I will not comment on Huntington's selective use of quotes from the Qur'an except to that the method would be like taking a quote from the Book of Joshua about God ordering the extermination of the Philistines--man, woman, and child-- or a quote of Jesus about burning the chaff (the quote used to justify burning at the stake throughout the middle ages) or condemning those who don't believe in him to eternal damnation and using such a quote to portray all of Biblical religions as inherently and only violent.
On the issue of the Enes Karic incident, I would like to make a short comment.
Statement: ""--The leader of Bosnia's Muslim community wants to ban what he calls ``European garbage: alcohol, drugs and prostitution.'' His objection to pork sales caused it to disappear from Sarajevo markets."
Comment: There are some Islamic nationalists who wish to ban pork. They are opposed by the majority of Bosnian Muslims. As far as attacking drugs, prostitution, and alcohol, these are common topics. It is common to blame them on some enemy (in the U.S. Republicans like to blame them on Democrats, the religious right likes to blame them on liberals, and racists like to blame them on people of color). As for the idea of banning practices based on religious views, it is not limited to Enes Karic. In the U.S. the Bible is constantly being cited by politicians as a support for laws on various issues, and even the Supreme Court used the Bible in upholding a Georgia law banning various forms of consensual sexual activity. Those who believe that religion should not govern the laws of the state oppose such appeals to religious texts in lawmaking in the U.S. as much as they do in Bosnia.
Statement: "--An Islamic fundamentalist publication close to Enes Karic, the culture and education minister, advocates banning mixed marriages."
Comment: "This statement is true and was verified. Enes Karic was immediately denounced for defending this statement on banning mixed marriages by many Bosnian Muslims, including then prime minister Haris Silajdzic. Needless to say, there is no question of mixed marriages anymore in the Republika Srpska or the HVO controlled territories, where only people of one religion are allowed to live in peace."
Statement: "--Karic, an Islamic scholar, ordered a ban on ``aggressor music''-- songs from Serbs and Serbia."
Comment: Again, Karic was immediately condemned by Bosnian Muslims for his statements about "aggressor music."
General Comment: The Enic Karic incident is noteworthy. It provoked entire series of article in Europe saying "see, the Bosnian Muslims are fundamentalists and should be abandoned to their fate." These articles were all quoted by Tanjug.
Yet Karic's statements, wrong as they were, were mild compared to statements of Americans about Japanese during World War II. And Karic was immediately denounced, publicly, by a wide range of people in Sarajevo.
There is a wide ignorance of and hatred toward Islam in Europe and North America. It is conveyed by people like Huntington who take the very real threat of certain fundamentalist Muslim groups and generalize it to smear all Muslims and all of Islam. Enes Karic's statements were not only wrong, but they played right into the hands of the hatred of Muslims in the West, a hatred that is not expressed often by policy makers, but one that helped guide the policy that led to the fate of the "Safe Haven" of Srebrenica, the full shame of which it may take the Western world generations to understand.
Michael Sells