Dont forget Srebrenica

“And do not be like those who forgot Allah, so He made them forget themselves. It is they who are rebellious transgressors (evil-doers)” [Surah al-Hashr, 19]

July marks 27 years since the abhorrent genocide committed against Muslims in Srebrenica (Bosnia), when at least 8,000 innocent mostly men and boys were massacred at the hands of the Serbian Army. The world stood by and watched, and UN appointed Dutch soldiers literally stepped aside to allow Serb forces to butcher through thousands of innocent and unarmed men, women and children. Their crime? That they were Muslim.

The words of Foad Riad, International Criminal Tribunal Judge in 1995 shed light on to the reality of the unimaginable horrors that took place, as follows: “Thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers' eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson. These are truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.”

As we see it, the victims have departed from this world, and we ask Allah (ﷻ) to accept them as shuhadaa and give them the highest status as He has promised in the Afterlife. But it is our responsibility to ensure that we never let the world forget this atrocity, which was a consequence of its double-standards. We must remind others around us in society, our colleagues, families, and especially children about this abhorrent injustice that was committed against Muslims, so that it is never allowed to repeat itself.

Please remember the victims in your duas (prayers) and raise as much awareness around this as possible so that we never see such an atrocity reoccurring ever again. For more information you can visit https://www.srebrenica.org.uk/

May Allah (ﷻ; The Possessor of Complete Glory and Majesty) protect us from forgetting ourselves, and restore strength and ‘izza (honour) within the Ummah, Ameen.