One should not be too concerned about the Cardinal's statement. He had many much worse and less truthful statements since the end of the war. The most recent one about the increasing Islamization of Sarajevo speaks much more about the past and someone's bad conscience, than about current events.
Cardinal Puljic has probably been informed that the biggest genocide of religious objects, unprecedented over the last few centuries, was carried out in Bosnia-Hercegovina. This genocide affected Islamic religious objects. As many as 1,280 mosques and Islamic religious objects were wiped off from the face of the Earth. This is not surprising and this genocide of religious objects should be context of genocide and ethnic cleansing and the attempt to divide this state. Today the previous locations of Islamic religious objects are used as soccer fields, garbage dumps, ecologically clean parks, anything but mosques. The Cardinal should have been interested in that cleansed "small land of Bosnia" as well. Therefore, as is well known in the Republic of Srpska, out of a thousand mosques, only one stands, surviving in a rural, inaccessible region. The rest of destroyed mosques were located in places where Catholic Christian believers did not tolerate other and different places for prayer to the One and Exalted being.
It's fine to talk and even give statements for newspapers, but facts are undeniable.
That is where we reach the true dimension of this religious genocide, the destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar, feudal complex Begovina and all the mosques in Stolac, Foca, Brcko, Banja Luka, Mostar, Trebinje, Gornji and Donji Vakuf, Ahmici...
There is a transcript of a communication made before the horrendous crime in Ahmici in which, after taking down the coordinates, an HVO officer berates his gunner for missing the mosque in Ahmici: "What sort of Ustasha are you if you can't hit a mosque?" In the Hague, they have a map of central Bosnia signed exactly by the indicted HVO officer, Blaskic, on which all of the mosques are marked as artillery targets.
As is well-known a similar map produced by the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina hasn't been found.
It is also easy to check whether Islamic countries build only mosques while western countries build streets and schools. Again, the Cardinal is wrong. The data is available in the Federation Ministry for Education and indicates that the Islamic countries have constructed numerous schools in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
It should be mentioned that out of the huge amount of assistance donated to this country by Saudi Arabia only seven percent was used for reconstruction or construction of religious objects.
Therefore the truth has nothing to do with the statement.
These sorts of lies are only an obvious example of the reactions of the local, in no way provoked media, about the donations from Islamic countries. They are mostly concerned about the construction of mosques.
Cardinal Puljic hasn't reacted so far, and he could have at least done it in the Inter-religious Council where he holds meetings and babbles about ecumenism and religious cooperation, about all those crosses planted between Mostar, Pocitelj, Kiseljak, and Zepce, where mosques and coexistence existed once upon a time.
But, Cardinal Puljic was not the only one to express a lack of misunderstanding for Islam. Similar lack of understanding was demonstrated by here present OHR. Petritsch was very permissive towards Dodik when he first opposed the reconstruction of the Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka, and then supposedly agreed with the reconstruction but raised all sorts of legal obstacles and threatened to demolish the mosque if the reconstruction started before all the needed documents were obtained. The decision of the Human Rights Court allowing the reconstruction to proceed was futile. Besides two-three meetings and curt statements Petritsch did not demonstrate decisiveness that is characteristic for him in dismissals of Bosniak officials.
The Democratic Initiative of Sarajevo Serbs took care of giving the case initiated by Cardinal Puljic, regarding the alleged "Islamization of Sarajevo", a lowly and tragic dimension. Namely, they supported the Cardinal and thereby confirmed mutual alignment of opinions.
According to Nezavisne Novine, the Democratic Initiative "agrees with the Cardinal of Vrhbosna, Vinko Puljic, and his criticism of 'increasing Islamization of Sarajevo', and reminds the public that it warned the public about the same issue as many as two years ago". Therefore, the only open issue is who is the true "owner" of such statements.
Kapor is also an expert on Islamic architecture.
According to him "new mosques do not correspond to Bosnian Islamic architectural tradition and Bosnian Islam". "This is imported Saudi Arabian, Afghan or Indonesian Islamic architecture," states Kapor as a worldly expert that knows all about Islam from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan and Indonesia, therefore much more than even the Cardinal. He then adds that in those mosques and around them, the faithful "practice the type of Islam alien to Bosnia-Hercegovina".
I do not know who else will try to help the Cardinal, besides Goran Kapor. But it already seems that enough has been said and that more than this is not necessary.