IWPR
- 10 May 2002
Posted 12 May 2002 on RELIGIOSCOPE
Questions
are being raised over foreign funding of Muslim organisations
- and exactly what that money buys.
Recent
police raids against a number of Arab charities and the arrests
of suspected terrorists alerted local and international attention
to the resurgence of Islam in Bosnia. And among the questions
being raised about the revival is who controls the new mosques
funded by Muslim charities and governments and what conditions
they set for their support?
For
example, a report by the Brussels-based think-tank the International
Crisis Group published late last year said that assistance
from charities such as the Saudi High Commission for Relief,
which helps war widows, orphans and other victims of war,
required "female beneficiaries to cover their heads
and their children to attend classes in their faith".
Reisu-l-ulema
Dr Mustafa Ceric, head of Bosnia's Islamic Community, defended
the operation of such charities, saying, "Without
them we could not survive". Ceric added that he had
seen no proof that any had done wrong and asserted that no "good Muslim" could have taken part in the
attacks of September 11.
He
rejected claims that Saudi Arabia's dominant faith, Wahabbism,
an extremist form of Islam with a literal interpretation of
the Koran, is trying to take root, telling IWPR that all "gift
mosques" are under his jurisdiction, even if the
form of Islam promoted is "slightly" different
to the Hanafi tradition.
The
Hanafi school, a branch of Sunni Islam founded in Iraq in
the 8th century, is followed by the majority of Muslims in
Turkey and the Balkans and is extremely tolerant of differences
within Islamic communities.
Head
of protocol for the Islamic Community Ifet Mustafic, backed
Ceric, saying, "You will find in every mosque some
individuals whether Saudi or domestic that pray the way Saudis
do, but officially the prayers are led by Hanafi Imams."
The
Sarajevo-based Active Islamic Youth is among the groups rumoured
to be linked with Wahhabism and more extreme elements, but
its head Muris Cupic denies his group is involved in "militant
Islam", insisting that it focuses on expressing and
preaching their religious identity.
One
of the most visible foreign-backed projects in Bosnia is the
King Fahd Cultural Centre inaugurated in Sarajevo last year.
Incorporating a mosque for 5,000 worshippers and housing the
Saudi High Commission, it cost an estimated 10 million euros.
In central Bosnia's Muslim-dominated Bugojno region, the generosity
of one of the Saudi king's wives saw the opening of the giant
new Princess Al Jooharah Al Brahim Mosque and Cultural Centre
last autumn, complete with space for 2000 worshippers, library,
and Arabic language laboratory.
Local
Islamic leader Imam Efendija Arnaut expresses gratitude to
the Muslim charities that have helped with what he calls the
religious "rebirth" of his area.
He
says he is seizing the opportunity to try and educate Bugojno's
Bosniak community - 87 per cent of the population, compared
to 42 per cent pre-war - about Islam's "message of
peace", expanding local outreach programmes, the
number of services in the mosques and youth religious classes.
The
Islamic Community estimates that eighty per cent of the state's
1750 mosques were destroyed or damaged during the years of
war with 50 or 60 of these having now been totally rebuilt,
and many more repaired. But it's the new mosques, especially
the ones financed and designed with help from Islamic countries,
which have provoked most controversy. To Croats and Serbs
in Bugojno, Sarajevo and other areas where there is a Bosnian
Muslim majority, these new buildings symbolise a new Muslim
dominance.
For
example, last October the Saudi High Commission for Relief
to Bosnia printed and distributed a brochure in Bugojno at
the time of the inauguration of the new local mosque. "Bugojno
is one of the few cities in Bosnia where there are almost
no Croats, although it borders Croat-inhabited territories," it read. The Bosnian foreign ministry swiftly lodged a complaint
with the Saudi embassy, saying the remarks alarmed Bosnian
Croats. "There's a growing danger of religious imperialism," warned local Catholic priest Fra Ivo Markovic told IWPR. Indeed,
since the war and the end of officially secular communist
regime, there has been a significant resurgence in religiosity
amongst all three of Bosnia's dominant faiths Islam, Serb
Orthodoxy and Catholicism
International
Crisis Group analyst and Balkan historian Mark Wheeler, who
first visited the region in 1969, argues that Bosniaks increasingly
see Islam as a religion than an identity badge.
"People
that were here before the war when mosques were museums and
tourist attractions, and women in Islamic dress were completely
and utterly absent, can't help but be struck by the extent
to which Muslims have become more and more prone to practice
their faith rather than simply have it as one of those things
that connotes their historical identity," he said.
A
growing number of young Bosniaks have been seen taking up
Islamic rituals, like marrying in the mosque, after completing
the mandatory civil ceremony.
For
example Aida, of a Croat-Bosniak background who took Islam
as her religion as a child, married a Muslim man two years
ago. And while stressing that it was not vital that she choose
a husband of her own faith, she did admit "it's easier
when you are the same religion". Marrying in a mosque "for the sake of tradition" offered "some
kind of protection".
There
has also been a noticeable increase in young men with beards
and young women in headscarves, although they still remain
a minority even within the Bosniak population.
Wheeler
says fundamentalism, largely in the form of foreign Muslim
groups, does exist in Bosnia. But, at the same time, he considers
the threat no greater than that of Le Pen to France, suspecting "an awful lot of journalists, who tried in the aftermath
of September 11 to create a great story out of this, have
been exaggerating".
Julie
Poucher Harbin
