3 thoughts on “The Mujahideen of Bosnia

  1. Though I can’t see the video for technical reasons, only audio plays on my computer, something is strange about the picture I see before I play the movie: it has two steeples (or should I say minarat). Only Shi’ite mosques come with two steeples. Sunni mosques traditionally do have only one steeple. In Saudi Arabia only three mosques do have more than one steeple, I have read somewhere. One out of three has been designed and constructed by Italians who may not have been aware of the differences. That’s the one right behind the black cube. Wonder if Saudi Arabia funds mosques that look like Shi’ite mosques.

    This is a link to pictures of mosques in Mecca and Medina for your reference:
    http://www.tabnak.ir/fa/news/203590/تصاویر-عربستان-سرزمین-مساجد-تک-مناره

    Apparently mosques in Germany belong to both traditions. Are designers unaware of the differences or just different money sources led to this confusion? I don’t know. But it’s strange.
    Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mosques_in_Germany

    Sorry for off-topic, but I found the right moment to tell what was in my mind for long time.

  2. At 22 seconds in this otherwise admirably translated film, the English subtitle reads:

    The Saudi ideology was dominant here (at the King Fahd Mosque in Sarajevo) until recently/Bis vor kurzem hatte die saudische Botschaft hier das Sagen, aber….

    It is true that BOTSCHAFT can mean message, hence “ideology”, but in context the film is saying something more concrete, given that the word also means “(diplomatic) embassy”:

    Until recently the Saudi EMBASSY had the mosque under its control but had to hand over because…

    A clue to this mistranslation can be seen from the fact that “ideology” does not match the plural pronoun “they” in the second half of the sentence, whereas “embassy” as singular noun can, provided that one also accepts sentences in English like

    “the police say they (not “it”) are looking for robbers…”

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