Bosnia Urged To Protect Clerics From ISIS Threats

The Bosniak member of Bosnia's presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, has called on the country's institutions to protect imams [Muslim clerics] after so-called Islamic State recently its supporters to kill Bosnian Muslim religious leaders by shooting them or cutting their throats. 

Izetbegovic said the recent grisly threats came from "renegades" from Bosnia, fighting in Syria, who were targeting Bosnia's Islamic Community because it had not succumbed to what he called a "misinterpretation of Islam", media reports said.

"The moderate, open and genuine interpretation of traditional Islam in this region is the best obstacle to all attempts to abuse and radicalize Muslims," Izetbegovic said at the press conference in Sarajevo.

The Islamist terrorist organization - which has suffered major setbacks recently in Iraq and Syria - called on its supporters in the Balkans to kill local Muslim leaders by slicing their throats and shooting them with silenced guns.

"Slash the heads of those [apostates], especially their Mufti. We swear by Allah, there is nothing Allah values more than killing those who twisted His faith, those who want Islam to be destroyed from within," ISIS, has said in the Balkan edition of its magazine, Rumiyah.

"Attack them, kill them using silencers, that is indeed a glorious act ... kill them in front of their children and wives. Spill their dirty blood, let it run down the streets of the Balkans," the magazine reads.

Along with the text, ISIS published photographs of Bosnia's senior Muslim cleric, Reisu-l-ulema Husein ef. Kavazovic, his deputy, Husein ef. Smajic, and the Muftis of the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

ISIS labelled the clerics "leaders of non-Islamic communities" and said that killing ...