July 11, 2005 marked the 10 year anniversary of the genocide against Bosnian Muslims carried out by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica. In 1995 Serb forces overran a UN contingent assigned to protect Muslim civilians. The result was the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim civilians. The bodies of the victims were buried in mass graves and, to this day, these bodies are in the process of being exhumed and identified. Those who led and participated in the genocide should be brought to justice. The Islamic Center of Southern California is calling upon the worldwide community to help arrest Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both of whom have been indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity by the UN tribunal in The Hague.

Man’s inhumanity to man is the worst of man’s sins and the act of genocide is a manifestation of this sin on a mass scale. Genocide is a blatant rejection of God’s sacred creation: the life of the human being. It is difficult to imagine what can lead man to act against his fellow man in such a manner. To be sure, the act of genocide begins when a man is led to believe that another man with a different religion, race, ethnicity, or culture is subhuman. Such belief plants the seed of intolerance. Once planted in the hearts and minds of men, man is capable of heinous crimes against man.

The Islamic Center offers its support and sympathy to the families and friends of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide. May God grant patience to those who have lost their loved ones. Let us never allow the murder of these innocent victims to have occurred in vain, but rather, let their deaths serve as a reminder of what man is capable of doing when he believes others are subhuman. We pray that our worldwide community of man learns never to succumb to the mindset that people who are different are somehow subhuman.