TOP STORY: ISLAM IN BOSNIA: From the ashes of war, Islamic awareness rises in Bosnia

c. 1996 Religion News Service GORAZDE, Bosnia (RNS)-On the east bank of the River Drina, Mufti Muhammed Effendic, leader of Gorazde’s Islamic community, inspects the latest repairs on the minaret of Sinanbeg Sijercic Mosque. The new minaret is an ungainly construction of steel poles and twisted wires with a loudspeaker perched precariously at its top. […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

GORAZDE, Bosnia (RNS)-On the east bank of the River Drina, Mufti Muhammed Effendic, leader of Gorazde’s Islamic community, inspects the latest repairs on the minaret of Sinanbeg Sijercic Mosque. The new minaret is an ungainly construction of steel poles and twisted wires with a loudspeaker perched precariously at its top.

Someday, a proper stone minaret will be built for the war-damaged mosque. But Effendic points out that the makeshift tower is still unique. It is the only minaret on the only remaining mosque in eastern Bosnia’s entire Drina region, all of which-except the government-held enclave of Gorazde-is now under Bosnian Serb control.”Our task today is to rebuild and teach,”says the mufti, a soft-spoken man in his mid-forties.”We have to let our people know what happened to them and why it happened. Never again can we allow ourselves to be at the mercy of another nation.” Before the war, only a minority of Gorazde’s Muslims practiced their religion (three-quarters of the population was Muslim, the rest Serb). Today, many Muslims, especially young people, are eager to learn about Islam and the Muslim tradition in Bosnia.


Here and in other government-held territories mosque attendance is up dramatically, religious education classes are full, and a new generation is respecting traditional Islamic holidays.”For too long, the culture and history of the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) was denied,”says Effendic, referring to the rule of the Habsburg monarchy, the post-World War I Serb-dominated kingdom, and socialist Yugoslavia that followed 400 years of Muslim dominance under the Ottoman Empire.”Our culture is hidden in the past, and now we have to rediscover it.” But while many Muslims here feel compelled to rediscover their heritage, there is much rebuilding to be done as Serbs, Muslims and Croats maintain an uneasy peace.

This mostly Muslim, industrial city endured more than three years of siege, cut off from government-held territory by Bosnian Serb forces and several times nearly overrun. Last summer, the Bosnian Serb Army captured the other two eastern enclaves, Srebrenica and Zepa, expelling or killing many of their inhabitants.

Today, people here live without running water and electricity, dependent on humanitarian aid convoys from Sarajevo. A heavy pall of smoke from wood stoves hangs over the trampled suburbs and shell-shattered housing blocks.

For Gorazde’s 60,000 residents, half of whom are refugees from surrounding Serb-occupied towns and villages, the siege is still fresh in their minds.”We are alive today only because we defended our city,”says Edim, a young Muslim soldier.”Everyone helped, even the mufti and the imams. They gathered up corpses and body parts from the street. They buried the dead at night, when the snipers couldn’t see.” Throughout government-held Bosnia, the Islamic community is struggling to cope with the boom of interest in Islam. Although voluntary religious instruction is available in public schools for the first time since before World War II, there are not enough classrooms, qualified instructors or teaching materials to meet the demand. Islamic sponsors abroad have donated truckloads of Korans and other literature-but mostly in Arabic, a language few Bosnians know.

Chief among the sponsors were Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both countries have contributed weapons as well as religious literature. Foreign Muslim mercenaries-known as mujahadeen, or”freedom fighters”-from the Middle East, Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world fought alongside Bosnian Muslims.

Under the Dayton peace accord, all foreign mercenaries are supposed to leave Bosnia. But NATO officers recently uncovered what they said was a terrorist training center just west of Sarajevo that was run by Iranians.

Bosnian Muslim leaders admit the hardship and suffering of the war has brought many formerly non-practicing Muslims into the mosques. But they say the real source of the religious revival was the collapse of the socialist regime.”A lot of Muslims were `secret believers’ before the war,”says Aziz Kadribegovic, editor of the Sarajevo-based Islamic weekly Preporod. Now, he says, these people are free to practice without fear of discrimination.


Yet ethnic passions stirred up by the war have inevitably led many Bosnian Muslims to embrace the religious side of their identity.”Before the war, I simply called myself Bosnian,”says Mehmed, a 26-year-old engineer.”Today I say I am a Bosnian Muslim, or Bosniak, and I’m proud of that.” For the past two years Mehmed has abstained from drinking alcohol and now fasts during Ramadan.”My parents think it’s a bit odd,”he laughs,”since I wasn’t brought up that way. But they accept it.” Some Bosnian Muslims respond defensively to the question of their changing relationship to Islam. From the beginning of the war, Bosnian Serb propaganda painted the Muslims as religious extremists bent on waging a holy war against non-believers. Many Bosnian Muslims suspect the West’s fear of Islam prevented the international community from taking stronger action against the Bosnian Serbs.”All nations have their identity,”says Aida Alibabic, a Muslim lawyer.”Why can’t we have ours? Are we really so dangerous just because we believe in Allah?” Even after four years of war, there is little evidence of a militant brand of Islam. Bosnia’s Muslims insist they are Europeans, with European values and traditions.”Islam is one religion,”says Kadribegovic.”But our culture and our behavior is our own. Just look around you, women here wear mini-skirts and make-up.” Bosnian Muslims say a defining characteristic of their culture is tolerance. Under Ottoman rule, they point out, Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews enjoyed wide-ranging freedom to practice their religion.”For more than five centuries we have lived together with other people,”says Sead Avdic, a graphic artist.”This is part of the Bosniak identity.” Critics charge that some Islamic leaders are allied with the right-wing of the ruling nationalist party, the SDA, which favors the creation of a Muslim nationalist state in Bosnia. In some cities, SDA leaders have demoted Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats, as well as liberal Muslims, from official positions. But even critics admit the SDA is a nationalist, not a religious, party. Many of its members are former communists who only recently discovered Islam themselves.

Teaching Muslims about their religion doesn’t mean teaching them to hate others,”says Mufti Effendic of Gorazde.”It just means helping them find out about themselves.” In war-battered Gorazde, even after the traumatic experience of the siege, many Muslims say they could live with their former Serb neighbors again.”Those who didn’t shoot can come back,”says Elisa, a kindergarten teacher.”Lots of Serbs didn’t want this war.””The Muslim people in Bosnia have been threatened with genocide ten times over the last two centuries,”says Dr. Alija Begovic, chief surgeon at Gorazde hospital.”But we’re still prepared to live together with other peoples. I don’t know,”he smiles,”there is either something wrong with us or with the rest of the world.”

MJP END HOCKENOS

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