Kurt Bassuener March 11th, 2009

Ahmet Alibašic, DPC Senior Associate and lecturer at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, wrote an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Europe on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s efforts to rally support against the International Criminal Court’s issuance of a warrant for his arrest on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Ahmet writes from his perspective as a Bosnian Muslim:

Muslim victims of genocide in Bosnia finally gained some succor from the arrest last July of former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic. Yet Muslims in Darfur are still being victimized by the regime of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whom the International Criminal Court indicted Wednesday.
 
As a Bosnian and a Muslim who suffered from international passivity in the face of genocide, I am appalled at Mr. Bashir’s transparent attempt at ethnoreligious manipulation. The international community — with Muslims at the forefront — should instead stand with Mr. Bashir’s victims and demand that he be brought to justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
 
Defending Mr. Bashir in the name of Islam is particularly odious. Muslim leaders already have failed their brother Bashir by missing opportunities over the years to help him by stopping him, as the Prophet Muhammad advised. Helping your brother whether he is right or wrong is not the Islamic way.
 
At a grassroots level, some Muslim voices have broken through the din of support for Mr. Bashir among Muslim leaders. After the ICC prosecutor announced the charges, the American Islamic Community correctly identified “our moral duty to seek justice for thousands of fellow Muslims murdered simply for having the wrong identity.”

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has condemned the expulsion of humanitarian aid groups by Bashir, but the American policy response remains unclear.

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