Want to Cultivate a Liberal European Islam? Look to Bosnia.

Throughout the 20th century, Bosnian Muslim thinkers offered creative theological interpretations that squared with European life.

When French President Emmanuel Macron said last summer that he would create a new “framework and rules” for Islamic institutions in France, he was not alone. Other politicians and thinkers have also been involved in a broader effort to find an articulation of the religion that meshes with what they see as European values.

What is too little noticed, however, is that a tolerant European Islam has already existed for centuries—on the southeastern part of the continent, where Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, Turks, and others see themselves as fully Muslim and fully European. A 2013 Pew Research Center study shows that they’re among the most liberal Muslims in the world. For example, only tiny minorities of surveyed Bosnian Muslims, known as Bosniaks, think adulterers must be stoned and apostates executed, in contrast with large majorities in favor of both stances among Pakistani and Egyptian Muslims.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE ATLANTIC 

Pope Urges Bosnians to Put Fratricidal Past Behind Them

A banner advertising Pope Francis’ visit to Bosnia hangs in Sarajevo. Religion News Service photo by Brian Pellot

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Pope Francis heard about the horrors of Bosnia’s fratricidal war of the 1990s and its slow process of healing Saturday as he visited Sarajevo to urge Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics to put the “barbarity” of the past behind them and work together for a peaceful future.

Thousands of cheering Bosnians gave Francis a joyous welcome, lining his motorcade route through the mostly Muslim city of 300,000. Another 65,000 people, most of them Catholics, packed the same Sarajevo stadium where St. John Paul II presided over an emotional post-war Mass of reconciliation in 1997.

Francis said he was coming to Sarajevo for a daylong trip to encourage the process of peace and reconciliation and show his support for Bosnia’s tiny Catholic community. With Croat passports in hand, many Catholics have fled high unemployment in Bosnia to search for better opportunities in the European Union.

The most poignant moment of the day came when two Catholic priests and a nun told Francis of their experiences during the war, of having been kidnapped, tortured and starved by Muslim or Serb Orthodox Christian troops and threatened with death. Moved by the testimony, Francis bowed down to one of them and asked for his blessing.

Speaking off-the-cuff, Francis told the gathering of priests and nuns in Sarajevo’s cathedral that they must never forget the “cruelty” inflicted on their fellow Catholics — not to seek vengeance, but to show the power of forgiveness.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES 

First Imam to Earn Catholic University Degree

CAIRO – A Portland Muslim imam has made history by becoming the first Muslim to graduate from a Catholic university.

“I was looking for a place to be accepted as myself and to be the true face of Islam, though I am not the best follower,” Abdullah Polovina, who leads a congregation of Bosnian Muslims in Portland, told The Oregonian on Monday.

The imam, 41, has recently completed a master’s degree at Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry, where he was the first Muslim to ever enroll.

Taking the position of the leader of Bosniaks Educational and Cultural Organization, he first connected with leaders at Seattle University through interfaith-dialogue events.For more than a decade, Polovina lived in Seattle as an imam before moving to Portland in 2013.

Holding education at a high position, Polovina said he wanted to pursue a graduate degree that would improve his leadership, finding Seattle’s transformation leadership program appealing.

For him, studying the Bible was not comfortable at the beginning. Later, he quickly settled into sharing his own perspective and appreciating the overlaps.

During the class, he proved many similarities between Islam and Christianity from moral values to key historical figures.

“I felt at home,” Polovina, an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, said.

“I strengthened my faith and strengthened myself as a leader.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM ONISLAM.ORG

A Muslim Leader Reflects On The Holocaust After Visiting Auschwitz

Muhamed Jusic was quiet throughout much of our journey and we only learned afterwards why. He had his own story to tell. From the Kenyan mall massacre and the Boston Marathon to renewed violence in Iraq, Muslim extremists capture the headlines. Yet between the grim captions, there are other stories and there is hope. We, a Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Jew, know this firsthand.

We experienced an unprecedented, some even called it an historic trip, that involved 12 influential Muslim imams, professors, and business leaders from around the world. These Muslim leaders agreed to travel with us, some against the opinion of family and friends and with safety concerns back home. Why? Because the trip was to Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland and the Holocaust is commonly misunderstood and misused within the Muslim world to foment anti-Semitism and anti-West hate. These leaders felt obligated to bear witness to the truth. They then took home what they saw and condemned anti-Semitism in all forms.

Among them was Muhamed Jusic from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country with its own atrocities and rise of evil. “I could not stop comparing horrors of Holocaust with my own experience and childhood memories of ‘ethnic cleansing’. It was very hard to put into words all my overwhelming feelings and thoughts while visiting actual places where people became the victims of the biggest atrocity in European history. I feared I might sound pathetic, after all, what could I possibly say that was not said by so many before me? How can I possibly make some sense out of it all when the greatest minds in human history cannot explain to us what happened to humanity? My own story haunted me during trip. But I did not have courage, unlike many of the Holocaust survivors we met, to openly share my story with the others.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE HUFFINGTON POST