbia have deteriorated in recent years due to regional phenomena like the refugee crisis of 2015 and the rise of the so called ISIS group in the Middle East.

"In 2015 we saw a paradigmatic shift in the rightwing parties in Croatia," Dino Mujadzevic, a researcher from the University of Zagreb and expert of contemporary history of South-Eastern Europe, told BIRN (non-profit organizations in the Balkans).

According to Mujadzevic, Islamophobia has not been a major issue in Croatia, but things have changed since the huge wave of refugees hit the country last year.

"For the first time, Croatian right-wing parties are exploiting the idea of a 'Muslim threat' coming to our country, imported by non-European Muslims ... and media in Croatia have started reporting extensively about crimes committed by Muslims or refugee seekers in other countries", Mujadzevic said, noting that this media environment is facilitating the growth of anti-Islamic sentiments among the population.

"In case there is a new wave of refugees ... Islamophobia will become a real force in Croatia," he predicted.

Mujadzevic's concerns were shared by Bojan Perovic, a researcher from the University of Hamburg and an expert on human rights from Serbia.

He warned about growing anti-Muslim sentiment in Serbian media and the risk that it might obtain wider support after the last parliamentarian elections marked the return of hardcore nationalist parties to parliament.

While Perovic noted that Serbian authorities reacted promptly to the refugee crisis, he noted that anti-Islamic sentiments are present in both Serbian school books and tabloids.

"In the future, and especially after nationalist parties came back to the parliament, we can expect this kind of rhetoric to become even more popular," Perovic told BIRN.

Both Perovic and Mujadzevic were among the experts who participated in a panel dedicated to Islamophobia in the Balkans, organized as part of the first European Islamophobia summit on Sunday.

Other panelists stressed that Islamophobic rhetoric can be found also in countries like Kosovo and Bosnia, where Muslims represent a large part of the population.

Arber Fetiu, a researcher of the University of Montreal, from Kosovo, said that although many people in Kosovo practice Islam, negative stereotypes against "bearded men" and "veiled women" were becoming increasingly common, as an effect of the concerns over radicalization and extremism, and because they are seen as subject to a "foreign religious influence" which might be undermining Kosovo's independence.

Dermana Seta, a Bosnian expert on religious studies who chairs the commission for freedom of religion inside the Bosnian Islamic Community, noted that Bosnian Muslims are often victims of hate speech and crimes in places where they are in the minority.

She said that moves by Bosnian authorities to fight terrorism and extremisim have contributed to stigmatizing Muslim believers as potential threats to security.

"The Bosnian strategy against terrorism specifically adopts measures against extremists ... while other extreme [Serbian and Croat] right-wing movements are not even mentioned," Seta told BIRN.

"Our government is trying to impress its Western partners, but its techniques are not doing any good for our internal situation," Seta concluded.