RELIGION-SERBIA: Muslim School to Open in Belgrade

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 19 2001 (IPS) - For the first time in more than a century, an Islamic high school, or medressa, is to open its doors here.

“We have promises (from the authorities) that all the necessary papers will be done in time, meaning that the classes could start by” September, when the next school term begins, says Hamdija Jusufspahic, mufti, or head, of the Muslim community in Belgrade. “We hope that the new message of badly needed inter-religious tolerance can be sent from here”.

The new school is under construction in the small yard of the Bajrakli mosque, the capital’s only one. The mosque is more than 400 years old and remains a rare symbol of Turkish rule in Belgrade, which lasted almost five centuries.

“We hope that more than 100 students will start attending medressa in the capital,” Jusufspahic says.

At least 200,000 of Belgrade’s 2.5 million people are Muslims, making them the second largest religious group in the capital, after Orthodox Serbs. There are smaller Roman Catholics and Jewish communities.

For the time being, the mufti explains, young Muslims from Belgrade and other parts of Serbia attend Islamic schools abroad.

The nearest medressa is in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia- Herzegovina, he says. Once finished with high school, students seeking further Islamic education travel to the Middle East, especially Cairo. The mufti himself graduated there.

“The Islamic community here is too poor to be able to send many students abroad,” mufti says.

Islam has a 500-year history in Serbia but the liberation of Orthodox Serbs from Turkish rule at the end of the 19th century brought the destruction of Islamic symbols.

When Turkish rule ended in Serbia, some 90,000 Muslims lived in Belgrade. They had ten Islamic schools and prayed in 273 mosques. Today, Bajrakli is all that’s left.

“There are discreet hints that Muslims will be allowed to have a separate cemetery as well,” Jusufspahic says. “That would mean that our believers would be buried in accordance with the rules of our religion”.

Decades ago, there were separate lots for Muslims at six Belgrade cemeteries, but they are full and closed now. Muslims are being buried alongside other Belgradians in an “improper manner”, the mufti says.

Serbian society is burdened with the legacy of war in neighbouring Bosnia and repression in Kosovo, where non-Serbs, Muslims above all, were the targets of atrocities.

At the height of the war in Bosnia, between 1992 and 1995, the Bajrakli mosque, the mufti’s home nearby, and a small administrative building served as provisional shelters for Muslim refugees who managed to reach Belgrade.

But the campaign of hatred against Muslims at the time, inspired by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, made life hard for them and many were forced to leave for third countries. Bombs were thrown into the mosque’s yard but no one was killed. Milosevic’s police never found the perpetrators.

When NATO forces ceased their 11-week campaign of air raids against Serbia two years ago, the mosque became a meeting point and real estate exchange for Belgrade’s Ethnic Albanians and arriving Serb refugees from Kosovo.

Analysts say the new administration, which took over when Slobodan Milosevic fell from power last October, has a more tolerant approach towards non-Serbs and religion in general.

“There are encouraging signs that the times of intolerance against the non-Orthodox population are over,” says Belgrade sociologist Ivan Marjanovic. “One of the signs is the fact that the Serbian Orthodox Church gave a small sum of 5,000 German marks (2,500 US dollars) when the construction of the medressa began”.

Before the Serbian parliament takes its summer recess, it is expected to consider a join petition from religious groups seeking the re-introduction of religious classes in elementary and secondary schools. Such classes have not taken place at public schools since a socialist government came to power at end of World War II.

The heads of the Serbian Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish communities submitted the appeal in unison.