Bosnia and Gaza are not randomly chosen geographies. Both are lands that historically sustained experiences of multiculturalism, multifaith coexistence, and shared life. Gaza, too, has long been part of a multilayered social fabric, hosting different religions and ethnic identities throughout history. Before the war, in Sarajevo, Bosniak Muslims, Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats and Jews lived together. As Alija Izetbegovic once said: “We are a typical country located on the Great Border that separates two worlds. Our faith comes from the East, but our education is from Europe. Our heart belongs to one world, our mind to another. Within this lies a sense of forgiveness and benevolence. If we are honest people, we must admit that Bosnians constantly ask themselves who they are and to which world they belong. My answer to this question is this: I am a European Muslim. And I am perfectly content with this definition.” However, the West is deeply uncomfortable with this definition.
The Bosnian war, coupled with the West’s silence, led to one of the greatest human tragedies in the heart of Europe. At the very outset of the conflict, the arms embargo prevented the correction of the ammunition asymmetry that disadvantaged Bosnian Muslims, effectively paving the way for mass killings. Izetbegovic sharply condemned the immorality of the West’s early intervention in his speech at the German Society for Foreign Policy on March 17, 1995: “The international community did intervene in this war, but in a way it never should have. This must never be forgotten! The intervention took place through an arms embargo that, in practice, affected only the victim of the aggression. Instead of helping us through military intervention or by arming us, the world did exactly the opposite. It prohibited the arming of a country under attack, depriving us of our most legitimate, most natural right – the right to self-defense.”
In July 1995, one of the darkest chapters of the Bosnian War was written. In Srebrenica, which had been declared a safe zone by the United Nations, 8,372 Bosnian civilians were systematically massacred under the watch of Dutch soldiers. The massacre was not only an atrocity against the Bosnian people but also a moment when the universal values claimed by Western civilization – such as human rights, freedom and the right to life – were brutally betrayed. After World War II, Europe had declared that it had established a normative order centered on human dignity, pledging “never again” to allow such crimes to happen. However, Srebrenica revealed just how fragile those claims truly were. While thousands of Muslim civilians were slaughtered in a U.N.-declared safe zone, under the supposed protection of international forces, the silence of the Western world exposed the selective application of human rights discourse when faced with the tragedy of a Muslim population.
On the other hand, these events reflect another image deeply rooted in the Western perception of the East: Muslim geographies are often depicted as “natural” spaces where order, prosperity, and peace are impossible – lands inherently associated with violence and chaos. The atrocities in Srebrenica, combined with the West’s passive complicity, reinforced this perception, portraying the deaths of Bosnian Muslims as if they were part of the ordinary course of history. Today, we witness a similar picture in Gaza: while international law is openly violated, while children are killed, and hospitals and schools are bombed, much of the Western world remains silent – or even produces narratives that legitimize the attacks. In doing so, the tragedies experienced by Muslims are not framed within the Western value system as “humanitarian disasters” but are instead presented as though they are the natural destiny of these geographies.
The Western response to the Russia-Ukraine war makes this double standard even more evident. When Russia attacked Ukraine, the Western world acted swiftly: the EU spoke with one voice, the U.S. approved multibillion-dollar aid packages, borders were opened to Ukrainian refugees, and the media celebrated the Ukrainian people’s resistance through narratives of heroism. Refugees from Ukraine were seen as “one of us;” they were considered part of “civilization.” However, the same reflex was never triggered for the Muslims massacred in Bosnia or for the children dying under the bombs in Gaza. The principles of international law, the inviolability of the right to life, and the norms of humanitarian aid were conveniently suspended whenever Muslim populations were involved.
This selective approach exposes how instrumentalized the Western discourse on human rights has become and demonstrates that Muslims are consistently excluded from this value system. Understanding this silence requires understanding the deeply embedded rhetoric of Orientalism in the Western historical consciousness. Orientalism constructs a mental map in which the West places itself at the center while portraying the East as the “other” – backward, irrational, and inherently prone to violence. The media plays a critical role in constantly reproducing this narrative. For instance, during the Ukraine war, Western media explicitly named the aggressor, kept civilian casualties constantly in the spotlight, and mobilized public opinion. In contrast, in Gaza, the media language has largely been neutralized, with the identity of the perpetrator obscured and responsibility dispersed across vague narratives. A similar pattern unfolded in Srebrenica; the international media’s lack of attention prior to the massacre contributed to delayed intervention and created the conditions for the deaths of thousands.
Yet, Western societies were not entirely silent. In countries such as the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, and Canada, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the attacks on Gaza. Particularly on U.S. university campuses, students organized weekslong demonstrations; in some cases, campuses were occupied, and faculty members issued statements of solidarity. At leading universities like Columbia, Harvard, and MIT, students staged prolonged sit-ins, released pro-Palestinian statements, and pressured university administrations to take a clear stance on Gaza. However, despite these strong societal reactions, Western politics remained largely unaffected by these movements. On the contrary, during this period, some university presidents were forced to resign under political pressure, illustrating the widening gap between public sentiment and political decision-making.
Harvard University’s first female president, Claudine Gay, was questioned in Congress on accusations of “failing to adequately intervene” in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Soon after, allegations of plagiarism in her academic work were brought forward in an apparent attempt to discredit her, ultimately forcing her to resign. Similarly, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, was unable to withstand mounting political and financial pressures after being criticized for “not forcefully suppressing” criticisms of Israel and was also compelled to step down. These examples once again reveal how, in the context of Gaza, university autonomy in the West can be easily eroded under the influence of political authorities, donor lobbies, and public pressure. Academics and students who drew attention to the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza were frequently confronted with accusations of “anti-Semitism.” Students faced disciplinary investigations, some were suspended from their universities, and job offers were rescinded. At MIT, the work permits of researchers who participated in a pro-Palestinian student protest were questioned, while at Stanford, faculty members expressing support for Palestine became direct targets of donors. Most recently, the case of professor Cemal Kafadar, the director of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, remains fresh in public memory.
Although universities are often portrayed as independent centers of knowledge production, when it comes to Gaza, this claim loses much of its meaning under the direct influence of politics and capital. Moreover, Western politics and its influential networks simultaneously restrict free platforms for debate on the tragedy in Gaza and impose various forms of pressure, while at the same time continuing to claim a commitment to the values of “university autonomy” and “freedom of expression.” This contradiction – or hypocrisy – clearly reveals that Western discourses on both human rights and academic freedom operate selectively, and that the issue of Gaza has profoundly shaken the intellectual sphere even within Western democracies. In short, even the principles most fiercely defended by the West, such as the autonomy of higher education institutions, lose their significance when the context involves Muslims.
Despite the moral clarity expressed by large segments of society, intellectuals like Jürgen Habermas quickly stepped in to help shape a new political narrative. Habermas’s statement on Gaza occupies a central place in this debate. In a declaration co-signed with Nicole Deitelhoff, Rainer Forst, and Klaus Günther on Nov. 13, 2023, Habermas argued that Israel’s military operations following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks were “justified in principle” and claimed that labeling what is happening in Gaza as “genocide” would distort legal standards. What stands out in Habermas’s statement is the deliberate omission of the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza and the absence of any explicit acknowledgment of the value of Palestinian lives. This silence, at the discursive level, implicitly legitimizes Israel’s attacks, and when combined with the broader Orientalist framework of the West, it reinforces the perception that Muslim lives are less “worthy of mourning.”
Habermas’ stance also produces a profound contradiction within his own theoretical framework. Through his theory of communicative action and the concept of the public sphere, Habermas argues that democratic legitimacy can only be achieved through a process of deliberation conducted under free, equal, and non-coercive conditions. Yet, when it comes to Gaza, Palestinians are effectively excluded from this public sphere as equal subjects. The Western intellectual tradition thus reveals its tendency to easily marginalize Muslim geographies, repeatedly demonstrating through painful experiences that the theories it produces are applied selectively, primarily within the West itself. The differing responses to global tragedies expose a deep hierarchy within Western intellectual thought concerning which lives are deemed “worthy of mourning.” The deaths of Ukrainian civilians are immediately labeled as war crimes, whereas the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza are described merely as “the consequence of conflict.” When a thinker as prominent as Habermas adopts such a discourse, it provides, at a mental and discursive level, a form of legitimacy to the massacre in Gaza.
The trajectory from Srebrenica to Gaza clearly exposes the boundaries and selectivity of the Western discourse on human rights. Under the influence of orientalist rhetoric, the West positions Muslim geographies as the “other face” of civilization. Wars in regions like Bosnia and Gaza – historically multicultural and rooted in traditions of coexistence – have resulted not only in immense human loss but also in the complete disintegration of shared living experiences. The silence of the West accelerates this fragmentation, continually redefining the Muslim world as a perpetual “geography of crisis.” Regardless of the justifications presented, just as Gaza finds no place within Habermas’s moral imagination, the values underpinning the theoretical frameworks developed within the Western intellectual tradition ultimately do not extend to Muslims.
The swift response, humanitarian aid, and political unity displayed during the Ukraine war demonstrate that the West is fully capable of acting decisively when it chooses to do so. However, the silence during Bosnia’s tragedy in the recent past and now in Gaza reveals precisely for whom, when, and under what conditions the West chooses to defend human rights. At this point, both Western civilization and the international system have been dragged into a profound legitimacy crisis in the eyes of history, and the very concept of humanity has been rendered hollow. All these events stand as painful evidence that Muslims are implicitly positioned as the inferno of Western civilization. Within the context of Bosnia, Gaza, and Ukraine, it becomes clear that the West has long since lost the intellectual, moral and political foundations for its claim – or legitimacy – to lead humanity. The issue is no longer just about Gaza or Bosnia; it is about the collapse of the West’s own discursive and ethical legitimacy – the erosion of the very normative order it claims to have built in the name of universal values.
