Peace, Bruv

The next part was a talk delivered by Dr. Sehija the director of An-Nahla centre, an NGO based in Sarajevo.

She began by talking about the physical and psychological toll of the conflict: the rise in the rate of suicides across Bosnia, the rise in mental health problems and stress brought on by the trauma of war, and also surprisingly an increase in the number of heart attacks and cancers. She noted that even 15 years after the end of war there is a still a lack of resources to help deal with these problems.

Then she turned to the state of Islam in Bosnia. Up till the fall of Communism the unrivalled and dominant school of thought followed was the Hanafi madhhab, heavily influenced by sufism. There is a saying in Bosnia that Islam survived in the country up till the conflict thanks to Sufism, wallahu a’lam. The main tariqas followed in Bosnia are the naqshabandi and qadari ones (there was a wonderful photo shown of one of these sufi places built on a cliff next to a waterfall – unfortunately, i don’t have it).

As restrictions on travel loosened after Communism, Bosnian students began to move about visiting the Arab lands and Malaysia & Indonesia in particular. When these students returned to their native land, slowly some diversity was introduced into the practise of Islam. Ironically though, what really brought diversity was the war itself.

The conflict brought Muslims from across the world to help in the defence and support of Bosnians and each group of helpers brought their own “flavour” of Islam. The Arabs brought the Hanbali school of thought, and also a salafi-leaning practise of Islam. The Ikhwan also came in bringing not only diversity but also their famous tarbiyyah programs. The Iranians came, alhumdulillah not to spread their shiite doctrine but to help financially, may Allah guide them for that.

Post conflict, Bosnia now has 6 Islamic schools and institutes of further education for adults. These institutes have turned out over 250 PhDs in recent years with a sizeable majority – in the region of 60% – being awarded to women. There are also three Islamic publications that are printed regularly, including the “Preporod” paper (the name translates to “Revival”).

The head of Bosnia’s committee of scholars is currently Dr. Mustafa Ceric. Both speakers expressed their support for Ceric in light of his ability to keep Muslims in the country united and to keep a lid on factional disputes which all too often have blighted communities elsewhere.

Dr. Sehija then moved onto discussion of the work of an-Nahla and this was an absolutely mind-blowing part of the talk. I have never, ever seen any centre that combines such a huge range of activities for the benefit of its local community as this centre. It combines in its portfolio activities that focus on general education, religious education, women and families, counselling & therapy, culture, sport, health & beauty, lifeskills and creative workshops.

Dr. Sehija sent me a copy of the powerpoint presentation that looks at all these areas in a bit more detail which you can download and view by clicking here. I highly recommend that you take a look at it.

Use of the centre’s services is not restricted to ethnic Bosnian Muslim women but is also open to the Serb & Croat women of Sarajevo.While they encourage users of their services to pay an annual membership fee, even this is not mandatory, and this goes to show how devoted they are to improving the lives of women.

The aim of the centre is to bring some purpose back to the lives of women who were affected by the war: a centre that aims to make women more self-reliant, and to build their self-esteem. And thanks to their work and that of other institutes in Bosnia ,women are now able to move into occupations where previously you would not see many women, even areas such as teaching and clerical work.

(As a side point, Senad commented that over the past 200 years Bosnian women have been through a lot of difficulty, and as a result have developed a toughness that is truly remarkable. Amusingly in the QA, one elderly Bosnian lady demonstrated this when she gave her husband a wack on the arm telling him to be quiet and let her speak, haha.)

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Sometimes Muslims collect money for projects, and it is not always visible where that money is going. The Nahla centre though is an example of a project which makes your heart wish that you had more money so that you could send it to them to help them continue in their excellent work.

The English website for the centre is http://english.nahla.ba/

So, how can you and me help?

Bosnia’s economy is still very weak and one of the ways that we can help and at the same time benefit ourselves is by visiting Bosnia. The country has spectacular natural beauty and i also think there is much for us to learn by visiting our brothers and sisters there.

One group taking this approach is the brothers from Silk Route Tours. These excellent brothers have arranged a number of trips to Bosnia during 2010 with the first group leaving this April, insha’Allah. Please check out their website because the program for the tour looks fantastic.

The second way we might help – and this came out in the QA sessions – was for Muslims around the world, especially in the West, to organise ourselves and volunteer our services there. This is already a popular thing amongst many Europeans and again it has dual-benefits: by going there, you benefit the local community with your knowledge and experience, while you yourself benefit from the life experience that comes with such breaks. I remember one of the girls at work telling me of the fantastic time she spent in Peru teaching English to young children. The experience itself was great she says and she also came away having learnt Spanish.

What i’m talking is about the sort of stuff that organisations like these people do: http://www.projects-abroad.co.uk/

I went to a very interesting talk delivered by a Bosnian brother and sister on Friday evening organised by Silk Route Tours. Part of the aim of the talk and the subsequent course run the day after on the history of Islam in the Balkans was to drum up interest to visit Bosnia, but more about that later.

The lecture was delivered in two parts: the first part by the brother dealt with the history of the build up to the Balkans conflict.

He started off talking about the 1970s when the region (at the time a country named Yugoslavia made up of 6 republics) was under Communist rule and led by a strong (perhaps brutal) leader named Tito. During his reign, Yugoslavia borrowed billions from the IMF and the standard of living was good. At the same time, the Communist State suppressed religion in general and so Muslims amongst others felt a degree of disconnect with their religion.

As the country entered the 80s, those IMF loans taken out in the previous decade needed to be paid back so the economy suffered and people experienced hardships. Against this backdrop certain political leaders came to the fore, and exploiting nationalist feelings started to drive a wedge between people in the different republics. Chief amongst these leaders was the now notorious Slobodan Milosevic.

As economic conditions worsened the different republics making up Yugoslavia held local referendums resulting in the separation of Slovenia first, and then Croatia from Yugoslavia.

Bosnia then held its own referendum and 65% of the people voted for independence. Unlike Slovenia and Croatia, Bosnia shared no border with a neighbouring European country from which it might receive assistance – but a massive one with Serbia along its eastern border. As the situation with Serbia became more tense, the Bosnian leadership made a critical error: instead of being frank about the situation and preparing its people for the possibility of war, they insisted that peace could be sustained. Perhaps they genuinely felt that was the case since Bosnia was the most ethnically mixed republic of all Yugoslavia and from Alija Izetbegovic down to the locals no one believed that Serb neighbour would turn on Muslim neighbour.

With the benefit of hindsight, the following ayah came to my mind at this part of the lecture: “Ah! ye are those who love them, but they love you not.” [3:119]

So, this peace was shattered when Serbia invaded Bosnia from its eastern border and within a couple of days the Serb army was in control of a large part of east Bosnia.

So why were Croatia and Slovenia able to secede from Yugoslavia and escape being butchered while Bosnia not? Well, the defence of Bosnia was hindered in two ways: first, it’s leadership lulled the people into thinking that war could be averted thus the people were caught unawares when the Serbs attacked, and second a UN embargo forbade the importing of weapons into Bosnia.

Due to its disadvantaged geographic location the smuggling of weapons into the country was also extremely difficulty so village after Bosnian village fell as the Serbian army, backed and supplied by the Russians, marched westward.

Despite some early help from Croatia, approximately 70% of Bosnia was under Serb control within 3 months of the invasion starting.

Ignoring the leaderships assurance that war would be averted, by Allah’s grace, some people realised the danger of the situation and had started to organise resistance at a local level, and helped to arm the civilian population. One of these places was Srebrenica which resisted the Serb army for 1.5 – 2 years.

If it resisted successfully for so long why is its name associated with one of the last century’s worst human disasters? It was because the UN declared it as a safe-haven and spent months disarming the local population. Once that disarming was complete, the Serb army waltzed in to find an unarmed population and the rest is history.

Around 10,000 people tried to flee Srebrenica as the army advanced and it is said that these people left in a huge long line aiming to cross the 30km between them and the next safest village and a forest that lay in-between. It is said that this line of 10,000 people was 7 or 8 kilometres long. Some made it, and others didn’t. Some were lost in the forest, and died wandering, yet others survived, including one woman who lived off fruits and berries in the forest for three months before finally making it out and arriving at a safe village on the other side.

Out of 1700 mosques in Bosnia, the Serbs destroyed 1200. Yet, the one Serb Church that remained  in… I forget the name of the Bosnian town… the Muslims assigned a patrol of soldiers to ensure that it wasn’t attacked, and until today even the windows of the Church remain unshattered due to the care & concern of the Muslims. In the Q&A one young Bosnian man mentioned Banja Luka as having the world’s holiest car parks; his mother, an elderly Bosnian lady, explained his words telling us that 16 mosques in that town were flattened to make parking areas for the Serb army’s vehicles.

In late 1995 the Dayton Peace accords were signed and war came to an end.

So where is Bosnia today? Against the backdrop of an economically difficult 80s, then a devastating war in the 90s, the country has been unable to attract the level of foreign investment required to build it up and help it stand on its own feet. And while Bosnians have peace  and go about their daily lives as do we all, the perception outside of Bosnia remains that the region is still troubled, and this again hinders the flow of foreign investment into the country.

High unemployment has led to problems that had never been seen before the war, including drugs, alcoholism and crime. Neither was the country helped by the fact that the war displaced millions of people with five or six hundred thousand leaving  the country including the creme of the crop of Bosnia’s professionals such as Doctors, nurses, lawyers and engineers, who never returned but settled in places such as Austria, Germany and America.

Bosnia’s population today is roughly made up of 45% Muslims, 33% Serbs and 18% Croats, thus remains, quite ethnically-mixed.

In terms of help during the conflict, most of it was financial, some political and some military. The main helpers being Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Malaysia and Iran.

At the time of the conflict, Turkey was ruled by a secularist government and provided some help, but since the arrival some years ago of the Islamic-flavoured government of Erdogan, Turkey has helped Bosnia more than any other Muslim country, engaging in the reconstruction of schools, hospitals and bridges, so may Allah reward Erdogan handsomely for that.

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I’ll discuss the sister’s talk regarding social work, Islam in Bosnia, the Nakhla centre and how one can help in my next post, insha’Allah.

Haven’t really had much time to follow the ins and outs of this debate, but came across a pretty good post by Fatima Barakatullah on the AlKauthar forums:

Alhamdulillah I had the chance to talk about it at the BBC’s studio yesterday as part of a BBC World service programme. They gave me the chance to comment and try to analyse what was happening in Europe…

Here are some important points that can be made when discussing the niqab ban some of which I got the chance to make during the interview:

-France has so many other pressing issues to deal with than something that is only done by 2000 or so law abiding women. It is bullying a minority within a minority within a minority.

-What do you hope to achieve through the ban?
What is your evidence that women are being forced to cover their faces? If you are doing it because you feel that the women are oppressed, then will this solve the oppression? No, it will ghettoise them even more…if women are facing any sort of oppression, they need to be given access to means of escaping that, not criminalised…

-Banning things don’t win over the hearts and minds of the people…the women are doing this out of a conviction and so they will not let go of the niqab, perhaps more women will start to wear it.

-What happened when the hijab was banned in schools? Most Muslims didn’t throw off their hijabs…they just set up more independent Muslim schools instead…so the idea that it will help integration is a fallacy too.

-There is this myth that the niqab has come to France as a result of migrants coming to France and wearing it…It is estimated that a quarter of the women who wear the niqab in France are actually converts. Women are choosing to cover. (The minister was constantly referring to niqab wearing women as ‘they’ and talking as if they were foreigners, not French!)

-This is the rise of Secular Fundamentalism. The whole overreaction to niqab has coloniolist undertones: “We the civilised Europeans, must show you, the poor savages and heathens that you are, how to live a better life, because our way of life is superior to yours.” (Imagine if Malcolm X were alive what he’d say!) It is extremely patronising.

-I remember at one point the presenter was asking: But you do understand that it makes people feel uncomfortable doesn’t it…my husband said I should have said: “Yeah…50 years ago black and brown faces in Europe made people feel uncomfortable….”
I said something like…yes, people feel uncomfortable about things they don’t understand, but we can make people feel at ease by educating them etc.

-The nature of Islam is that it is a complete way of life and it does manifest itself visibly…so it can’t be made invisible….it will manifest itself in some other way.

-Europe is going through an identity crisis and is overreacting to the visible presence of Muslims. It is creating a sense of insecurity and the media do whip up histeria around this topic, exaggerating it: for example the Nationalist party in Switzerland with their billboards with a menacing looking niqabi in the foreground and swiss flags with missiles that are minarets in the background: clear racism and prejudice.

My second app for the iPhone is up and available now on the app store for anyone who is interested.

The iTunes app store link is this:
itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mosques/id349259097?mt=8

Mosque coverage in this app includes:

• 1000+ USA mosques
• 770+ UK Mosques
• 140+ Australian mosques
• 90+ Canadian mosques

There is already a version 1.1 upgrade in the pipes, so if you like or dislike something let me know in the next few weeks so that i can consider the changes for the next version.

Below are a couple of screenshots: