How to Be European
By Dr Akbar Ahmed
American University
Washington, DC
Dr Haris Silajdzic is a Muslim Malraux or Havel. Like Andre Malraux, the French minister of cultural affairs, and Vaclav Havel, the first President of the Czech Republic, Haris is the quintessential European public intellectual. Like them he is both philosopher and national statesman; the former forever fascinated and in despair at the human condition and the latter embodying the hopes and aspirations of the people in spite of it. A Bosniak Muslim, Haris has held the highest offices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the nation he helped create in the 1990s – Foreign Minister, Prime Minister (twice) and President. He is also a poet acutely aware of the world around him and the pain, joy, tears and laughter in it.
I could not but help think that had he not been a Muslim and not played such an active role in creating a Muslim nation in Europe, he would have been better known on the international stage. We may well have been seeing films about him and reading books telling us his story. He is, after all, perhaps the most prominent Muslim intellectual-cum-statesman in Europe. As is the case with most national heroes, and given the turbulent history and divided society of his country, it is not surprising that Haris has his detractors. He now believes he has done what he could for his nation and people. He mentioned the passing of most of his friends over the years. I noted a certain resignation creeping into his reflections – that suggests perhaps an abandonment of active politics.
During our field work trip in 2014, I would meet Haris in Sarajevo, who, not surprisingly for a European intellectual, would be sitting by himself, lost in thought, drinking coffee and smoking a thin cigar in a corner in the appropriately named Café Morocco. In our lengthy freewheeling conversations, when he began to develop an idea he would not let it go unless he had explored it thoroughly to what he thought was its logical conclusion. Once, as we left the café, we stepped into a torrential downpour. As neither of us had umbrellas, we were quickly soaked, but he stood there and continued talking, oblivious towards the rain. Briefly he diverted the conversation to global warming and climate change, pointing to the “Malaysian-like” rain before our very eyes before returning to the topic under discussion.
For a man who has held the highest offices in his country – and is possibly the last surviving founding father of the nation and widely considered its most prominent living statesman – I was struck by the fact that there was never any kind of security around him. Indeed, his low key appearance, usually in an open and somewhat crumpled white shirt and grey trousers, confirmed the impression of an ordinary Bosnian going about his business. Perhaps it was his religious training – at one point he ran the office of the Grand Mufti – or perhaps it was the characteristic Bosnian down-to-earth attitude to life.
Yet there was no denying his charisma. I saw how quickly the philosopher dealing with the abstract transformed into an affectionate “uncle” exuding emotion when he met my family. He especially humored my granddaughter Anah, aged four. He would pick her up and talk to her with delight. Amineh, Anah’s mother, took several pictures of them. After that, when we met he would enquire about Anah. His compassion had survived the mephitic hatred and anger that genocide engenders.
We talked of our admiration for Goethe and Rumi and compared them. We talked about the purpose of life and the meaning of faith in an increasingly secular world and of the fragility of human societies. He returned to Goethe again and again: “When I think of Europe in positive terms, what it aspires to be, I think of one word – Goethe”. Haris kept raising the question: “Why do we exist?” He is constantly amazed at humankind: “We are a miracle!” The siege of Sarajevo, which he described as the longest in European history, taught him many lessons about the uncertainty of life as, he said, he risked death every time he walked the streets. People today are in such a hurry that they have little time to reflect on life.
He thought a great deal about the Asian impact on Europe including the contribution of almost all of its major religions including Christianity. He believed that European history was heading the wrong way and coming to an end as Asian powers like China emerged. His view of contemporary Muslims was not complimentary as he believed they are too obsessed with recreating the past. Muslims had still to answer the question Bernard Lewis famously raised, i.e. “What went wrong?” Haris agreed with Lewis that Muslims had fallen far behind the West and it would take time before they catch up.
As for those arguing that Muslims are not part of Europe, he told me of his ethnic roots which go back two thousand years and stated emphatically, “We are here to stay.” When I asked who his heroes were, he mentioned Croat and even Serb figures but his main role model was the figure of the anonymous and idealized Palestinian woman. In the most difficult circumstances, he said, she keeps the family together, her children clean, her posture dignified and never abandons hope for the future. Clearly he saw an echo of what his fellow Bosnians had suffered in the figure of the Palestinian woman.
Pride in his European identity is matched by Haris’ anger and disappointment at Europe’s indifference to the massive human rights violations in the Balkans in the 1990s. He cited the French president who told him that they would never allow a Muslim nation to exist in Europe. The European strategy was to place an embargo on weapons on the region in the hope that it would stop the fighting. In fact, all the embargo did was to allow the Serbian forces – who inherited the bulk of the military machinery of Yugoslavia – to carry out their sinister ethnic designs while tiny land-locked Bosnia was denied access to weapons even for self-defense. In addition, it was common knowledge that the Russians were providing full military support to the Serbs, who they consider their ethnic kin. The Serbian forces were also putting out propaganda that the Bosnians were breeding “Islamic terrorists” and were therefore a threat to Europe. However truncated, just getting the state was a touch-and-go business and there were moments when it seemed it would never happen.
In a dramatic retelling of the struggle for Bosnia, Haris recalled the bleakest moments in the siege of Sarajevo when he thought it was just a matter of days before it fell; then a miracle happened. Desperately seeing assistance, Haris met the Pakistani prime minister in Islamabad, who asked him what he could do to help. Haris realized it was a long shot, but he explained that without anti-tank missiles his people would be exterminated before long. The Serbian forces had dug their tanks into the hilltops surrounding Sarajevo and their constant barrage of shells rained down death and destruction. The defenders of Sarajevo, who included Serbs who wished for a united and inclusive nation, were fighting just to survive – with primitive hunting guns and farming tools. They were like sitting ducks and the Serbian forces had boasted of the imminent downfall of the city. In a five-minute meeting the prime minister of Pakistan decided on the matter and agreed to provide the anti-tank missiles that Haris desired. But the consignment still had to clear several hurdles. On arrival in Croatia, half of it was forcibly kept by the authorities for themselves as a kind of “tax.”
Haris recalls, with a quiet glee that two decades have not dimmed, the moment when the first anti-tank missiles were fired. They struck their target and in an instant destroyed the tanks. The Serbian forces literally had no idea what hit them. Baffled, they immediately pulled back all the tanks from the hilltops. It was a turning point in the war. The worst was over.
“That changed the character of the war” Haris reflected, lost in thought. Pakistanis are a “noble” people he said as if to himself. Perhaps Pakistanis were sympathetic, he thought, because they also suffered at the creation of their nation in 1947. That is why he found all of them – Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf, regardless of their politics – equally sympathetic. Later, Haris’ dramatic story of Pakistan’s intervention was confirmed to me by senior diplomats at the Pakistani embassy in Sarajevo.
Although he could accurately be described as one of the founding fathers of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haris is not entirely satisfied with his creation. The American sponsored Dayton Accord, in which he participated as a member, has resulted in a strange unworkable concoction of a state which is paralyzed by the clash of interests of opposing ethnic groups. Although the Croats and Serbs were given their own nations within the larger entity, they still hold one-third interest each in Bosnia. The very people who the Bosniaks view as the aggressors in the genocide against them now have veto powers over their lives. Dr Haris demands more streamlining of the administration and rights for his Bosniak people and is therefore seen as their champion by the Bosniaks and as a dangerous opponent by some Serbs. Referring to the role of the Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his group in the genocide of the 1990s, he had famously said: “If you kill one person, you are prosecuted. If you kill ten people you are famous. If you kill a quarter-of-a-million people you are invited to a peace conference.”
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Bosnian War and its aftermath is the great compassion that has lived on in the Bosnian people. In reflecting on Bosnian history and identity, Haris argued that Bosnia, one of Europe’s indigenous Muslim nations, developed its long history of cultural pluralism and acceptance – and its compassionate nature – due in large part to its place along civilizational fault lines.
I was curious to know where the compassion came from among Bosnians especially in the context of the genocide they faced:
“Oh what a difficult question, even if I knew the answer it would take me days to explain. Our region was caught between the East and West always. Going back to Roman times, it probably created an empathy for those who suffer in a way. So we had the Eastern Roman Empire, Western Roman Empire, eastern church, western church, so in the end we had our own Bosnian church here… So there are reasons for that but the truth is that there was a developed sense of the underdog and empathy for the underdog. That is a sign of a civilized behavior… During the last war the Muslims of Bosnia showed that quite clearly and as I said it was recognized by friend and foe. Defending themselves against the aggression they behaved in a civilized way, unfortunately with some bad examples and incidents, but as a rule they behaved very well considering the life and death situation. […] I can be proud not of everything we did but in critical times we behaved in a civilized way, like the last war between ‘92 and ‘95. I mean that we behaved under the threat of life and death, not normal circumstances, we behaved better than the others and that is recognized by friend and foe as we did hundreds of years ago when we protected weaker groups here in the Balkans because I believe that you are civilized if you protect weaker groups within your society.”
Silajdzic also explained that Bosnia’s deeply held pluralism shows the peaceful role Muslims can – and do – play in European society. He noted in particular that Bosnian history has been largely shaped by inclusive, pluralist institutions.
“We have authentic pluralism here for hundreds of years, long periods of peace and stability in Bosnia here. We have freedom for women, for example, much before Islam here in Bosnia, women played an equal part and it’s quite clear from our medieval history here which is written in stone not metaphorically, written in stone literally and we have it all over the place, there have been free societies here to a certain extent. The kings were chosen by a parliament. […] We had Gothic influence here in Bosnia and it is still present in our day and age. So we have the influence, there was freedom here, it’s not like the medieval situation of everything being dark, no. There was a place for women, electing their own king and things like that, so this is not exactly a savage place. But we live in Europe, which has invented two world wars – not by Bosnia by the way and not by Muslims by the way.”
Silajdzic also argued that Bosnians have simply been living out their charter as Muslims and following the message of the Qur’an in fostering pluralism.
“That’s why in the Qur’an it says that, and I’m paraphrasing: We have created you, peoples and tribes so that you can know each other… what’s wrong with that? And if we follow this, we just know each other so it’s good to know and it may enrich me. Bosnian pluralism is deep and it can enrich, and Bosnia as it is today is not a very successful state after the war and genocide and all that.”
Haris addressed European Islamophobes who say Muslims are a “foreign” people, meaning non-European, with a touch of exasperation:
“But who are you? Who are you? You came here too, we all came from somewhere, so that unfortunately is present in Europe but what is also present there is positive spirit – a spirit of pluralism. It is stronger with Bosnia because we have authentic pluralism here for hundreds of years – long periods of peace and stability in Bosnia.”
In fact, Silajdzic made a strong case that Bosnia, in spite of its small size and peripheral location within Europe, can serve as a role model for European values for the rest of that continent. He stated, “But today as we are, not very significant, not very big and all that, we still can show or remind Europe of its great genius and its great ideas of pluralism, of egalité, fraternité, liberté. Small Bosnia can do that but they don’t want to hear it.”
(Akbar Ahmed is Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University, Washington DC)
