Now I remember what chapter of the forever war it was - it was Kosovo, and I never did get an answer as to who decided to switch the defining label from religious affiliation to ethnicity. These matters are obviously decided at some very senior level, as the label is used by government spokespersons and all the media, but we never find out whose decision it was, and it seems that it was only me that was even bothering to ask the question.

During the Bosnian war, I often expressed my concern that the Bosnians were the only participants identified by a religion. Despite their constant emphasis on the multi-religious nature of their mandate, the west happily accepted the Serbian name for the Bosnians.

The cosmopolitan Bosnian population,  the muslim majority and their non-muslim friends and supporters, were always aggregated in our media and politics as Bosnian Muslims, that label with its foreign oh-so non-European sound, the scourge of Byzantium, the Muslim.

Yet now,  when the Serbs have a much more clearly defined Muslim target, that label has been dropped for one of national ethnicity, and I do find myself wondering who changed the label and why.

Perhaps it’s best that public perceptions in the West are left unclouded by Crusader caricatures of the Muslim, but let’s not completely ignore the religious component of the persecution of ‘Ethnic Albanian Kosovars’.

Let’s not forget that what we are seeing once more is the systematic dehumanisation, persecution, and elimination of a people whose ethnicity gives them a different religious heritage. Once more we hear those echoes of the Holocaust. A good old traditional pogrom - how European.

The Bosnians weren’t concerned with the Christian affirmation of those who persecuted them. Muslims have always had a protective relationship towards their Christian friends. ‘You will surely find the nearest of them in love to the believers are those who say "We are Christians"’ says the Qur’an.

But who is to help the Muslims of Eastern Europe hold on to their understanding of Christians as those “nearest to them in love”, identifiable by their Christian behaviour, and following in the footsteps of their Lord? Well, that’s something for Christians to think about.

Qur’an says: ‘And We sent …Jesus son of Mary …and We gave to him the Gospel, wherein is guidance and light, confirming the Torah before it, as a guidance and a lesson for the mindful. So let the People of the Gospel judge according to what God has sent down therein. Whoever judges not according to what God has sent down - they are the ungodly.’  (5.49-50)