Bosnians are allowed to celebrate everything that does not offend the feelings of the two peoples (Croats and Serbs) in the country who are openly antagonistic towards the same nation-state they live in, with a deeply criminal history, because objectively, that is the case. I also know they attack the truth regarding the Bosnian Kingdom, but that is a different topic. This is the reason why you have a sculpture of Ban Kulin and not, for example, a monument to Jakub Pasha, who destroyed a Croatian army in 1493, killed the Croatian elites, and expanded the borders of Ottoman Bosnia westward, allowing the sultanate to expand its control over most of what is now Croatia.
I know the pre-programmed, colonised response: “Well, because Bosnia wasn’t independent; it was part of the Ottomans.” I can only laugh at that, because Bosniaks were governing themselves and fighting for their own interests both before the arrival of Muslim rule and afterwards—and even more so afterwards. European nobility, which included Bosniak nobility, were all intermingling with one another, with monarchs from different lands. They were a mixed people.
The centuries of Bosniak history that we ourselves are filtering out so as not to hurt the feelings of genocidal peoples, who will be antagonistic regardless of whether you care about their feelings or not, are being left out. And this is far more important to who we are now as a people than some monarchs, most of whom were killed in Europe by Europeans because they were supposedly so wicked. Did we, as a people, exist before a Kotromanić or a Ban Kulin, or did we simply come out of their behinds?
