Com­ment: This is to be seen against the back­ground of the revival of the Han­jar (13th Waf­fen SS) Divi­sion in Bosnia, the growth of the Nazi Bosniak Union in that same state, and the res­ur­rec­tion of fas­cist fight­ing for­ma­tions in Kosovo.

“Saudis Fund Balkan Mus­lims Spread­ing Hate of the West” by Bojan Pancevski; timeson­line; 3/28/2010.

“Saudi Ara­bia is pour­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balkans, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fight­ers for jihad in Afghanistan.

Accord­ing to offi­cials in Mace­do­nia, Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism threat­ens to desta­bilise the Balkans. Strict Wah­habi and Salafi fac­tions funded by Saudi organ­i­sa­tions are clash­ing with tra­di­tion­ally mod­er­ate local Mus­lim communities.

Fun­da­men­tal­ists have financed the con­struc­tion of scores of mosques and com­mu­nity cen­tres as well as hand­ing some fol­low­ers up to £225 a month. They are expected not only to grow beards but also to per­suade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a cus­tom vir­tu­ally unknown in the lib­eral Islamic tra­di­tion of the Balkans.

Gov­ern­ment sources in tra­di­tion­ally sec­u­lar Mace­do­nia (offi­cial title the For­mer Yugoslav Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia), said they were mon­i­tor­ing up to 50 Al-Qaeda vol­un­teers recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

Clas­si­fied doc­u­ments seen by The Sun­day Times reveal that Mace­don­ian offi­cials are also inves­ti­gat­ing a num­ber of Islamic char­i­ties, some in Saudi Ara­bia, which are active through­out the Balkans and are sus­pected of spread­ing extrem­ism and laun­der­ing money for ter­ror­ist organisations.

One of the groups under scrutiny is the Inter­na­tional Islamic Relief Organ­i­sa­tion from Saudi Ara­bia, which is on a United Nations black­list of organ­i­sa­tions back­ing ter­ror­ism. It did not respond to inquiries, but has pre­vi­ously denied involve­ment in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties, call­ing such claims “totally unfounded”.

Accord­ing to its web­site, it works in 32 coun­tries to pro­vide relief to the vic­tims of nat­ural dis­as­ters and to carry out human­i­tar­ian, health and edu­ca­tional projects.

“Hun­dreds of mil­lions have been poured into Mace­do­nia alone in the past decade and most of it comes from Saudi Ara­bia,” said a gov­ern­ment source. “The Saudis’ main export seems to be ide­ol­ogy, not oil.” . . .