Sells has been know to write interesting books covering issues and clashes between Christians and Muslims, due to his Serbian heritege and his background as a Professor and chairperson of the Department of Religion at Haverford College, in the US. He critisices his own in a very tough and honest way. Even if some fanatics will claim that he only speaks about the horrible acts of crime conducted by Serbians and Croats.
Sells gives us a detailed look into the, by the Serbs, created mythology. I say created, some of you may say revised, but in any case it hade the purpose to seduce it's own pepole to commit the most serious war crimes since the Soviet gulag camps or the concentration camps of the third rich.
Serbs use the death of Prince Lazar at the infamous battle in Kosovo between the Serbs and the Ottomans, Muslims have since been considered Christ killers and the primary target of Serb hatred. You can have your own opinions about this, but fact is that the Serbs used this myth to put a spell on there own people. Much like Adolf Hitler.

Sells writes in a way that many people might find hard to understand. Even if the book is only 150 pages it takes quite a while to get through. It is packed with information and it is not happy reading. It breaks your heart to hear about all the massacres that took place in Europe. As Europeans we should know better then let it happen again. And even as I knew about many of what Sells is writing, due to my background.
The West didn't do anything about the situation before it was too late. The reason to this may be that they didn't want to argue with Russia in imbalance that only needed something to fuel a last fight against the capitalists. Comments, by Sells, about secret NATO supply stores can't be taken seriously due to the level of speculations surrounded the breakup of the Warzawa pact. Fact is that Sovjet hade huge supply stores in the former Yugoslavia. And Serbian leaders made sure to take control over those, at an early stage of the conflict.

It is hard for a European to hear that those genocidal theories were used again, didn't we learn anything??? The Orthodox church were involved in those crimes and that is something I didn't expect, but that's why we are protestants in Sweden, not fundamentalists.

In all, a really good book that will open your eyes to the crimes committed by people that should know better. Serbians and Croatians was involved in World war II and it seems that people that suffered want revenge, much like Israel...

BUY!!!

I just finished reading this book and it was so intriguing that I finished it in one sitting. It will open your eyes, on the matter of Bosnia, so big that you'll be able to see the craters on Uranus, if there is any over there. Read it!

Sells gives us a solid account of the war in Bosnia in the early 1990's. However, I do have some criticisms. While he covers in quite abit of detail Croat and especially Serb religious fanaticism and violence, he only mentions the Bosniac's own atrocities on a couple of occasions.
The other problem is that the book is abit too short, when you see the price of the book (150 pages of actual text, excluding footnotes).

Although of Serbian origin, Michael Sells offers a detailed, unbiased and honest analysis of Serbian nationalism and Christian fundamentalism. Sells argues that Christian mythology and extremism helped enable the annihilation of an entire people. Driven by an ancient hatred for the Turks which dates back to the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the Serbs have always viewed Muslims as their primary adversary. Today, many Serbian nationalists deliberately associate Bosnian Muslims with the Ottomans even though no such link exists. However, this is sophisticated propaganda, the goal of which is to mislead the Serbian people and to induce hatred in them. This strategy turned out to be very successful because it unleashed the extermination of Bosnian Muslims. Numerous testimonies offered by the survivors of the Bosnian war lend considerable support to Sells' thesis, namely that Christian extremism played a pivotal role in justifying the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. For example, many survivors reported being called "bloody Turks" by Serbs soldiers. Other similar derogatory slurs were frequently used by Serb soldiers, revealing great hatred for Muslims. Moreover, a systematic destruction of mosques and other Islamic architecture indicate that the Serbs wanted to obliterate every single trace of Islam in Bosnia. The fact that every single mosque has been destroyed in Republika Srpska speaks for itself. Conversely, many churches remain intact in the area controlled by the Bosnian government. In point of fact, only a few churches have been destroyed. It needs to be pointed out that Croats also purposely targeted historical monuments, as is evident in their destruction of Stari Most, the infamous old bridge in Mostar, the symbolic significance of which cannot be overstressed. For many years, the bridge had symbolized co-existence and a multiethnic society. By destroying the bridge, the Croat nationalists sent a clear message, namely that co-existence was not feasible. Christian fundamentalism and propaganda are also highly evident in literary works of many Christian writers. A novelist and a recipient of Nobel Prize, Ivo Andric, depicted Muslims as primitive and intransigent extremists whose principal goal was to create an Islamic state in Bosnia, clearly oblivious to the fact that Bosnia was a secularized society. Many renowned Serbian authors openly express similar views, one of which is Vuk Draskovic, known for his bigotry, parochialism and Islamophobia. Paradoxically, few attempts are made in Serbia to criticize these preposterous let alone distorted assertions, the sole purpose of which is to defame the adherents of the Islamic faith. Sells further correctly points out in his book that the Western (read Christian) world knowingly stood by and allowed for the Bosnian genocide to continue. The evidence to corroborate this claim is abundant. The imposition of the arms embargo, constant futile negotiations with a notorious war criminal Milosevic and Vance-Owens's plan to partition Bosnia into a Serb and a Croat part, leaving nothing to Bosnian Muslims, thereby rewarding the aggressor and punishing the victim. In spite of the initial collaboration with Muslims, the Croats suddenly turned their back on Muslims and began destroying them, presumably thinking that it is better to kill Muslims (the alien) than their fellow Christians- the Serbs. In point of fact, Tudjman and Milosevic had secretly agreed to divide Bosnia into a Serb and a Croat part. Sells' book lucidly divulges the crucial role of Christian fanaticism and mythology in allowing for the genocide of Bosnian Muslims to occur. This is truly a well written, well argued and thoroughly documented account of the Bosnian war. Highly recommended.