In the Balkans, Muslim, Christian, etc., are sometimes ethnic terms that have more to do with who someone’s ancestors were than any religious practices.
Are you sure or just assuming? Many Bosniaks are remarkably secular Muslims and rarely step foot in a mosque or obey what we expect are Muslim restrictions. Bosniaks - the cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, non-mosque going, US loving version of Muslims. While that joke isn’t strictly true either there’s a definite grain of truth in it. It’s not entirely impossible in a small sample that none were Muslim. Bosniaks are the largest of the ethnic groups in Bosnia but they are not the majority. Most Bosnians aren’t Bosniak.
Generally no. They are all Slavs. You might see long sleeves and and pants on a hot day on a Bosniak woman who’s making the concession to covering herself (even if it’s a skin tight t-shirt and painted on jeans.) Head scarves IME seem to pop up around Ramadan in Bosniak dominant regions. Some regions where foreign fighters (post Afghanistan mujahadeen) settled have more beards on men. Those are all paper thin cultural indicators and not a matter of genetics.
Re: “hate crime” evidence – I take internet chatter with a grain of salt, but: there’s the possibility that it’s not been widely reported due to ongoing investigation, but supposedly the perpetrators in the Zemir Begic murder were heard yelling things like “kill the white people” before the attack (of course other theories for it not being reported exist, from “the media doesn’t want to sound racist” to the simple fact that maybe it didn’t happen). Whether they did or not, I don’t know. There is a YouTube video of the ambulance/police response at the scene, and the person doing the filming says something like, “and of course it’s a white kid. They were yelling ‘kill the white people’ and now this.” It’s unclear to me whether that person meant they literally heard that phrase, or just echoing the general fear and rumors around town that the violent “protestors” were going to take their act into the white neighborhoods. If Zemir was “targeted” for any particular reason, I would suspect it was due to being white rather than being Bosnian. And even if it was just a “wrong place, wrong time” attack, as the police initially, at least, said, the perception is certainly there after recent events and the aforementioned rumors that such a black-on-white attack would be racially-motivated. There are people closer to the survivors who may indeed have a different impression based on their accounts, and the survivors/witnesses haven’t as far as I know spoken publicly. I suppose that’s what the FBI investigation(s) are trying to sort out.
Most people know that part of town is heavily Bosnian. In the mugging of the woman, it’s possible as soon as she said anything (if she has an accent at all) they would assume she was Bosnian. After the Begic murder, there was huge Bosnian (and others, but largely Bosnian) march echoing (or mocking) the “Black Lives Matter” chant with things like “Bosnian Lives Matter.” It was kind of a back and forth. That was a weird night. I had just gotten back into town and walked out to get a pizza, and the vibe was really odd and creepy. I actually was only somewhat informed of the Begic murder, and didn’t know anything about the huge protest happening blocks away. The streets and sidewalks were empty. The first restaurant we called for takeout was closing early because there were no customers. The Italian pizza place proprietor had her two sons (or other large-ish, young male relative/acquaintances) whom I’ve never seen there before seemingly sort of on guard. I think there was a feeling was that the Bosnian march, which seemed in some respects to be calling the black protests out as hypocritical, was going to draw a different crowd in response and it could be blood in the streets.
So it was a day or two after that when the woman was stopped and dragged out of her car, and the “you’re Bosnian…” comment was said, etc. It was likely a response to the current ratcheting of tensions, as I don’t think there’s necessarily a long-standing widespread “beef” between the two groups. Sure, there’s a TON of things I have little clue about here: yes, the Bosnian immigrants may have displaced some people, or “overtook” some black neighborhoods when they moved in, and there may be some old animosity there. I also know that the Bosnians are generally pretty proud of what they’ve done in the area. Honestly, years ago the Bevo neighborhood was considered to be another victim of serious urban decay. The Bosnian refugees bought in there because it was inexpensive. Now there’s lots of business growth, the houses are generally rehabbed and maintained. They didn’t come here wealthy, and accomplished a lot, I think there’s some ill-will on both sides about that (“you just don’t work hard”/“you act like you’re better than us”). I don’t know how much your average teenage idiot out at 2 am with a crowbar knows or thinks about these things; though a lot of prejudice is inherited/impressed upon young people who simply don’t think about why.
I don’t claim to have first-hand insight into either of these communities. At best, second hand. I do know people. I’ve lived in St. Louis for a while, and in South City for about 10 years, and the above are just my impressions from the people and things I know and have heard.
maybe because most imigrants are pretty freaking hard racists?
The only real racists left are people from Old World cultures coming into this country. That they can come into this country and hate people who were already here for years is appalling. I’m not even black and I’m pissed about it.
I say this as the child of immigrants, by the way, speaking from experience.
There’s an old joke about Balkan people.
Q: How do you tell the difference between a Serb, a Croat, and a Bosniak?
A: Croats are the ones who don’t go to Mass. Serbs are the ones who don’t go to Orthodox Divine Liturgy. And Bosniaks are the ones who don’t pray to Mecca five times a day.
I believe there are plenty who have only been here for five or six generations. 
No I am certain. I’ve been good friends since school with 8 Bosnians, and thus their families, and they are not Muslim. I have also worked with 4 ( and been to two weddings, which is how I know) and none have been Muslim.
I realize it is a small sample. I wasn’t doubting the factoid, just unaware of it.
The STL mayor and chief of police said that the crime was not racially motivated and therefore it must be true. :dubious:
I doubt that the person was attacked because he was Bosnian. Rather he was attacked because he had the nerve to try to stop the pukes from beating on his car and maybe that he was white was icing on the cake for the attackers.
Also there have been many other attacks on whites, Hispanics, and Oriental people in STL by the blacks. The “Knock Out Game” has killed at least 3 people in the last couple of years and injured many others. We’ve been told that these ‘games’ aren’t racially motivated either.
My son’s best friend was sitting on the outside patio of a bar in STL last summer when he was shot by a punk who was trying to hit another punk across the street. Fortunately the bullet went through his arm and didn’t do major damage. My son’s friend is white and the shooter was black. In this case I don’t think that it was racially motivated, but just bad shooting. However blacks shooting other blacks is a very bad thing also. I think the STL area is well over 100 blacks killed by other blacks so far this year.
One other thing that doesn’t break the news often is that in North St. Louis, a mostly black community, stray dogs are used for target practice. I support an animal shelter that has helped over 50 dogs with gunshot wounds in the last year. Sad.
Fergeson was bad but there’s a lot worse going on.
Then you have the perfect insight to their ethnicity if they are one of the big three groups in Bosnia. A Catholic ceremony should be Croat. I’ll let you guess what the Serbian Orthodox ceremony means. 
Is Serbian Orthodox related to Russian Orthodox?
Yup. Same religion, different chapters (dioceses) with different leadership until you get to the head guy, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (currently Patriarch Bartholomew). He’s sort of like the Pope, but with less absolute power.
There’s Bulgarian Orthodox, Greek, Armenian, Assyrian, even American and a score of others. Worship is essentially the same, just flavored differently according to ethnicity and language. Which means I can go to any of the churches and attend the Liturgy with a roughly equal poor degree of comprehension. 
I talked to both my friend and my coworker and apparently there is a small minority in town that is both Bosnian & Catholic. My group of friends from school grew up together and thus that is why they have clustered, and the reason why I haven’t known any Muslims. My coworker (after my hesitation to bring it up) stated he and another are also in this minority, but that the other two are non-practicing Muslims. Ignorance fought.
missed edit window…
My friend also stated that his family converted a few generations ago, and it was probably the same for the rest of the group.
Not in this case…both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church are autocephalic. The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church is Kiril, Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus, and the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church is Irinej, Patriarch of Serbia.
The Patriarch of Constantinople doesn’t have any authority over those two churches.
Bosnian woman in St. Louis now charged with filing a false police report. Apparently laid down in the street til a passerby found her. Made up the whole damn story.
Oh, why am I not surprised? :rolleyes:
:smack::o
Maybe this is too speculative for GQ, but I’ve gotten the distinct impression this “beef” has been whipped up out of nothing by the police and/or their supporters as propaganda against the Ferguson protestors.
There were only two crimes a year apart the Bosnian “protestors” were concerned about, and one of them turned out not to have even happened. The gist of their “protest” was that black “thugs” were targeting poor hardworking white folks in the Bosnian community, and that here was a community that wanted more policing, but couldn’t get it because of the “riots” in Ferguson stretching the PD too thin.
Something like “white lives matter too, and we love the police, so stop giving them such a hard time, let them protect us rather than forcing them to tear gas black looters”. Or something. It’s too hard for me to believe this sentiment arose organically.