Kuduzovic, who has roughly 33,000 followers on Facebook, is considered the highest authority among Salafi Da’is.

His most popular video on YouTube, titled ‘Can a husband sleep with two wives at the same time?’ and uploaded almost five years ago, has been viewed more than 170,000 times.

Such viewing figures are “very respectable”, said Srdjan Puhalo, a psychologist and author of the book ‘Salafists in Bosnia and Herzegovina’. “I think very few people in Bosnia and Herzegovina have such potential,” he told BIRN BiH.

Puhalo said it was important to note that conservative followers of Bosnia’s other main religions – Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity – take no issue with much of what the Da’is preach. This, he said, is suggestive of a society “in constant crisis, a permanent crisis where people are trying to find the best answers for themselves about how to live. How do they function in a society where you no longer know what’s good, what’s bad?”

Tanja Tankosic Girt, a psychologist and family therapist, said that social networks were “very important for young people because they are a communication channel that is very accessible to them.”

The Salafi Da’is, she said, have “softened” their messages, “they have learnt to open discussion about topics that have not otherwise been discussed.”

“Half of that is a show and another half is the truth. They are actually a reality show.”

Previously, the Salafi Da’is were heavily critical of the moderate form of Islam practiced by most Muslims in Bosnia, and some lectures were condemned as anti-Semitic. Such rhetoric has largely gone, but they continue to preach a restrictive view of the role of women in society.

Pezic, for example, has said Western society lost its moral compass when it “let women out of the home, when she became everything but a woman.”

The Salafi Da’is were also vocal in denouncing Bosnia’s first Gay Pride march in September this year.

Ljakic, who is considered more hardline than other Salafi Da’is and who never publicly accepted the Islamic Community’s invitation for integration, is also on record in one video lecture as saying female circumcision is not barbaric but is in accordance with Islam if carried out correctly.

“A number of those influencers promote polygamy and discuss very openly the guidelines for practicing polygamy and insist on full control of women, in terms of both their private and professional life,” said Becirevic.

“As they have tens of thousands of young followers and the figures are growing progressively, it means they have influence on those young people,” she told BIRN BiH.

Bosnian society, Becirevic warned, already “has a problem with tolerance, interethnic tolerance and political crisis”. The influence of Salafi Da’is is “an additional factor. This type of narrative is an additional factor in the destabilisation of society.”

“In a certain way, they fill gaps in the society, the lack of free activities for young people. They give instructions for life, they are involved in what Western countries call life-coaching.”

But while there has been a discernible shift in the language, Kuduzovic said in 2017 that the message remained the same.

“In 2000 or 1999, when we spoke about a joint Zikr [the practice of ritual prayer glorifying God], I had a switchblade in my hand. In 2016 I took a rose,” he said in a video uploaded to Facebook.

“The discourse is the same, there is no difference. Both have remained the same, I have not changed anything … So, brothers, this is about a change of tone only.”

Independent or coordinated?

One organisation that spent a decade organising Salafi Da’i events is Svjetlo [Light], led by Sead Abdurahman Kalabic. Svjetlo is no longer involved in such work, having handed over responsibility to a number of other organisations which Kalabic said were doing “a much better” job.

“Now we have the Internet, Facebook, various types of advertising, marketing etc, as well as attractive subjects,” Kalabic told BIRN BiH.

“The lecturers themselves, starting from Safet Kuduzovic, Pezic… have gained certain experience through lectures given in a more accessible manner. They attract young people more easily by giving nice lectures.”

Becirevic said it was notable that the Da’is appear to act independently of each other, but on closer examination their “roles have been carefully distributed”.

“Each of those influencers has a well-developed media profile,” Becirevic told BIRN BiH.

“One of them is attractive to young people and gets more and more followers every day. Another is slightly more conservative and he somehow seems like an undisputable authority in the Salafi world. The third-ranking one in the popularity poll is what we would call an extreme rightist in a political sense. Not only is he religiously conservative, but his messages contain traces of violence.” Becirevic did not specify whom she was referring to.

“They somehow coexist in the parallel online Salafi universe, as, what seems to me, a very well-coordinated team.”

Elvedin Subasic, a theologian, said the preaching of Ljakic and other Salafi Da’is should be viewed only in terms of its adherence to Bosnian law.

“In my opinion, as long as Ljakic stays within the framework of this country’s law, he can speak whatever he wants,” Subasic said.

“Those who want to offer a counter-narrative to that, there are probably people within that group who have already reacted when he, in one of his articles I think, mentioned that he did not waive the possibility of Takfir, denouncing someone a non-believer. Another group wrote a letter, saying they disagreed with him.”

“They have every right to call themselves Salafists and Muslims, and think of themselves as totally correct and the only true interpreters of Islam,” Subasic told BIRN BiH. “They have every right to do it, because they live in such a country.”

‘Pseudo-democratic’