# Srebrenica Massacre Explained: Europe’s Muslim Genocide

**Author:** Dr. Omar Suleiman
**Series:** Explained
**Published:** 2024-07-11
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/7rfp0H1ZAg8
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/explained/srebrenica-massacre-explained-europes-muslim-genocide
**Topics:** Politics & Practical Theology, Social Justice

## Description
On the 29th anniversary of the Bosnian Genocide, which saw the brutal killing of over 8,000 Bosniak Muslims by a Serbian nationalist militia, Dr. Omar Suleiman reflects on the dehumanization that precedes genocide. He poses a crucial question: Would the victims have faced the same fate if they had...

## Summary
This piece draws a direct parallel between the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, in which roughly 8,000 mostly Muslim Bosniak men and boys were massacred by Serbian nationalist forces, and the ongoing genocide unfolding in Gaza today. It highlights how the Bosnian genocide, part of a broader conflict that killed an estimated 100,000 people (80% Bosniaks) over three years, occurred despite Bosniaks being European and Caucasian, arguing that their Muslim identity marked them for dehumanization and slaughter even in a post-Holocaust Europe that claimed to have moved beyond such savagery. The narrative recounts survivor testimony, scenes of refugees fleeing in terror, and the discovery of mass graves at the Srebrenica Memorial Center, where victims were buried, exhumed, and reburied in attempts to hide evidence, eventually identified through DNA decades later. It emphasizes that genocide does not happen suddenly but is enabled by sustained neglect, systematic dehumanization, and degradation of a targeted people. The piece then turns to Gaza, noting that despite unprecedented real-time visibility of killings via smartphones and social media, the world faces a similar or worse failure of accountability, with a mounting death toll that risks becoming mere statistics rather than human tragedies. It stresses the danger of 'statistical numbness'—treating casualty numbers as abstract rather than as individual human beings with families, dreams, and souls. The powerful image of rows of shoes left behind by Srebrenica's victims serves as a symbol for the need to humanize victims rather than reduce them to numbers, drawing a direct line to Gaza victims like Hind Rajab, urging the audience to remember and honor the humanity of those killed, both in Bosnia's past and Gaza's present.

## Key Takeaways
- The 1995 Srebrenica genocide, in which roughly 8,000 mostly Muslim Bosniaks were killed by a Serbian nationalist militia, was the only genocide in Europe since the Holocaust. It did not happen suddenly but followed years of violence in which an estimated 100,000 people were killed, around 80 percent of them Bosniaks, showing how genocide is preceded by sustained dehumanization rather than erupting in a single moment.
- Despite being European and Caucasian, Bosniak Muslims were demonized and assigned for slaughter because of their faith. This raises the troubling question of whether being Muslim alone was enough to disqualify a people from being seen as fully European or even fully human, a logic that echoes how Muslim victims elsewhere have been treated as natural casualties.
- Srebrenica unfolded before smartphones and social media, yet the genocide in Gaza is now witnessed in real time across screens worldwide with little international accountability, suggesting that information alone does not stop atrocities. The line of victims' shoes at the Srebrenica memorial stands as a reminder to resist statistical numbness by humanizing each soul behind the numbers rather than reducing the dead to a daily casualty count.

## Transcript
**[0:00]** When I was 12, I saw all my family, my father and my uncles, shot right in front of me. They were shot right in front of my house, and the people who did it still live in my city. This may sound like Gaza today, but it's actually Srebrenica.

**[0:15]** The genocide that occurred in Srebrenica 29 years ago this week, when some 8,000 mostly Muslim Bosniaks were killed by a Serbian nationalist militia, was the largest genocide Europe has seen since the Holocaust. But it didn't come out of nowhere. In the three years

**[0:30]** leading up to the genocide, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 80% of whom were Bosniaks. Mushkit Hara has three children. They were all shelled last week and her husband is dead. Two sisters hit by shrapnel. Their parents were both killed by shellfire in Gornish Polya.

**[0:50]** Hata on the right has lost a leg. Surgeons working around the clock have operated on 60 people so far. This girl has been living off crumbs. Today there is near global consensus that there was in fact a genocide in Srebrenica. And today we're seeing it in Gaza. And in an information overload world, we're inundated

**[1:10]** with the news of casualties and tragedies every day. 10 killed here, 25 killed there, 700 killed there, a hospital bombing here, a UN school destroyed, a whole family tree wiped out, seven-year-old Hind Rajab's car shot 355 times. Understanding how genocide unfolds means

**[1:30]** remembering how the systematic dehumanization of a people is what permits it in the first place. It doesn't happen in one day. It takes sustained neglect of a fellow human's plight, degradation and humiliation. Women, children and the old packed in so tight many were struggling

**[1:49]** to breathe. There were numerous stops. The refugees were so hungry and thirsty they were begging us for snow. Suddenly a tailgate broke open and women and children spilled onto the road bringing yet more misery. Bringing down the sides of the lorries revealed the full extent of the suffering

**[2:08]** these people had gone through to escape the horrors of Srebrenica. One elderly man died on the way. Some will never remember what they went through to reach safety. Others are unlikely ever to forget. Would the victims of the Srebrenica genocide have been brutally massacred if they

**[2:25]** weren't Muslim? Despite their location in Europe and their Caucasian identity, Muslim Bosniaks were demonized, dehumanized and consequently assigned for slaughter precisely because of their Islam. Post-World War II decolonization had already normalized the third world Muslim victim of Africa

**[2:43]** and Asia. But in Europe itself, only a few decades separated from the Holocaust, Europeans were boasting that they had already left the savagery of the past behind. Insert Islam however and the Bosniak Muslim is automatically transformed into a natural casualty. After seeing the aftermath of

**[3:01]** 8,000 men and boys brutally slaughtered, it begs the question, did being Muslim alone potentially disqualify one from being considered European or even human? You can go today to the video store in Belgrade and take out the videos. In my home city which is today in the Serbian part of Bosnia.

**[3:20]** This testimony from 1995 might as well have been from 2024. The Bosnian genocide happened before social media, before widespread internet access, before a smartphone world. Vance describes the job as one of the toughest in the world, underlined by the refugee crisis in Tuzla and elsewhere,

**[3:37]** where the orphanages are overfilled with young victims like these from Srebrenica. Now as a genocide unfolds in Gaza on our phones, TVs and tablets, what's our excuse? We know in real time as victims are murdered in cold blood. We see the bodies of lifeless Palestinian children.

**[3:56]** We observe the death toll increase every single day. In many ways it seems like the information overload at our fingertips has done little to stop the killing. Nine months on and Israel's undeterred genocide in Gaza continues with very little international accountability.

**[4:16]** The question is, if we can see genocide playing across our screens, what does that mean for the world that we live in today? And how do we prevent future Srebrenicas and future Gazas from happening while still being present in the moment and stopping this genocide today? How do we avoid

**[4:32]** statistical numbness? One in which casualty counts past and present are merely numbers, absent souls. When I visited the Srebrenica Memorial Center, I was chilled to the bone by the sheer number of graves, most of them containing bodies or parts of bodies of Bosniak Muslims recovered

**[4:51]** from mass graves. They cover the ground as far as the eye can see. And in Srebrenica, the air itself seems to bear witness to the genocide that took place only less than three decades ago. So many, many returning, 10 years to the day, to where so few escaped. Not just massacred,

**[5:12]** but hurriedly buried, then methodically exhumed to be hidden in deep pits. Safe, the Serbs hoped, from the eyes of the world. It could never have worked. And so today, a decade on, 610 bodies identified by their DNA

**[5:31]** were buried here in the mass cemetery for Srebrenica, laid to rest for a third and final time. The difference between one casualty or two, much less 8,000, is the difference between night and day. And the most chilling display at the Memorial Center is this line of shoes in the place where

**[5:52]** the victims were slaughtered like animals. Each pair a reminder that we must humanize the victim and bring life to the virtual. Every human being who once stood in those shoes had tried to escape the horrific cruelty of their tormentors. The victims thought of many ways to run and hide

**[6:07]** and dreamt of walking freely without fear. They were children, parents, spouses, and siblings. But to those who massacred them, assembly line style, they were less than insects. Now in Gaza, avoiding statistical numbness is just as important.

**[6:24]** Resist it by humanizing Hind, by humanizing the soul of our soul, Reem. They are alive with their Lord, and they need to remain alive in our hearts.

## Other Episodes in "Explained"
- [Bosnia's Genocide, Up Close and Personal | Dr. Omar Suleiman](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/explained/bosnias-genocide-up-close-and-personal-dr-omar-suleiman.md)
- [Palestine’s 1936 Great Revolt: A lie that divided Muslims and Christians | Dr. Omar Suleiman](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/explained/palestines-1936-great-revolt.md)
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- [The Truth About Muslims Hating America](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/explained/the-truth-about-muslims-hating-america.md)
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