'Learn to Anticipate, Rather Than Reacting to Events'
Interview with Stephen Sulejman Schwartz

by Bedredin Gušić
Bedredin Gusic Blog [U.S.]
January 23, 2015

http://www.islamicpluralism.org/2449/learn-to-anticipate-rather-than-reacting-to-events

The flag of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina.

GUŠIĆ: How do you see the position of Muslims in the world, in general?

SCHWARTZ: The Muslim ummah is faced with many challenges, including, first, that of violent radicalism exemplified by the so-called Islamic State, and second, that of dictatorships epitomized by the bloodthirsty regime of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. Any belief that these phenomena are fundamentally different from one another is wrong. The brutality of the alleged "Islamic State" is a product and parallel of the atrocities committed by Al-Assad. Muslims need to repudiate radicalism and to promote social and political justice.

GUŠIĆ: How would you comment on the terrorist attack in Paris on January 7? The consequences of that act are tragic. But how about its causes?

The 20th c. Grand Mosque of Paris -- Photograph Via Wikimedia Commons.

SCHWARTZ: French Muslims and their offspring are caught in a system that encouraged their immigration after the French withdrawal from their colonial possessions in North Africa, but failed to integrate them. Unlike other Muslims in Western Europe, the great waves of immigration to France and Britain comprised many former soldiers in the French and British armies. Having risked their lives in opposition to the Algerian Revolution, and then fleeing to France, how can the Arab veterans of French military service not have felt, in some sense, resentment at the poor rewards they received? The same may be argued about Indian and Pakistani Muslims in Britain. For this reason it is probably unsurprising that France and Britain are centers of radical Islam in Western Europe, far exceeding any other countries.

It has been pointed out that French education is oriented toward the training of an elite, and that employment may often be discriminatory against those with Arab names or addresses in neighborhoods where immigrants congregate. By contrast, Germany, which has a much less significant problem of radical Islam, maintains both university-track and apprenticeship options that encourage young people of all ethnicities to find a place in society.

The importance of these social issues in the lives of French Muslims is admitted by the leading non-Muslim French politicians.

GUŠIĆ: Should freedom of expression have some limits? Or, is the freedom of the press in some countries still being abused?

The Statue of Liberty on September 11, 2001 -- Photograph By U.S. National Park Service.

SCHWARTZ: I am an American journalist and a Muslim. That means I have an absolute belief in freedom of expression, except when it involves direct incitement to personal violence. When I lived in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosova, I defended the freedom of media against the repressive meddling of the foreign agencies, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that tried to impose restrictions on reporting, publishing, and education.

I believe it is better to hear the bad things others might think about a person than to suppress them. In traditional Islam, we are guided to leave the company of those who insult us. In addition, Muslims who immigrate to majority non-Muslim lands must obey the laws of the country to which they go. This was a principle put forward by Prophet Muhammad sallallahualejhiselam. If they cannot do so, they should return to a majority-Muslim territory.

GUŠIĆ: Will there be a deterioration of the position of Muslims in Europe after the tragic events in France?

SCHWARTZ: As noted, responsible French, and other Western European, leaders are reaching out to Muslims to prevent a reaction against the Islamic communities. Yet we have seen already one absurd consequence of the atrocities. Marine Le Pen, head of the neofascist National Front in France, declared in a guest column in The New York Times on January 18, "every year tons of weapons from the Balkans enter French territory unhindered." From where comes this new and startling claim? I perceive in this the influence of Moscow, which supports Le Pen and similar demagogues in Western Europe, and which seeks to revive the past Russian policies of interference in the Balkans.

The flag of Ukraine. Every Muslim should stand up against Russian imperialism.

In another guest column, in the London Financial Times of January 14, Bulgarian policy expert Ivan Krastev warned, "Logic dictates that if Russia wants to increase the pressure on Europe, it should try beyond the territory of the former Soviet Union. It is such a scenario that makes the Balkans a likely hotspot… Bosnia's survival as a unified state cannot be taken for granted. If Russia openly backed the secessionist aspirations of the Republika Srpska, it could be the point of no return."

At the same time, Serbian leaders Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić are discussing a renewal of their ambitions regarding Kosova, doubtless based on a partition of the country's north. According to Belgrade news service B92, an advisor to Nikolić, Stanislava Pak, said that in Nikolić's coming proposal on Kosova "use can be made, for example, of some elements from… the Serb Republic (RS)." This is distressing in light of the Ukrainian events, and appears to spell a Russian attempt to make the so-called R.S. a permanent state.

GUŠIĆ: Your thesis about the difference between the Muslims of the Balkans and the Muslims who immigrated to Western Europe is interesting. Would you elaborate on this thesis for my readers, too?

SCHWARTZ: I stated the following to an interreligious conference in Kosova last year: We are often preached to, by Islamist radicals, regarding the indissoluble unity of the ummah. We are informed that there is one Allah subhanawata'la, one Prophet Muhammad sallallahualejhiselam, and one Qur'an al-qerim. All of which are true. But there is, we are told, one Islam, in which local, cultural, and doctrinal differences disappear. This is questionable, to say the least.

The flag of the Albanian nation.

I do not think anybody can accept the claim of "one Islam" who observes the basic differences between Balkan Islam, and especially Islam in the Albanian lands including Kosova, where the religion counts a majority of the population, and immigrant minority Islam in the countries of Western Europe, as well as the indigenous minority Islam in the Christian lands of Eastern Europe – Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania. British, French, German, and Scandinavian Muslims live differently from indigenous Balkan and Eastern European Muslims.

We should not be afraid to say we are Bosnian, Albanian, Macedonian, and American Muslims, with an emphasis on our national identities.

GUŠIĆ: You spent a lot of time in Bosnia. What are your experiences from my homeland?

SCHWARTZ: I was first drawn to the former Yugoslavia when I realized, after the emergence of Serbian ultranationalism in 1986, that a terrible war was coming there. I had been brought up as a leftist and was interested intensely in the Spanish civil war of 1936-39. Indeed, I was writing a book on Soviet involvement in that war, including that of Yugoslav volunteers, when, in the process of research, I read the infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. I knew immediately that Serbia was preparing aggression against its neighbors. I had also read the very enlightening journalistic reportage of Leon Trotsky on the Balkan Wars of 1912-13.

L. D. Trotsky.

I therefore came to ex-Yugoslavia in 1990 to report on the conflict I considered "my Spanish civil war," since I identified with George Orwell, who had gone to Spain to fight for the revolutionary left. I began as a typical "neutral" journalist but soon realized that "objectivity" is not "neutrality," but accuracy in the recording of evil. I confess that I took the side of the Croats, and then the Bosnians and Albanians, against the Serbian revival of fascism.

Bombed mosque in Ahmići, Central Bosnia,1993 – Photograph Courtesy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Den Haag.

But further, I fell in love with these lands and people, and especially with Bosnia and Sarajevo. I consider Sarajevo the most beautiful city I have ever known, and I have travelled around the world twice. Its landscape, its mosques, its people, its food – all delight me.

Having been born to a Jewish father and Christian mother, which meant I was not Jewish according to religious law, and since my father was deeply anti-religious, I was not raised as a Jew. I never had a bar mitzvah or attended a Hebrew school. I was, in truth, attracted more to the Christianity my mother had once professed. But I appreciated the tradition of civility and neighborliness between the Bosnian Muslims and the Bosnian Jews, and the work of Bosnian Jewish writers like Isak Samokovlija and Kalmi Baruh.

Interior of the first Bosnian Jewish synagogue (Kahal Viejo), founded 1581 C.E., Sarajevo – Photograph 1999 by Stephen Schwartz.

I had studied linguistics academically, speak Spanish, and was interested in the survival of Spanish among the Sephardic Jews of Bosnia. I found a wonderful mentor in this, the late professor Muhamed Nezirović of the University of Sarajevo (1934-2008). I learned the old Sephardic ballads, which the Jews called "our sevdahlinke," after encountering sevdahlinke as performed by Safet Isović and Omer Pobrić.

Rahmetli Muhamed Nezirovic,

I admired greatly the honorable conduct of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina in the war. I regret the acceptance of the Dayton Accords and the partition of Bosnia, but also recognize that Bosnians wanted peace, not continuation of the war.

Title: "Women Volunteers in the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina."

I have returned to Sarajevo many times and consider it an alternate home. Nothing suits me better than to buy the daily newspapers in Bosnian and Croatian, to eat in the Aščinica ASDž in the Baščaršija, to have coffee in the Caffé Imperijal, to visit the bookstores, to say Fatiha at the graveyard of the Alipaša mosque and the turbe of Gazi Husrev Beg in the courtyard of the Begova mosque, and to pray in the Čobanija and Magribija mosques. Thinking all the while of the Morić brothers and the wonderful songs of their unjust deaths. I also like Bosnian films.

The 16th c. C.E. Alipaša mosque, Sarajevo -- Photograph Via Wikimedia Commons. The most beautiful and moving site in the city. Fatiha for the heroes interred there.

The 15th-16th c. C.E. turbe of Gazi Husrev Beg, in the central Sarajevo mosque that bears his name. Fatiha.

The 16th c. CE Čobanija mosque, a jewel of Sarajevo.

The Magribija Mosque,16th c. CE, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina – Photograph 2009 Via Wikimedia Commons.

I am perhaps best described as a California writer who became, by an accident of history, an adopted Balkan Muslim. In Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosova, once accepting Islam, I further learned of the reality of Sufism.

The story is really quite elaborate and it is something on which I can speak and write extensively. I hope to produce a full book about my Bosnian experience some day.

GUŠIĆ: What is the primary mission of your Center?

SCHWARTZ: The Center for Islamic Pluralism exists to unite moderate, traditional, conventional, spiritual, and even conservative – but not radical – Muslims against the threat of extremist ideology. We do that primarily, at present, by cultivating young Muslim writers around the world, assisting Muslim prisoners in American and other jails, and combating the evil of female genital mutilation in the Middle East. Our da'wa is simple and modest.

GUŠIĆ: How you draw a contrast between Sufism and Wahhabism, for example?

SCHWARTZ: Wahhabism is a ferocious enemy of Sufism, and since most members of our Center are Sufi or Sufi-oriented, we must defend ourselves against Wahhabi aggression. Nevertheless, I observe a difference between Wahhabism in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is undergoing a slow and contradictory process of social change, and the metastasized Wahhabism of the false "Islamic State," which threatens Islam and the world. We do not want to kill all Wahhabis; we just want them to leave us alone. They should cease to enjoy a monopoly on religious authority in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and become just one among the many interpretations of Islam.

I should add that I published the first article in the U.S. warning of the coming war in Yugoslavia, in 1987, and the first on Wahhabism in Bosnia, in 2000. Until September 11, 2001, the world ignored the threat of radical infiltration in Bosnia.

GUŠIĆ: You are the author of several books. What is the main message of your book The Two Faces of Islam?

SCHWARTZ: The aim of The Two Faces of Islam – which was translated into Bosnian as Dva Lica Islama, by Enes Karić and Rešid Hafizović – was to explain to the American and global public, both Muslim and non-Muslim, the role of Wahhabism in Al-Qaida and the predominance of moderate and Sufi, rather than radical and Wahhabi, beliefs in the ummah.

GUŠIĆ: At the very last: What is your position on Huntington's theory of Clash of Civilizations?

SCHWARTZ: Huntington's book of that title never impressed me very much. I much prefer his earlier volume on global democratization, The Third Wave. His concept of civilizations is too much centered on the West – for example, he presented Latin America as a different civilization from that of the West, which is ludicrous. He also analyzed Japan and Korea, which have successfully integrated with the West, as separate. And of course, he treated the whole Islamic ummah as a single civilization, which I reject. Balkan, Turkish, Arab, Persian, Indian, Central Asian, Southeast Asian, Black African, and the new Euro-American Islam represent different cultures, and, if one insists, different civilizations. But I do not believe in an East-West division except geographically and in some limited historical contexts. Rather, I believe in a North-South disparity based on economics.

On the other hand, Huntington was correct in his polemic against Francis Fukuyama, who predicted "the end of history" with the fall of Communism. Few saw that the end of Communism would lead to more, rather than less, conflict. Nobody in the West understood the fatal paradox that the most advanced Communist state, the former Yugoslavia, would set a pattern for disintegration and bloodshed. The world is not good at looking ahead. I believe one must learn to anticipate, rather than reacting, to events.

GUŠIĆ: Thank you very much for this interview.

SCHWARTZ: Thank you very much for the opportunity – Allah imanet to all Bosnian Muslims and sve najbolje to all good Bosnians.

[The original Bosnian-language version of this text is accessible here.

[Ovaj tekst na bosanskom jeziku je dostupan ovdje.]

Without radical affectations in costume, but fighting for the dignity of their sisters and brothers, and the right to live in harmony with all. The Bosnian woman soldier deserves the respect and praise of every Muslim believer.

Related Topics:  Albanian Muslims, Balkan Muslims, Bektashi Sufis, Bosnian Muslims, British Muslims, European Muslims, French Muslims, German Muslims, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Muslim-Christian Relations, Muslim-Jewish Relations, Russia, Terrorism, Wahhabism receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free center for islamic pluralism mailing list