ZAGREB, April 2, 2018 - Croatian member of the European Parliament Tonino Picula has said that ignoring the presence of Wahhabis and other radical Islamic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) can only lead to making them stronger and pose a threat first and foremost to Bosniaks.
"Minimising the problem of Wahhabis and other Salafi groups in the country, which have radicalism as the common denominator, can only result in a counter-effect, the strengthening of such groups," Picula told the Sarajevo-based Dnevni Avaz paper of Monday. He is arriving in BiH on Tuesday together with an EP delegation.
Picula was commenting on a statement by Croatian MEP Marijana Petir about the threat of radical Islamic groups and Saudi Arabia's influence, after which she received numerous threats.
He said the only thing worse than exaggerating the problem was to completely ignore it and that "radical Islamists pose, first and foremost, a threat to the Bosniak people in BiH because they deal the most violently with everyone not practicing the Islam they are imposing by deforming it."
He said Croatia's concerns were legitimate because it shared a 1,000-kilometre-long border with BiH and because "the issue of Wahhabis and similar radical groups in BiH has been open for too long."
