[ALBSA-Info] Riedlmayer 's rightful and urgent concerns

[Agron Alibali]

RFE-RL
[C] END NOTE
[27] SAUDI AID WORKERS BULLDOZE BALKAN MONUMENTS
By Jolyon Naegele 
The Saudi bulldozing of some of the most historically 

valuable architectural monuments in the western Kosova
market 

town of Djakovica is merely the latest in a series of 

iconoclastic activities in the Balkans undertaken in
the name 

of reconstruction assistance by Arab aid
organizations. War- 

damaged historic buildings are not repaired, but
rather 

demolished to make way for what the Arab donors
consider to 

be more proper Islamic structures. 

The destruction is a further blow to Kosova's 

architectural heritage, following the destruction by
Serbian 

forces and civilians in 1998 and 1999 of over 200
mosques and 

other Islamic structures--about one-third of the total
number 

in the province. 

Harvard University Fine Arts librarian Andras 

Riedlmayer, the co-author of a survey of Kosova's
war-damaged 

architectural sites, is outraged by the Saudi
demolition 

program. 

"Unfortunately, a Saudi aid agency got permits from
the 

local reconstruction agency and from the local
institute for 

the preservation of monuments to work on the
restoration, so 

to speak, of the Hadum mosque complex in the center of
the 

historic district." 

Riedlmayer says the Saudis began on 24 July by trying
to 

knock down all the Ottoman-era gravestones in the
cemetery of 

the Hadum mosque. 

"The Saudis were interested in removing them because 

they consider gravestones to be idolatrous. They are 

followers of Wahhabism, which is an extremist
interpretation 

of Islam at odds with the practice of most of the
Muslim 

world." 

The Wahhabis are a purist movement founded in the 18th


century by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (c. 1703-1791).
He 

converted the Saud tribe, which now rules Saudi
Arabia. The 

Wahhabis are the largest and most powerful Muslim sect
in 

Saudi Arabia. 

Riedlmayer says the Saudis are obsessed with having
all 

ancient tombstones, mausoleums, and Sufi shrines
located near 

mosques eliminated, since--unlike most Muslims in the
world 

today--the Wahhabis believe these to be "un-Islamic"
and 

idolatrous. He said: "the Wahhabis, with their wealth
and 

fanaticism, are a menace to heritage, in some ways
more 

dangerous than the [Serb paramilitary] Chetniks, since
about 

the latter, at least, no one harbors any illusions
regarding 

their uncharitable intentions." 

The Saudi Joint Relief Committee for the People of 

Kosovo and Chechnya, established by royal decree, has
built 

mosques, schools, clinics, and shelters for displaced 

persons. It has also supplied the province with
several 

hundred tons of medicine, food, blankets, tents, and
clothing 

during the last 13 months. 

But spreading the message of Wahhabi Islam appears to
be 

another aim of the committee. The new mosques are
white, boxy 

structures devoid of detail--a far cry from the
centuries-old 

Ottoman-style mosques that characterize the urban and
village 

landscape in much of the Balkans. 

Riedlmayer says NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers declined to


intervene in Djakovica after the Saudis showed their 

authorized papers. 

"Eventually the Department of Culture in UNMIK (the UN


administration) was notified. They spoke with the
Saudis on 

[27 July] and tried to get them to desist. However, on
[28 

July], the Saudis sent in a bulldozer [and] knocked
down the 

buildings around the Hadum mosque, including the
library 

built in 1733 and ancient gravestones in the
graveyard." 

The Hadum mosque itself, which survived last year's 

fighting largely intact--despite fire damage to its
porch and 

grenade damage to its minaret--remains endangered. If
the 

past is prologue, the frescoes could soon be
whitewashed by 

Wahhabi purists. 

Attempts by RFE/RL to contact the UNMIK-Joint Interim 

Administration's Department of Culture, the Kosovo
Institute 

for the Protection of Monuments, or the Saudi Joint
Relief 

Committee in Kosovo were unsuccessful. 

However, Peruvian Alvaro Higueras, from the UNMIK 

Culture Department, confirmed in a telephone call to 

Riedlmayer on 3 August that the Saudis had razed the
library 

and Koran school. 

Higueras said the Saudis planned to build a reinforced


concrete Islamic center on the cleared site. But the
UNMIK 

official says the Saudis applied for permission for a 

restoration project, not for new construction.
Higueras says 

an order has now been issued to stop construction 

indefinitely. He says the Saudis will have to "undo
the 

damage" and restore the Ottoman-era buildings using 

traditional materials and techniques. 

Riedlmayer has documented cases in which the Saudi and


other Arab aid agencies have destroyed other historic
Islamic 

buildings elsewhere in Kosova, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and


Bulgaria. 

Last October, while Riedlmayer was in Kosova
conducting 

a survey of war-damaged architectural heritage, he
witnessed 

the destruction of Muslim cemeteries in Vushtrri. He
says an 

Islamic aid agency from the United Arab Emirates had 

pressured local Albanian residents to sledgehammer the
graves 

of their ancestors, completely clearing two historic 

graveyards next to the Gazi Ali Beg and Karamanli
mosques of 

more than 100 gravestones dating back to the 15th
century. 

Only the grave marker of Gazi Ali Beg himself
remained, as 

the locals refused to allow that one to be smashed. 

Riedlmayer says the UAE aid agency promised to rebuild


the damaged mosques "twice as big and twice as
Islamic," but 

only if the gravestones were removed. He says the
agency, the 

largest aid organization in the town, also made an
implicit 

threat to withhold humanitarian aid if the donors'
request 

was ignored. 

Riedlmayer notes that during and immediately after the


war in Bosnia (1992-95), a Saudi aid agency took
charge of 

the restoration of the Gazi Husrev Beg mosque (Begova 

dzamija) as well as other historic mosques in Sarajevo
and in 

many other towns and villages. 

At the Beg mosque, the Saudis ordered the Ottoman tile


work and painted wall decorations stripped off and
discarded 

and had the whole building redone, as Riedlmayer puts
it "in 

gleaming hospital white, even the minaret slathered in
white 

plaster." He says that in scores of villages, the
Saudis had 

war-damaged but restorable historic Ottoman-style
Bosnian 

mosques demolished and redone Saudi-style. All of the 

colorful Balkan-Muslim interior decor was eliminated,
and 

separate entrances were added to segregate women. 

To drive home the significance of the Saudi
destruction 

in the Balkans, Riedlmayer says, "Imagine, if you
will, some 

terrible catastrophe affecting the historic churches
of Rome 

and Tuscany, and then having" modern-day U.S.
Christian sects 

coming in and insisting that they be redone in "proper


Christian style." 

The author is a senior RFE/RL correspondent based in
Prague. 

To view photos of some of the structures described in
the 

article go to: 


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