National Symbols Debate Stirs Ethno-Religious Divisions in Montenegro

**Mingle** · 10-29-2018, 09:08 PM

Even though Montenegro is a secular, multi-ethnic state, arguments about the use of religious symbols still simmer and people still join political parties that only represent one ethnic or religious group.

If there is a single message to be learned from the recent example of Macedonia by its Balkan neighbors, it is to take all the issues of national symbols seriously before they become a tool in a political bargain that can threat countries’ future.

Members of the Bosniak and Serbian communities in Montenegro have been disputing the country’s national symbols for long time. In times of political crisis, political and other representatives of those communities raise questions about the flag, the national anthem or even some of the school curriculum that includes national poetry.

Having a dialogue about everything is healthy for a society. Sometimes, from different historical perspectives, the roles of public figures from history should be reviewed and discussed.

In the US, people are discussing the role of Andrew Jackson, General Custer and General Sherman, for example. In Russia, people are struggling with the country’s Soviet and Imperial past, and in Serbia and Croatia, people are trying to redefine and offer another perspective on the role of their WWII leaders.

Some of those attempts are genuinely wrong, but generally, debate brings more good things than bad ones, since when we think about the past, we can learn from the mistakes our fellow humans made.

What is interesting in the recent public outrage initiated by Bosniak diaspora communities is the decision to include a demand for a ban on the novel ‘Hourglass’ by Danilo Kis in their usual call for the banning of the 19th Century Montenegrin poet and ruler Petar Petrovic Njegos from the school curriculum.

In the 1972 novel, Kis, a Yugoslav (Montenegrin/Jewish) author, writes about one of his characters blaming the bad experience that Jewish elders and the Prophet Muhammed had while eating pork for the ban on pork meat consummation.

But ‘Hourglass’ is much more than this single passage, since it tells the story of the last days of a man before he is sent to a concentration camp, and is partly based on the life of the author's father, who actually died in Auschwitz.

The Njegos story is older and more complicated. His works have been misused both by people who used quotes from it to justify war crimes, and by those who saw Islamophobia in his writing. Some have even called him a ‘genocidal poet’.

The work that has been questioned is ‘The Mountain Wreath’, an epic in which Njegos writes about his ancestor Prince/Bishop Danilo, who lived more than a century before him, and who started a revolt against Ottoman Turkey. This revolt included punitive massacres of the local Muslim population - recent converts from Christianity, who Orthodox Montenegrins considered not just apostates but traitors.

Montenegrin troops in 1918.

Many dialogues in this profound and great work are filled with stereotypes about both Islam and Christianity, but people sometimes forget that these are only dialogues, not the opinions of the author.

Njegos was a prince-bishop and ruler of Montenegro in the times when Montenegro fought for its independence against the Ottoman Empire, but he was not a shallow man who hated Muslims or Islam.

His famous letter to the local Ottoman pasha Skopljak, at the time ‘The Mountain Wreath’ was written, proves it, as he makes a clear distinction between Muslims and oppressors.

In the letter, he even makes an analogy between Montenegrin and Muslim leaders when he praises his contemporaries, Imam Shamil of the Caucasus and Abdelkader in Tunisia. He calls them heroes who fight their oppressors, even though they were Muslims fighting for independence against Christian countries.

After the call to ban the two authors from the school curriculum, the old discontent with the national flag emerged again.

Montenegro is a republic, but our coat of arms is historical, since it was the coat of arms of the former ruling Petrovic dynasty. It features double-headed eagle with lion on a shield, and while Montenegro is a secular state, it has three crosses on the eagle’s crown, sceptre and orb.

These crosses on the flag are considered provocative by the representatives of the Bosniak community, represented by the Bosniak Party, which is the junior partner in the country’s ruling coalition. Deputy Prime Minister Rafet Husovic, who is the president of the Bosniak Party, told media that they will call for an initiative to change the national flag of Montenegro, either by removing the crosses or adding crescents to it.

Albanian representatives in the Parliament stated that they will not support the Bosniak Initiative.

It is interesting, though, that this initiative is supported by the diaspora organisations from countries like Britain, the US, Canada and Slovenia, where either national, state or local symbols feature crosses and Christian symbols.

Montenegro’s move to declare Njegos's birthday a state holiday has ruffled feathers among some of the country's ethnic minority communities in 2013. Photo: BIRN.

Britain’s Union Jack even features three crosses – those of St George, St Andrew and St Patrick. I never heard official representatives of the Muslim faith in the UK calling for a change to the British flag, or Christian minority representatives in Turkey, Algeria and Pakistan complaining about the crescents on these countries’ flags.

Still, that is our reality, as it is our reality to have ethnic parties in Montenegro, in which members are enrolled based on their religious or ethnic preferences.

When Montenegro reclaimed its independence, we decided to constitute the country as a civic nation, not an ethnic one. If we are a civic nation, then ethnic political parties seem obsolete. Can you imagine having a Latino party in the US, or an exclusively white party, or a political party consisting of any other race or ethnicity in the country?

Having strong minority movements and organisations that lobby for the election of leaders that will stand up for their rights is one thing, a very important one, but if you have a political party whose only agenda is purely ethnic, and is exclusive of other ethnicities and religious groups, then one must question its existence.

Even though the Christian Orthodox community shares the same ethnicity, the disintegration of Yugoslavia caused 30 per cent of the population of Montenegro to adopt a Serbian identity.

It is not an ethnic distinction since you have no Serbian or Montenegrin villages, different customs, and distinctive border between the two communities.

There are even numerous examples where siblings in the same family adopt different identities, or where both parents are Montenegrin and the child is Serbian, or vice versa.

So basically it is a political difference, similar to Austria or Ukraine, where part of the population at one point in history defined themselves as part of a greater Russian or German nation. But these societies evolved and today understand the difference between a nation and ethnicity.

Nevertheless, Montenegro acknowledged the wish of the people who politically adopted a Serbian identity to organise themselves as a minority group. This minority group now wants to change the symbols of the country in so they become more Serbian.

Misko Vukovic, an MP from the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, called the changing of symbols initiative political nonsense, which it is, when you really think about it.

Some people in government and in opposition believe that the raising the issue of national symbols distracts public opinion from the subjects that really matter in our country - the reform agenda, financial stability, and progress in the EU integration process.

And if we continue to have ethnic groups perpetually challenging each other on the subjects that deeply divide our society, as a result of a shortsighted political games, we will again miss the chance to evolve into a healthy coherent society. United in our differences, not restrained by them.

Ljubomir Filipovic is a Montenegrin consultant and activist, and the former vice-mayor of Budva.

The opinions expressed in the Comment section are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/arti...gro-10-29-2018