Hastings found, as subsequent research has uncovered, a religious war. In Sarajevo itself, it is true, this was not immediately apparent. The Serb cathedral, despite four years of siege by Serbs, was never vandalised by the population. The Muslim president and religious hierarchy continued to sit at the front row of the Catholic cathedral every Christmas Eve. The commandant in charge of Sarajevo ’s defenders, Jovan Divjak, was himself an ethnic Serb; [21] another Serb, Miro Lazovic, was the speaker of Bosnia ’s parliament. Although the defence of the city had first been mounted by the heroic young Sufis of the Sinanova Qadiri Tekke, for many of the defenders this was never a religious war; except for those who saw the defence of the city’s history of tolerance as a sacred task.
