News in English     | 14.12.2019. 15:59 |

Rais Kavazović: We are aware of political attempts to divide Muslims (VIDEO)

FENA Kanita Aliagić

SARAJEVO, December 14 (FENA) – We are aware of political attempts to divide Muslims in this region, to weaken their deeply rooted community and to leave them without a religious representative or leaders. That should be clear to Muslims in this region. True unity can only be achieved through institutions. Stories about Muslim unity after they've been divided on political, ideological and whatever grounds are just empty slogans, said the Raisu-l-ulama of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina Husein effendi Kavazović.

After taking office for his second term, the Raisu-l-ulama talked about the challenges and priorities of the Islamic Community in BiH, education, European-Muslim values and the relationship of the state of BiH towards the Islamic Community in an interview with the Federal News Agency - FENA. He also talked about French President Macrone, awarding the Nobel Prize to Peter Handke and other topics.

Interviewer: Kanita Aliagić

Raisu-l-ulama Kavazović thanked Muslims for trusting him and choosing him as their leader for the second time, stressing that to him that is a responsibility but also, at the same time, a great honor.

He will continue strengthening the capacities of the Islamic Community, working on making it stronger within the jamaat, improving social protection of people, cooperation with meshihats outside of the Islamic Community and diaspora where the Islamic Community has many jamaats.

“We will work to increase the capacities of our educational institutions in order to provide answers adequate to the spirit of Islamic values, which is our teaching, but also in the spirit of the Bosnian tradition that respects the others we live with, respects all the people with whom Muslims in BiH and Europe live with,” Rais Kavazović said.

The highest priority, according to him, is protecting the Muslim identity, but also the national identity of the members of the Islamic Community and raising their awareness about belonging to the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a living space and positioning the unity of Bosniaks in their homeland as well as abroad.

“That is the condition for our biological survival and wholesome spiritual and moral strengthening. In BiH, this implies strengthening the state, but also healing the society as a whole, in all its components. It is up to us to be good promoters in society by setting ourselves as examples and having an overall social engagement, rather than just uttering empty words and announcements. We are role models for others and hope that the world can be better. It is our constant obligation to preserve our traditional but also open-to-modernism model of institutional living of Islam in a European context,” the Rais said.

He emphasized that, if the opportunity arises, the Islamic Community in BiH will attempt to cooperate with Western European countries in the field of education.

“We will look for partners in Europe and the Muslim world in joint programs of a safe environment and developing trust among people. The Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an open community. I hope that the promises we have received from European countries will be realized and that the fate of European integration and the promises that were made will not be betrayed,“ said Rais Kavazović.

Considering that on the election day he announced the change of speed and not the direction that the Islamic Community will be taking, in the interview with FENA he explained that what he meant foremost is a speedier response of the Community regarding the challenges that appear before Muslims in the world in general, and European Muslims in particular.

“It is necessary for the Islamic Community to improve its capacities so that the people within the IC of BiH are people who will have the competencies to respond to the challenges that the community faces. We will continue to work with our people to improve the speed of implementation of various programs and to improve their quality. There were some setbacks indeed, sometimes the setback happened because we were doing reforms within the Community, so certain programs and projects that we had planned to do required a longer implementation period. This should not happen in the future, given that we are ahead in the reform process, it has come to life, so in that part I think we can change our speed and thus request from our staff within the IC to respond more quickly to the challenges faced by Muslims in BiH and the world,” Rais explained.

When asked what is the quality of the cooperation with mashihats and Islamic communities in the homeland, countries of the former Yugoslavia and the diaspora, he said that just before the elections for raisu-l-ulama, consent was given to the statutes of the mashihats in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia which are aligned with new constitutional changes.

Through this process, they sought to eliminate inconsistencies and doubts and “we can now say that we have a united Community, and the period before us will be, by the grace of the Merciful, a period of strengthening our unity and harmonizing our legal acts and procedures.”

“The Islamic community has more theological and historical arguments to preserve its unity in the territories of the southern Slavic peoples than some others. Let's look at how, for example, the Serbian Orthodox Church is opposed to any attempt to establish the autocephaly of other churches in the region, and any divisions among Orthodox Serbs along the borders of today's states are not even an issue worth mentioning. Not to mention the Catholic Church. We are aware of political attempts to divide Muslims in this region, to weaken their deeply rooted community and to leave them without a religious representative or leaders. That should be clear to Muslims in this region. True unity can only be achieved through institutions. Stories about Muslim unity after they've been divided on political, ideological and whatever grounds are just empty slogans,” stresses Rais Kavazović.

Even though the legal position of the IC in BiH is defined by its Constitution, the Law on Freedom of Religion and the Legal Status of Churches and Religious Communities in BiH, when asked why the IC did not sign the treaty with the state of BiH, Kavazović replies that this is a question for political elites, above all those who for reasons known only to them, decided to block the signing of the treaty, the same treaty that has been signed by the Catholic and Orthodox Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“We constantly reiterate that this issue should not be politicized. That is an issue of basic human and citizens’ rights and should be handled as such. Refusing to sign a treaty with IC sends a message to Muslims in BiH that there is no political will to grant the elementary right to organize their religious life freely and functionally. It is an ugly message to the most numerous people and religious community in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Kavazović said, adding that he hopes that reason will prevail and that the issue will be resolved soon.

Speaking about the further development and reform of the education system in Bosnia and Herzegovina at all levels, he emphasized that education has historically been and remains the foundation of the Islamic community. Religious studies in public schools have yet to bear fruit.

“I am not satisfied with the network of nurseries and daycare centers of the Islamic Community in BiH. We could have done more in that regard. The madrasa in Banja Luka, which we will put into operation as soon as possible, will be the crown of our education system since it has special symbolic value and significance to our entire community,” Rais stressed.

Islamic faculties within the Islamic Community in BiH should be connected but there is also the need to modernize study programs.

“I especially stress this because the Islamic Community has the opportunity to establish standards because of the tradition of educating imams on the one hand while on the other it has a positive effect on developing the Islamic identity not only of Muslims of Bosniak origin but also other Muslims in the world, especially in Europe,” Kavazović emphasized.

Therefore, it is important, he added, that we approach all reforms with full responsibility for the consequences, but also to seize the opportunities provided, because this is the only way to ensure the need for top-level personnel, in all areas, to be ready for great challenges and to fulfill the mission.

“I know from conversations with Muslims that this Muslim community, which I have served as Raisu-l-ulama for the past seven years, is aware that it has to be invested in and supported because they know that our children can and should have scholarships and every kind of help to acquire knowledge in quality and accessible universities around the world,” explains Rais.

Asked what ways the IC in BiH can help alleviate the crisis in which more and more young and educated people are deciding to leave the country, while migrants arrive in BiH on a daily basis, Rais Kavazović said that the Islamic Community does not have the capacity of the state and cannot take over the work of state institutions, although some expect it from the IC.

The Islamic Community, he said, can speak up, point to and advocate for a just, functional, less corrupt state with good governance that will ensure a better future for young people. And it does that - it works with the youth, as a community it is included in the lives of people even when they leave the country “but we cannot create jobs, pass laws, prosecute corruption and crime - the state has to do it.”

“We encourage people to stay in their homeland, not to give up, to fight and we guarantee them that we will support them. Our imams are present even in places where, for example, only one old woman lives. We will not give up a single inch of our homeland, but we cannot keep the people in by just saying nice things. It takes a lot more. They need effective policies and a sense of security that is not conducive to constant conflicts and threats of new crimes,” he said.

Asked about the return of BiH citizens from the Syrian front, and how the IC can help the country integrate these people, Kavazović expressed hope that the proponents of these ideologies, after all that had happened to them in Syria and Iraq, became aware of the consequences of such worldviews.

“I hope that everyone has learned the lesson of where such rigid, reductionist and fundamentalist interpretations of the faith lead and that new generations of followers of such ideas will learn from this. But this problem is not only ideological in nature. There are many factors in this phenomenon of violent extremism that determine it and which should not be ignored, from the personal profiles of these individuals, their psychological profile to socio-economic factors and the social environment. It is not good to look at this problem from only one angle, not even the security one, which may be the most important for us now,” he said.

The Islamic community, he added, is ready to help reintegrate and rehabilitate these women and children to the best of their ability if the state so requests from the IC and if those families ask us for help.

“We will not impose ourselves, but we are aware of our responsibility, as well as the challenges and problems we as a society face. They only thing we want to avoid is to act like a state and we do not want to invade on the privacy of those families. Our help in what we can do will undoubtedly be provided,” explained Rais Kavazović.

When asked to give his opinion on the comments of the French President Emmanuel Macron that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a ticking time bomb, Rais Kavazović said that such comments are very dangerous even though they were uttered purely due to political opportunism, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

“We need to do as much as we can to not allow the powerful forces to wage their wars and battles through us. In order for this not to happen we must have a minimum of agreement and unity about the future of this region. I am sorry that there are still forces in the region, but also in our homeland, that do not give up on the ideologies that have caused so much evil in this part of the world and that would rather have the interests of others put before us. I am afraid that Europe will be late in the Balkans. Macrone doesn't see it or he doesn't want to see it,” Kavazović said.

He recalled that the Islamic Community immediately condemned the decision of the Nobel Committee for Literature at the Swedish Academy to award the Nobel Prize to someone who denies genocide and extolls war crimes, and that is a “bad message and insult to victims of genocide and other crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo.”

“We have heard this message and we will not forget it, we will not forget the voice of those who stood up to condemn it and the silence of those who pretended it is none of their concern. Likewise, we will never forget the ‘no’ of those at the UN Security Council, when they voted against the resolution on Srebrenica and thus denied mothers who lost their children and other victims of genocide the right to at least acknowledge their pain, we will not forget this insult and an attempt to repeatedly humiliate the victims. It is simply the world we live in. What I am glad about is that we have seen that Handke's Europe is not the only one, that it is not even the majority but his Europe is stronger and that is worrisome,” he said.

It is up to us now, he added, to give a response at the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, and to do everything we can to show our determination to persevere in the fight for truth and to show that we did not grew tired.

Asked what Muslims can specifically do for the Islamic Community so it can become a stronger and more independent institution, an institution that will continue to live on for centuries, Rais Kavazović said that the Islamic Community will be as strong as Muslims perceive it to be. If Muslims see it as a community through which they can satisfy their spiritual needs and their interests, the Islamic Community will be strong.

“Muslims have been investing in the Islamic Community so far, and we want to thank our fellow Muslims for the high awareness they have been showing, not only in the last couple of years, but during the entire 20th century. They have shown that community is important to them and that it plays an important role in their identity. The IC, after the departure of the Ottoman Empire, which was a Muslim state, remained the only organization that cared about the Islamic identity of our people. They never betrayed the IC, they were always dedicated to it, they always invested in it. The IC should reciprocate in the best way it can,” he said.

He stresses the importance of maintaining the trust of the members of the jammat in the IC and that the IC will reciprocate it.

“In coordination and acting together, both those employed by the IC and members of our jammat, we can preserve our religious and spiritual identity and work for the moral uplifting of our people and for the strengthening of our identity,” said Rais Kavazović, emphasizing how he should continue to contribute to building trust among the members of the Community, to develop mutual solidarity, strengthen its institutional rooting through the construction of mosques, maktabs, kindergartens, social care institutions, madrasas, libraries, boarding schools for pupils and students, homes for the elderly and disabled, and assist institutions of general interest and humanitarian organizations.

“The Islamic Community is part of our identity, it should be of help and refuge to all, but at the same time, we should care about all its capacities and development,” concluded the Raisu-l-ulema of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina Husein ef. Kavazović in an interview with FENA.

Watch video at http://fena.ba/video/3805

Download video at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FN1Yo7Yr2pFn4CMncB1qG21RkR-RTaSY?usp=sharing

(FENA) L. N.

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