Bosnia the Good: Tolerance and Tradition 9789633865149

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BOSNIA THE GOOD

BOSNIA THE GOOD Tolerance and Tradition

Rusmir Mahmutcehajic

1»» •r C E U P R E S S *tV Central European University Press

First published in Bosnian as Dobra Bosnia by Edition Durieux, Zagreb, 1997

English edition published in 2000 by Central European University Press Nadoru. 15 H-1051 Budapest Hungary 400 West 59 t h Street New York, NY 10019 USA

Translated by Marina Bowder

©1997 by Rusmir Mahmutcehajic English translation © 2000 by Rusmir Mahmutcehajic

Distributed in the United Kingdom and Western Europe by Plymbridge Distributors Ltd., Estover Road, Plymouth, PL6 7PZ, United Kingdom

All rights reserved. N o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher

ISBN 963-9116-86-6 Cloth ISBN 963-9116-87-4 Paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available upon request

Printed in Hungary by Akadémiai Nyomda

CONTENTS

PREFACE

3

Introduction T H E BOSNIAN PARADIGM

9

Chapter 1 T H E BALKAN ARCHIPELAGO Introduction Sovereignty Christianity Islam Serbhood Croathood Bosniac Identity Political Downslide Modernity and Beyond Tolerance and Tradition

13 13 16 19 23 26 29 31 34 41 45

Chapter 2 KERNEL AND SHELL Introduction The Diversity of Religions

55 55 59

Tradition Corruption Islam through Phenomenology The Science of Symbols Speech into Script

61 64 65 69 72

Chapter 3 DUALISM RESOLVED Introduction The Five Signs of Duality The Word and the Apple The Rose and the Vine The Staff and the Moon The Sword and the Web The Temple and the Tomb

81 81 85 85 87 91 94 97

The Face: Five Stages The Face Heaven and Earth Sun and Moon Stars and Mountains Trees and Animals Submission and Freedom

100 101 102 103 105 106 107

Chapter 4 T H E CYCLE OF SLAUGHTER Introduction The Secret Letter Christ and Christology Parakletos The Transition Verticality and Horizontality 'Heresy' Opposition Splitting Changes Without an Answer

115 115 117 120 121 124 128 131 132 134 137 139

The Hand Disappearance and Renewal Conditions

140 143 144

Chapter 5 THE MASDJID Introduction High in Low Building and Razing The Stations of Wisdom Fear: Flight and Attack Love: Patience and Passion Knowledge: I and I Humanity and Perfection

151 151 154 157 159 165 167 169 173

Chapter 6 GENOCIDE Introduction 'The End of History' 'The Clash of Civilisations' Elites Ideologies Organisations Perpetrators Toxic Reaction Crime and the Future

183 183 187 190 193 196 199 202 206 208

EPILOGUE

213

BIBLIOGRAPHY

223

INDEX OF NAMES

229

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!

PREFACE

'Bosnia the Good' has once again witnessed the accomplishments of evil: the slaughtered are still rotting in their thousands, unburied, throughout the forests of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lying in mud, washed up on riverbanks or thrown into pits—the distance humanity has travelled from itself can be crudely measured in the numbers of dead. The depths of degradation reached, here in Bosnia, deter the survivors from attempting to penetrate and understand their experience, letting evil pull back into the shadows to nurse itself for a new outbreak. The structure which evil inhabits, and from which, from time to time, it erupts, evades examination: and we continue passively to accept life in a darkened landscape, empty of principle. Learning to understand evil and its works can be compared to climbing a ladder, from the lowest aspects of humanity to the highest: to the Centre, which can be called Goodness. In the span between the lowest and the highest, evil and good—terms which today sound naive, even embarrassing—stand as absolutes: either the total rejection of the principles in which our sacred traditions are rooted; or hope in the future and the salvation of humanity. Hope still breathes, although faintly, in war-torn Bosnia: a country moulded by the symbols which three of the widest and strongest of religious traditions (the sophia perennis, lex aeterna, din al-haqq) have inscribed in the Bosnian book of life and death. The killers violated these scriptures by rejecting the principle that 'a right way and an open road' were individually created for all nations (Kur'an). If

4

Preface

the coequal existence of different laws and ways holds as a principle, then only the greatest evil can result from humanity's failure to live by this principle. Our inability to acknowledge and accept all laws and ways has led us to act like false gods, demanding that our own laws and ways should dominate, or even annihilate, those of others. This failure prevents us from climbing the ladder of values, which, in leading us to the Cause and End of all, would free us from false gods. Bosnia bears living testimony to the potential created when several sacred laws and ways are present together. Each has its own inherent form of defence against the possibility of mutual violence: denial of one sacred tradition by another means that the first has ceased to be sacred, has lost its capacity to achieve holiness for humanity. T o join this denial is to join forces with the unreal, which seeks the annihilation of others to feed its own emptiness. T o falsify the real identity of Bosnia means to deny goodness: inadequacy can only achieve potency by denying the presence and the existence of the holy, the whole. If we lose awareness of the possibilities incorporated and suggested by Bosnia, there will be no more opposition to the continuing growth of a system of evil in the place of the real Bosnia. The sacred traditions of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Islam are incorporated into Bosnia's structure in a living relationship of mutual testing and confirmation. The sacred is unique, but the roads and ways to achieve it are many, since 'to every one of you We have appointed a right way and an open road'. But Imam 'Ali ibn Abi Talib adds: 'The example of the world is like that of a snake, which is soft in touch but whose poison is fatal.' The breaking of the original ties between the different sacred traditions forming the unity of Bosnia has resulted from a vicious campaign launched by nationalist powers, identifying themselves as Orthodox and Catholic, against the Bosnian Muslims. While justification was sought and found in the West's distorted images of Islam, the political ideologies of these attacks were based on the totalitarian conviction that an abased standard of ignorance and fear should be universally applied. This ideology, preaching that the nation and the state are one, involves a total denial of the principles which humanity's multiple ladders of spirituality, all different but all leading upwards, are trying to reach. A turning-point has been reached in ideology: its sense of a grand purpose is disappearing, to be replaced by the endless, mechanical production of new methods for plunging the world into a specifically human darkness. The ladders of spirituality are being chopped off short: they no longer climb to the Highest, and the communities which were struggling to ascend by them are los-

Preface

5

ing sight of the whole. Their attitude to others has become a campaign of smearing and exploitation, used to help conceal their own ideological emptiness. The obsessive killing in Bosnia was caused by, and is a revelation of, this particular form of politics, which force humanity away from the paths where it can find and fulfil its greatest capacity for holiness and joy. Disorientated and numbed, we lose the highest aspect of humanity: our sense that we are beings created for perfection. Instead, we let ourselves participate in the worst forms of degradation, following the road to darkness. Confronted by this loss of direction, manifest in the slaughter and division throughout Bosnia, all we can envision is an endless cycle of chaos and fear. T o understand the evil, we must examine its target: a direct approach to the core of Bosnia's identity is required. Only at the very heart of this identity, in its eternal, yet ignored testimony to the sopbia perennis, will we finally recognise the misery of that state towards which the politics of 'antiBosnia' are driving us. T o understand the intricate relationship of the roots and the branches of humanity, we should broaden our vision: only a higher and deeper perception will show us the shallow nature of the huge structures, without foundation or purpose, which are compelling their members to destroy Bosnia. The division of current Bosnian politics from their original, transcendent root has turned the competing ideologies into opposed and irreconcilable entities. Yet even in their present state of mutual antagonism they are willing to contribute to one another's campaign of destruction for as long as the twin resources of money and human violence remain at their disposal. These ideologies cannot rise beyond themselves, being diseased at the core: to conceal their deformity, each exalts the sacred treasures of its own religion, while denying and attacking those of others. This trend towards isolation and—ultimately—annihilation is the logical consequence of our acceptance of pure reason as a sufficient guide for humanity, coupled with a materialist view of the universe. The destruction of Bosnia, the manufacture and exploitation of a false opposition between Islam and the Christian West, are merely a part of the general trend towards the destruction of spiritual unity in the world. For, regardless of what religion the participants in this destruction claim to follow, they are similar in their absolute hostility to Tradition. There is a stark contrast between the deepening trend of destruction, in particular of destruction that claims religious motives, and the principles which are the real foundations and guides of every sacred tradition. If the

6

Preface

language and message of any one of the sacred traditions forming Bosnia's multi-stranded unity are compared with the brutality of the plan to destroy Bosnia, this contrast is starker still. The selection of the Islamic tradition and the Bosniac inheritance as the central targets for the anti-Bosnia campaign provides an insight into this campaign's primarily anti-religious nature. W e are compelled to realise the darkness of our modern attitude to religious tradition, which has helped increase the savagery of this destruction. 'And some men there are who say "We believe in God and the Last Day" but they are not believers' (Kur'an). T o gain a fuller insight into the destruction of Bosnia's pluriform identity, which is, in itself, a treasury of Tradition or Gnosis, we need to understand the depth of the gulf between Tradition and the shallow vulgarity of our new-age outlook. The essence of Tradition is its constancy and its universality—a global axis uniting the realm of mutability with the realm of principle, discernible in all symbols and rituals and teachings. A society founded on Tradition is directed towards a primarily spiritual goal, a goal lost to the secular society which derives most of its principles from the demands of material gain. The first type of society may include significant elements of the second, but the latter cannot incorporate the former: the lesser cannot contain the greater. The systematic slaughter of Bosnia's Muslims, and the claim that Islam is to blame, are features of a complex and intricate campaign, which should be interpreted against the background of modernity. The whole phenomenon has arisen from two simultaneous trends: that of destroying spirituality and building a 'New World Order', and the evolution of human individuality. The greatest fatality to befall the people of Bosnia would be rejection of their spiritual inheritance in the mistaken belief that this would contribute to their advance as a society. As violence and hatred assault their national consciousness, they are starting to acquiesce in the denial of the historical relationship between the separate sacred traditions which have combined to form Bosnia's unique identity. They are accepting the denial of this identity, its unity in diversity, its potential to lead from the lowest towards the Highest, from darkness towards the Light. If Bosnia's ethnic Muslims, after facing destruction by systematic killing, by the denial of their existence as a nation, by the rape of their identity and the sacking of their traditional inheritance, become what their killers portray them as—radicalised, power-hungry, bent on vengeance—this would be to destroy themselves from within. They can only discern and avoid this danger if they turn towards their own Centre and open the way to their

Preface

1

spiritual treasury, as a lost source of life; and to its language, as a treasury of eternal wisdom. Goodness could then enter the arena where rival powers are struggling for supremacy. T o submit to distortion is to submit to evil: the superficial and treacherous exploitation of religious tradition currently taking place is the darkest denial of Goodness. But the truth, when alone, cannot be proved: 'a first cause, being itself uncaused, is not prob-ab\e. but axiomatic' (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy). God is, essentially, provable only to God: only the self can comprehend the self. Yet every genuine tradition offers its own indestructible form of testimony to the Centre: the idea of Goodness. Each testimony is independent and self-sufficient, but is not in itself opposed to any other form of sacred teaching. T h e sacred forms of the various traditions cannot be exchanged or compared: but the coexistence of multiple and apparently contradictory forms has proved a difficult riddle to solve. T h e role Bosnia has played in resolving this riddle offers a crucial testimony to the potential of the world and humanity. At the centre of the denial and the destruction of Bosnia is the denial and destruction of its Islamic component, suggesting strongly that Bosnia's diverse unity is inseparable from the Islam-based identity of the Bosniacs (Bosnia's ethnic Muslims). T h e destructive forces proclaimed an essential opposition between the Islamic world and Western liberalism and democracy founded on Christianity, and this attitude is being urged on the members of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the guise of a requirement sprung from the core of their sacred traditions. Precisely the same outlook is now being touted—with the support and funding of external sources— among the Bosnian Muslims. All available means are being deployed in the effort to prove to them that their religious identity contradicts the concept that Bosnia should embody the unity of different sacred traditions. Those hostile both to the idea of Bosnia and to the Bosniac nation are well aware that, when the Bosniac national ideology finally succumbs to the dogma which teaches that unity in diversity is impossible, Bosnia will finally disappear. This book probes the evil from which this dogma has sprung, together with its present consequences, and in contrast examines the spiritual foundations of Bosniac culture: its guiding concept that unity is found at the heart of every holy tradition. Although this book mainly examines the Islamic elements of Bosnia's triple-stranded religious diversity, the evidence and conclusions have general significance for both Bosnia and the world's multiple structure of sacred traditions.

8

Preface

This book was written when the killing and division in Bosnia and Herzegovina were reaching their climax. Those who experienced the cataclysm found themselves reduced to the absolute basics of their own natures: their choices narrowed to the three options of defence, surrender, or flight. In this multitude of individual dramas, ranging across the scale of human experience, the image of the world as a whole, and Bosnia's place in its context, was lost to view. This book tries to offer a wider vision, a more solid sense of identity: it reaches out to the beleaguered defenders of the concept of Bosnia as a unity in diversity. In particular it tries to help them withstand what was perhaps the severest test of the war: the overwhelming pressure, from all sides, to accept the division of Bosnia into three ethno-national entities. Those who surrendered to this compulsion tried to find historical and cultural justifications—and in so doing aligned themselves with those who were bent on division. This book tries to show that only by upholding and defending the concept of unity in diversity could they ensure for themselves and their country a road towards human salvation. It also tries to help them take a sceptical view of the modernist project of human self-sufficiency, and to direct them to the holy and infinite inner locus, the authority and transcendence towards which the self should turn. Bosnia the Good tries to show the width of the gulf between the archetypal Bosnia and the reality of genocide, and how well the latter was aided by ideological totalitarianism and the current intellectual disdain for religion. This book is dedicated not only to the Bosnian defenders of Bosnia and the coexistence of its different ways and laws, but to all who believe in the potential for finding unity in religious diversity, and the embodiment of this unity in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author and translator express grateful acknowledgements to Francis R. Jones, Merima Osmankadic and Oto Lukacevic for their contribution to the translation of parts of this work.

INTRODUCTION

THE BOSNIAN PARADIGM

T

HE revelation of Truth takes place in different languages, at different times and under different conditions. Its interpretations then have to meet various social and political demands and an awareness of the Truth itself is frequently diminished, subjugated by powerful individuals or groups who claim a monopoly of the Truth. This is accompanied by attempts to subordinate all other interpretations to a single, predominant interpretation, and by a rejection of all the essential principles of Truth. The divine traditions which constitute Bosnia's identity—Bosnian Christianity, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam and Judaism—are different in form but share the same genealogy—going back to Abraham. Their close kinship suggests their potential to encounter and embrace these differences, as aspects of an underlying unity. On the other hand, the premise common to most or all religious traditions—that is, the potential of every individual to receive salvation—can be suppressed by an overemphasis on differences between interpretations, symbols and ideas, which in turn can be exploited by nationalist regimes. The search for the highest ideals has always been manipulated in accordance with the totalitarian need for establishing simplified systems of ideas. Political and national programmes are presented in religious frameworks, the values of which are reduced to a fraction of the values required by the principle that all diversity is comprehended in essential unity. Religious interpretations, symbols and ideas become ever more subject to national

10

INTRODUCTION

ideologies. The voice calling for humanity to remember its shared, sacred elements becomes ever weaker: the voice calling for strong, defined borders grows ever more powerful. The revival of religion within the separate groups comprising Bosnia coincided with the collapse of the ideological system of the Yugoslav communist state and the rise of nation-state ideologies which demanded the redrafting of the existing national borders. This in turn produced 'national unions' based on the undisputed dominance of one leader and one political party, each aspiring to transform the Bosnian matrix of complex and interwoven identities into separate, isolated totalities of state and territory. The real masters of this war, from its very beginning, were Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and his elite, and Croatia's Franjo Tudman with his elite— and their Bosniac counterpart, Alija Izetbegovic. An integral aspect of their systems is that of placing religious meanings, symbols and ideas in a subordinate position, serving and upholding the new ideologies. The voice of opposition to these new, militarised ideologies has, until now, remained weak in Bosnia. Also weak were, and are, those forces that could have become a base for, and partner to, the international order, in its ambition to establish social stability and respect for human rights in the Balkans and in Bosnia itself. Contacts between Bosnia's component groups are maintained today largely through the mediation of the individuals and organisations representing the international community—with the frequent result that the divisions between these groups have become more solidly institutionalised. All parties assume that the political and religious establishments and individuals of the ideologised, totalitarian entities of Serb, Croat and Bosniac, are reflections of insurmountable ethnic, religious and political differences. Thus, the basic elements of trust, which the rational modelling of economic behaviour fails to approach, are blocked out by political reservations. Members of Bosnia's component groups find it easier to establish connections with the outside world than with individuals and institutions in their own environment. This outlook produces an increasingly rigid and closed mentality. The sense of the unity underlying Bosnia's land, history, language, ethnogenesis and divine traditions is fast or slowly disappearing from the outlooks of individuals and groups. The near is seen as distant: small differences are encouraged to grow into impossible barriers. Without a renewed willingness to acknowledge and accept the ideas behind the Bosnian concept, change cannot take place. While no achievements

The Bosnian Paradigm

11

are made in this direction, the present ceasefire will remain a partial cure that in n o way guarantees healing. T h e ideologising—and idealising—of history will intensify. Acceptance of the restricted scales of values prescribed by ideological exclusiveness will continue to prevent individuals and groups f r o m entering the field of open dialogue and strengthening trust. Since the prevalent concept of co-operation is that of a purely political dialogue, between totally separate, ideologised ethnic entities, all efforts to strengthen trust are interpreted as a denial of these entities. T h e political stage displays the paradox of opposition between virtually indistinguishable political oligarchies. T h e area where all can achieve consensus offers n o r o o m for the resolution of differences: it lies in their joint opposition to all efforts at transcending the borders by which they have confined themselves. O p e n dialogue, in which all participants of Bosnia's unity of diversity can join, is, f r o m where these forces stand, dangerous n o t only to themselves, b u t to the very essence of the Serb, C r o a t and Bosniac entities. 'Everything can be divided', they claim. 'Everything can be joined' is the need of the Bosnian people. T h i s unification does n o t demand the exclusion of individual differences: it speaks to the core of every group. 1 Bosnian poet M a k Dizdar suggested a generation ago, in The Stone Sleeper, h o w Bosnia's identity rises transcendent above the persistence of slaughter and the extinction of culture: You'll burn my home to the ground Till all Falls And then you '11 say these dark words This nest is done for now This cursed cur Is slain With pain But by a miracle I will still be dreaming here on earth (...) And from afar I'll let it be told This truth of mine Unerring And old

12

INTRODUCTION

(You know nothing about the sign Of the husbandman Or his vine You don't know what such gifts are worth) (Mak Dizdar, 'Message')2

NOTES 1 For a more detailed analysis of the most recent attempts to disrupt Bosnia's unity in diversity, see the forthcoming translation into English The Denial of Bosnia (Pennsylvania: The Penn. State University Press). 2 Mak Dizdar, Kameni spavac (Stone Sleeper), trans. Francis R. Jones (Sarajevo, 1999), pp. 179,181 and 183.

CHAPTER 1

THE BALKAN ARCHIPELAGO Had God not driven back the people, some by the means of others, there had been destroyed cloisters and churches, synagogues and mosques, wherein God's Name is much mentioned. (Kur'an, 22:40)

Introduction

T

HE clash between political, religious and national entities within the Balkans has been experienced by their hapless peoples over a long period. Frequently this experience has taken the form of genocide, the mass killing of the weaker by the stronger, on a greater or lesser scale. In the transition from faith in the holiness of man, as the highest creation of God, to the ecclesiastical faith in 'the sacredness of the supreme authorities over the people', a complex multitude of national and supra-national contradictions has emerged. The intricate structure of the Balkan matrix interweaves various concepts of supra-nationalism and nationalism: the histories of the Balkan nations interact, permeate one another and conflict endlessly, a riddle without an answer.

The urge to construct a logical model to analyse this state of affairs has been defeated by the intricacy of the Balkan matrix. Small differences in language, faith and historical experience have expanded catastrophically into unbridgeable gulfs, and these differences have helped fuel the drive for exclusive rights to territory. The individual national and religious entities form a virtual archipelago of multiple but isolated units. While none have yet succeeded in defining their borders in precise accord with their national presence, the unending attempts to establish new borders or change the old have always been productive of disaster. Where one unit has attempted to impose its rule over another, or part of another, multiple death has always

14

THE BALKAN ARCHIPELAGO

been the result. As the Croats, Bosniacs, Serbs, Montenegrins, Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks and other members of the Balkan archipelago have come to acknowledge one another as separate nations, their consequent campaigns to impose their individual national sovereignties have produced insoluble conflicts. The concept of the ethnically pure nation state, as the only effective method of ensuring national sovereignty, is impossible to implement in the Balkans without genocide. The natural remedy would be for the various Balkan nationalisms to resolve their differences with the help of supranational concepts: religion above all. However, the forms of supranationalism present in the Balkans are themselves in bitter conflict over the issues of national borders. Each supports its own favoured nationalism, to which it is linked by tradition. Thus the various supra-nationalisms directly or indirectly support individual demands for nation states, as the condition for national sovereignty, and so have played their own part in national conflicts. The multiple nationalisms of the Balkan peninsula are catered for primarily by two forms of religious supra-nationalism: the Christian, in the dual manifestation of Orthodox and Catholic; and the Islamic. This brief study attempts to analyse the premises of the supra-national/national relationship in this part of the world, focusing on the prevalent attitudes towards Bosnia from the perspective of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Islam— and Serb, Croat and Bosniac. The question about universal history, posited from the earliest times, involves the need to define a law governing the flow of history, to render phenomena explicable as manifestations of a unique, guiding force. Ibn Khaldun, in his Mukaddima, examined the proposal of a general law in depth: the fluctuation of civilisations is decreasing, he felt, due to the unchangeable internal forces of history. On an exceptional basis, Ibn Khaldun held, upheavals of such dimensions occur that the result is a new creation, a renaissance, the rise of a new age. 1 Ibn Khaldun pointed to this dynamic of fluctuation—which can be seen in retrospect as the dialectic development of human faith—and predicted the growth of new civilisational trends in the West. Several centuries later, Immanuel Kant laid emphasis on the need to place and incorporate the principles of universal history within an interpretation of the sequence through which humanity passes and the future achievements of this progress.2 Kant's concept of universal history was elaborated in the work of Georg W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx: for both,

Introduction

15

history is heading for climax in the resolution of the tensions which act as the moving forces. The historical development of society is perfected in the liberal state, for Hegel, and in the communist state, for Marx: these will fulfil all human desires. The liberal state will be achieved by the battle for recognition, and the communist state by social economics. After the fall of the 'Communist Empire', at the end of the second Christian millennium, Hegel's predictions were accepted as proven, in particular by Alexandre Kojeve, who claims that the end of history is in sight. According to Kojeve, the 'universal and homogeneous state' which can be called 'liberal democracy', is finally resolving the issues of recognition, replacing the master—servant relationship with one of general and equal recognition.3 Today, liberal democracy and the free market have at their disposal the resources to impose and defend their belief in their 'fulfilment', thus running the risk of regarding everything which they perceive as being other as archaeological remnants incapable of achieving the post-history nirvana. On the other hand, the phenomena of Nazism and Communism: structured and (albeit temporarily) dominant systems of violence, confirmed that the proposition of a united moving force or law, leading history towards its 'end' and humanity towards 'the last man', must remain an open question. The general sweep of opinion has passed over a large amount of evidence seen as having had no impact on humanity as a whole—in fact, this material is of decisive importance for evaluating the proposition of a general law defining the trend of history. Kant's concept of the 'advance of history' has been refuted, according to many modern thinkers, by the sheer volume of phenomena which fall outside the law.4 The collapse of the 'Communist Empire', founded on the 'advance of history' principle, testifies overwhelmingly to the fact that this analysis ignores too many crucial elements. This evidence is cited to demonstrate that there is neither a God nor any secular mechanism—like Hegel's universal history—to define the significance of the current of events. History is, accordingly, a chaotic multitude of conflicts between nations, in which liberalism does not hold the decisive—or even a decisive—position. On the other hand, Hegel's dialectic of the fight for recognition, which can claim to be a more comprehensive system since it stresses the spiritual aspects of humanity as decisive in directing the current of history, has again re-entered the arena. The disappearance of the fault-line dividing the globe into two ideological kingdoms was accompanied by stresses which transformed Bosnia into a bloody battlefield. The image of war-torn Bosnia, imprisoned by siege but

16

THE BALKAN ARCHIPELAGO

nevertheless scrutinised and manipulated by leading international factors, raises urgent questions about the future. All Balkan states have at some stage defined Islam as other in the course of their struggle for recognition: nearly all the Muslims of Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Serbia have been destroyed or expelled by genocidal campaigns. Bosnia must, while abiding by its original form, which lasted intact for a thousand years, somehow find a solution to its quest for recognition which does not involve self-destruction. For if the general trend of destroying the other has risen from individuals to the village, tribe, nation and state, the end must be in total conflict between the most powerful members of the world mosaic. This conflict may ultimately end in a totalitarian equilibrium, in which we neither can earn, nor care to earn, the recognition of the others. And if, as Samuel P. Huntington foresees, the great conflict of the future will be that between the West and Islam, 5 then the Bosnian conflict has the significance of a key to universal history.

Sovereignty The current European understanding of sovereignty is founded, primarily, on the conclusions of Jean Bodin and Pierre de Belloy, published towards the end of the sixteenth century. Their concept of sovereignty is closely linked to the monarchy: this is God-created, and therefore the monarch is answerable only to God. Sovereignty belongs to the monarchy, since it was bestowed by the Absolute Sovereign. No contractual agreement can exist between the monarch and his subjects: instead, Bodin, in giving absolute powers to the monarch, stresses the monarch's obligation to accept and uphold the natural rights of his subjects. This concept of God's justice as the source of the monarch's sovereignty can be seen as historically responsible for promoting in the monarch a sense of duty towards his subjects. On the other hand, this concept placed the people in the position of subject and deprived them of equal status with the monarch. The consequent desire for a civil society, a human and spiritual renaissance, influenced the development of civil and political theories of humanism and the philosophy of nature. Secular powers replaced those of the church, and interest swung from religion towards politics. In line with this development, the mutual antagonism of nation states, and the diminution of internal forces for unity and reverence, pushed sovereignty into the realm of the nation and the state. The necessity arose for

Sovereignty

17

defining the moral status of political power: this brought the accompanying issues of national unity, state power, internal stability and security, and international justice, into focus. A series of new political concepts sprang up in Italy, England, France and Holland. Niccolo Machiavelli had laid the foundations in the fifteenth century when he urged that 'reasons of state' supersede morals. Thomas Hobbes developed the theory of the protection of the interest of individuals and society, binding it exclusively to the state. Sovereignty is, on the basis of the social contract, transferred to the individual who, in return, supports the security of the community. This theory of sovereignty received further elaboration from the German political essayists of the nineteenth century, who formed the concept of the distribution of sovereignty, shared between the empire and its federal units. George Waitz offered the theory of sovereignty divided between the centre and the state members, but his theory was challenged by Max von Seydel, who maintained that sovereignty can be neither shared nor transferred. Georg Jellinek subsequently tried to resolve the question of whether sovereignty is divisible: moving towards a juridical theory of the voluntary limitation of sovereignty, Leon Duguit offered a sociological-positivist description of the law which would perform this task. Maurice Hauriou, who developed the theory of the institution, takes a similar approach. All of the foregoing can simply be related to the concept of sovereignty as the right and the ability to create and manage a state. The concept of national sovereignty is most profoundly expressed in the American Declaration of Independence (1776), which adds to the concepts expressed in the French constitution of 1791. Sovereignty is one and indivisible, and cannot be removed or transferred. It belongs to the nation, and no separate group or individual can claim it exclusively. The concept of popular sovereignty incorporates the expression of national sovereignty. Inquiring who, in the name of nation or state, actually realises sovereignty, Austine decides that sovereignty belongs to the national parliament, as the highest organ. The parliament passes laws which bind all citizens, but is not itself confined by law, since it can change the legislation at will. On the other hand, the constitution of the United States does not give unlimited powers to the legislative body: in fact, it imposes significant limitations on this body. From these concepts arises the dual sovereignty characteristic of every complex federal structure: next, this sovereignty must be founded on a functional basis. In our century, theories of 'multiple sovereignty' have developed: sovereignty comprised of various political, economic and religious

18

THE BALKAN ARCHIPELAGO

groups. Sovereignty is connected in various ways to the people, nation and state, and these separate categories permeate and condition one another. The 1948 declaration of the United Nations laid down the principle of equal, defined sovereign rights for all members, as the founding principle of international relations. Accordingly, sovereignty ceased to be the symbol of the unlimited powers of the state, since the states accepted a significant limitation of their sovereignty. If all these models are included in our analysis of the term sovereignty, as applied in the Balkans, then several contradictions emerge. The Balkan nations of today base themselves on early mediaeval kingdoms, but their borders have significandy altered, and the populations have shifted and dispersed themselves among other ethnic groups. All the present nations derive their historical identity from these vanished kingdoms, but the borders of the modern states are validated only partly by historical continuity. The national sovereignty of one Balkan nation cannot be established in a single nation state without violating the rights of other nations. State sovereignty cannot be bound exclusively to a single ethnic group without endangering the basic rights of a significant portion of the state's citizens. This state of affairs, however, has not prevented the formulation and implementation of national programmes which have threatened the survival of other nations present in the same geopolitical territory. The people of every Balkan state are broken up into several nations: every Balkan nation is dispersed over several states. The sovereignty of the nations cannot exclude the sovereignty of the state; conversely, the sovereignty of the state must validate equal rights for all its citizens—for all the various nations comprising the total population of the state. With the acceptance and implementation of modern formulations of national and state sovereignty in the Balkan area, the need has arisen for the promotion of theoretical and practical acceptance of proximity and unity, interrelationships and co-operation. If the concepts of sovereignty are adopted without these additional concepts, they will merely add to the bitter Balkan experience of historical hatred and conflicts. Denial and division, the most basic forms of human weakness in action, will find justification in ideology and 'reasons of state' far more readily than will constructive plans for cooperation and coexistence. What attitudes do the Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic supra-nationalisms assume towards issues of popular, national and state sovereignty? This question takes on its most complex form in Bosnia, which is inhabited joindy by three nations. The Bosniacs derive their identity from the medi-

Christianity

19

aeval Bosnian kingdom, and its subsequent experiences, in a single historical flow. T h e acceptance of Islam under the Ottoman Empire is, for them, the continuation and fulfilment of this kingdom: the continuation and fulfilment of the Bosnian Church's beleaguered search for salvation. T h e Bosnian Croats share the memory of the Bosnian kingdom, but its surrender to the Ottoman Empire is seen as the start of a difficult period under various usurping governments. The Bosnian Serbs have no interest in either the Bosnian kingdom or the Church of Bosnia: they look only to mediaeval Serbia. Later we will investigate some of the background to this difference in outlook. The Bosniacs participate primarily in the Islamic tradition, the Croats in the Catholic, the Serbs in the Orthodox: these differences in tradition are used to identify the fundamental differences between these three nations. T h e engagement of the three Bosnian nations in liberal democracy, therefore, is crucially conditioned by the involvement of Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy in national politics.

Christianity There are two basic stems forming the Christian view of the state in the West: one rooted in Augustine, the other in Aquinas. Both branched off from Eastern Christianity, in the form declared to be the Imperial Religion by Emperor Constantine. Constantine had turned one of the most dangerous opponents of the Roman Empire into a means for achieving the goals of the state, seeing a solid spiritual-religious system as the pre-condition for establishing and maintaining the state. The unity of the church became, therefore, one of the essential issues of the state. Eusebius of Caesarea, Emperor Constantine's court theologian, emphasises the indissoluble union of the empire and the imperial church. For Eusebius, Constantine, as the premier Christian ruler, is 'the expression of God's will on Earth', armed by God's decree with the means of making war to cleanse the world from the deniers of the Truth. The political metaphysics of Eusebius became the foundation of the historical perception of the state, and of the church's concept of orthodoxy. The church is, in Eastern Orthodox understanding, a tool in the hands of the state. In the relationship between the state and the Orthodox Church, national egoism supersedes any ecumenical desires. This is clearly seen in the part the Orthodox national churches have played in the Balkan tragedy: their role has never been

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that of peacemaker or protector of the helpless. Instead, their tradition of being bound to the state—originating, ironically, in the church's ancient policy that every nation should receive the gospels and liturgy in its own language—has been manipulated to strengthen the link between Orthodox Christianity and the national identity of individual Orthodox nations. Hence, we see the churches collaborating willingly in nationalist enterprises. The different views held by Eusebius and Augustine on the relations of church and state are reflected in the difference between Orthodox and Roman Catholic relations to the state. The Catholic Church has repeatedly become involved in the design and implementation of the national projects of Catholic peoples, but never as a mere tool in the hands of the state. It is not even unusual for a Catholic state to submit to the influence of the Catholic Church on its policies. This differs sharply from the position of the Orthodox Churches, which are always the tools of national policies and are always subject to them. The Catholic Church remains genuinely supra-national, while from time to time allying itself with national projects in order to further its own goals; the Orthodox Churches have been seen to voluntarily engage in nationalist projects, colluding fully in the exploitation of Orthodoxy's supra-national qualities. For Augustine, the fallen Roman Empire prefigured the Roman Catholic Church, rather than Christian Byzantium. Augustine saw the Catholic Church, in its earthly manifestation, as a projection of God's Kingdom here on earth, its constitution founded by Christ himself. This concept significantly influenced various political thinkers, such as the papal authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: later it shaped the thinking of John Calvin and Martin Luther, and of Reinhold Niebuhr as their modern interpreter. For Augustine, man is not primarily a rational being. He is a creature of many fears, and the world he creates is the product of this aspect of his nature. He discovers or creates false gods which he serves, compelled by his nature. The urge to satisfy these desires and fears sways individuals, groups and peoples, who achieve their position in the social equation on the basis of the balance of power. Disturbing this fragile balance results in division and bloodshed. Augustine sees the world as driven by a suicidal compulsion towards destruction, symbolised by the multitude of latter-day rivers of Babylon. Those who have rejected the false gods are left to mourn on the riverbanks, in the bleak understanding that the world is a place of perpetual slaughter. Nations and states seek satisfaction for their fears and lusts in endless conflicts: even collective membership of a single faith fails to provide an

Christianity

21

effective umpire and peacemaker. Only those who withdraw from the world and unite themselves to God are saved. It is important to be aware of the extent to which Augustine's innate pessimism may have influenced his views: he turns in revulsion from the desires of his corporeal being and struggles to prevail over the self as fallen and damned. But his position also stems from his logical acceptance of political reality: he knows how many millions are killed and displaced in the name of justice, and how many killers believe in the justice of what they do. According to Augustine, the love of God and the denial of the self lead to the New Jerusalem, the church of this world, and to the heavenly community of the saints. But he has little faith in the concept that man's yearning for heaven will produce any form of order in this world. For Aquinas, the state enshrines the concept of life on the basis of public discourse. This expresses man's rational nature, and the political order which is its logical consequence. The state, as res publica, supports the populace in overcoming their desires for temporal gain and in turning towards the realisation of universal good. Man's natural capacity, which includes the principle of morality, is the consequence of man's similarity to God. Rationality is predominant, according to Aquinas, in the core of humanity. Human nature incorporates elements which enable society to prevail over selfhood, and which make possible the formation of political order; therefore the civil laws of every nation must be in harmony with natural laws. The process of leading a Christian nation towards practical acceptance of these laws demands, according to Aquinas, that there should be a supremely authoritative supra-national interpreter for these laws. This interpreter never engages directly in state affairs, but, on exceptional occasions, can and must issue decisions, resolving the conflict in the spirit of justice. Aquinas believed strongly that, in the adjustment of relations between Christian nations, the authority of the Pope of Rome would be accepted as supreme and incontestable. 'In order to be spiritually divided from the temporal, management of this kingdom is entrusted not to this world's kingdom, but to the priests, but above all to the highest among them, the heir of St Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Pope of Rome, to whom all kings must submit, just as they submit to Jesus our Lord.' In the period when Aquinas presented this view of state and inter-state order, the tide of history was carrying the Christian West in a totally different direction. The future no longer belonged to any form of united Christian empire, but to separate nation states. The feeling of belonging to a particular nation became the most important sense of membership. People

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placed their hopes on the peace which could be secured for them by a national army, rather than the pope. But Christianity had a decisive role to play in the development of modern liberalism and democracy, in which many thinkers see the prospect for universal satisfaction of all human desires. Hegel's dialectic of the battle for acknowledgement showed the future possibility of the liberation of the slave to be of greater historical significance than all the privileges and powers of the master in the present. The most significant form of liberation ideology, the realisation of which would produce a society founded on freedom and equality here on earth, is Christianity—fulfilled and perfect religion. Friederich Nietzsche and Max Weber, along with Hegel, affirm the existence of a direct relationship between Christianity and the growth of Western-style liberal democracy. The concept of freedom, Hegel believes, received full expression in Christianity, since the latter established the principle of general equality for all peoples before God, with regard to their ability and freedom to choose between good and evil. Christian freedom is the internal freedom of the soul, not the body. All people are created equal, since God gave them inalienable rights. Thus the slave achieves freedom and human dignity. Christianity does not, however, offer the realisation of human freedom in this world: this is possible only in the Kingdom of God. From the viewpoint of liberalism, the concept of freedom is not yet adequately catered for by the methods currently existing for its realisation in this world. According to Hegel, the achievement of this goal demands the secularisation of Christianity, or rather the transfer of Christian concepts of freedom to the present time and place. The French Revolution, Hegel believed, was an attempt to realise in the present world the Christian vision of a community of freedom and equality. The contemporary liberal state potentially embodies the Christian concepts of freedom and general equality for all the people of this world. Since the Christian perception of history is strictly linear, it cannot accept that God's message has ever been manifested in the world subsequent to the First Coming of Christ. This means that Christianity, in all its forms, cannot accept the message of Islam. Therefore, the existence of Islam as a living entity has to be explained away, and, as a spiritual truth, denied—an inheritance which Christianity has passed on to its own descendant, the liberal, democratic state.

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23

Islam Islam 6 considers itself the final and most complete message from God. It sees itself as comprehending the full inheritance of God's word, from primordial man, through a long series of believers and prophets, to their culmination in the prophet Muhammad. It embraces the whole of the world and humanity, the totality of individual and social life. At the centre of the Islamic message stands humanity, as the most perfect of God's creatures.^ Human nature achieves fulfilment in awareness of God and forgetfulness of the self: relations between peoples depend on the extent to which they have succeeded in achieving oblivion of the self. People are, according to Islam, divided into races, nations, tribes and faiths, in order to acknowledge and influence one another: O Mankind, W e have created you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, that you may know one another. Surely the noblest among you in the sight of God is the most God-conscious of you.®

However, membership of any of these groups cannot have priority over the awareness of God and the obligation to do good and prevent evil. Humanity is ultimately a single unit and its laws are those of God. The Islamic model for existence involves attaining conditions in which human nature, which in itself yearns for God, can be freely expressed and liberated from its shell of false values ( k u f r ) . Interpersonal relations should be established on the basis of confidence and trust. Submission to God will result in an increased sense of responsibility towards humanity and the world: the more submission, the greater the sense of responsibility. Inversely, excluding the imperative of submission to God limits the grounds on which interpersonal relations can be established. Islam stresses the humble biological origins of man—'the drop of seed' and the unity of the branches, of which all humanity, from the first to the last, are the fruit, as the children of a single union. This message finds expression in the perfect example which the prophet Muhammad presents to humanity. His followers are given the task of building a model community, guided by their obligation to establish a place where people will be brought into God's moral structure {madincP). Wher-

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ever Muslims are living, they should order their community and their society on the basis of the Message and Example of God's Messenger. They should desire that the whole world be transformed into a madina, a community of believers. But their intention is not to create a world order which excludes the multitude of religious traditions, since God 'has created for all nations their own law and their own way'10. Humanity as a whole is a collective umma, or united community, composed of many different ummas, each of which is defined by its dedication to one of the forms in which God's message has been revealed (Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Islamic, etc.). Each of the individual ummas can in turn contain a multitude of members of different races, nations and tribes. These ummas are ruled by their own sacred laws, and their communities are each a madina. Their independence ceases only at the point where it limits or endangers the priority of Islam—Islam in its literal sense, as 'submission to God'. Axiology, or the study of values, is derived from the spiritual scale of values and cannot be in opposition to the general definitions of Islam. When it is in opposition, this is the consequence of failure to accept the indivisibility of God's sovereignty. The medina is the way of realising this sovereignty in human society: no individual and no group can possess sovereignty if this conflicts in any way with total subjection to the will of God, revealed by God's Messengers and their example. In drawing a comparison between Islam and the political philosophies of Western Europe which have produced the modern concept of liberalism, it is possible to claim that the Islamic concept of the state also enshrines a form of constitutional sovereignty. This sovereignty is limited by the rule of law and the obligation of the community to prevent the holder of sovereignty from failing in full submission to the Kur'an and Sunna. Islam's laws are God's laws, but the Message and the Example of God's Messenger oblige the people of Islam to testify to their faith, before all nations, in carrying out God's laws and prohibitions within their own communities. Nations are, according to Islam, recognisable and acceptable components of an umma, whether this is the community of all humanity, or of all Muslims—that is, all who are in submission to God. Since Islam defines the level of world enlightenment on the basis of the achieved degree of either submission or opposition to the self, national communities of all denominations can be defined as standing with or against Islam (submission to God) on this basis. Sovereignty in the context of Islam signifies the capacity for defence against all forms of imposed sovereignty which are, by their nature, opposed to God, and against the rule of laws which do not accord with the laws of

Islam

IS

God. T h e nation state is, accordingly, non-Islamic and opposed to Islam if it is not a medina, or place where people are able to submit to God's moral system rather than to human domination. According to Islam, man is granted the capacity and the freedom to choose between good and evil. T h e choice of good, the rejection of evil, and the acceptance of full individual responsibility for every good or evil action, however minuscule, confirm and strengthen human worth and dignity. All differences between peoples, which do not result from differences in response to these choices, are signs sent by God, symbols of the unity of diversity. T h e struggle for recognition, manifest in the dialectic of the master and the slave, is not mediated by any one institution: the totality of the social order is responsible for enabling the relationship between humanity as the slave and God as the Master. All elements of the social order which deny or obstruct this relationship are fundamentally flawed. Although this concept of a universal world order based on principle is preserved among Muslims, in the last five centuries they have been in general uninvolved in the development of the natural sciences and the consequent developments of technology, economics and society. Islam's social reality now appears to be no more than the cultural inheritance of a large part of the world, where human desires and the fight for recognition brew bitter conflicts. This area covers a multitude of would-be nation states, whose records on human rights are currently abysmal, which lack clear national ideologies and consensus on the definitions required to legitimise government, and which can above all be seen as essentially opposed to the world of liberal democracy. In the world mosaic, the religion of Islam is reduced in the eyes of many to the status of an ideology: 'a systematic and coherent ideology, just like Liberalism and Communism, with its own code of morality and doctrine of political and social justice', as Francis Fukuyama puts it. 11 T h e message of Islam is universal, since it addresses all nations as members of humanity and not only as members of various ethnic or national groups. 'The current revival of Islamic fundamentalism, touching virtually every country in the world with a substantial Muslim population, can be seen', says Francis Fukuyama, 'as a response to the failure of Muslim societies generally to maintain their dignity vis-a-vis the non-Muslim West ... T h e Islamic revival was rather the nostalgic re-assertion of an older, purer set of values, said to have existed in the distant past, that were neither the discredited "traditional values" of the recent past, nor the Western values that had been so poorly transplanted to the Middle East.' 12

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T h e linear perception of a succession of heavenly messages, characteristic both of Islam and Christianity, has placed these two religions in a totally irreconcilable relationship. Christianity denies Islam and emphasises the finality and perfection of Christ as the Word of God. Islam confirms Christ as the Word of God, allocating Christianity a significant position in the message given by the Kur'an and the Sunna. T h e consequence of Islam's attitude to Christianity shows, in general, that wherever Islam governs, Christianity has survived. On the other hand, where Christianity has maintained or reasserted political rule, the presence of Muslims and their culture is exceptional. Bosnia offers an incontrovertible example: churches and monasteries survived, and many more were built, during nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule whereas more than a thousand of Bosnia's mosques were destroyed during this last decade alone. Although Islam accepts the existence of nations, it does not accept the national form of axiology, which springs from national myth. Tribes and nations raise their own welfare to the level of an absolute principle, and everything which can be seen as opposed to this welfare is intolerable, even if it stands for the good of others. This justifies acts against others which would be viewed as intolerable if those others were responsible for these same acts. Islam therefore rejects axiology, when applied to national values, as a distortion, since it risks altering the fundamental values of humanity. Islam promotes a political view of the world as a unified space, not as a purely Muslim umma—which could only ever be one part of the multiple constitution of the true Islamic state. The governing identity of every individual umma is its unique sacred tradition or traditions: the Kur'anic principle that compulsion in faith is unacceptable 1 ^ is the primary basis for relations between Muslims and other communities.

Serbhood T h e concept of Serb national freedom and the creation of a Serb nation state is fundamentally anti-Islamic. Islam and the Muslims are always identified with the Ottoman Empire and thus blamed for the fall of the mythologised fourteenth-century Serb-Orthodox kingdom of Dusan Stefan— whose dynasty succeeded in establishing sole control over a large territory. In the construction of Serb national ideology, during the nineteenth century, this former kingdom became the archetypal basis for the projected nation state. T h e kingdom can only be renewed through the destruction of

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everything that is Islamic and Muslim—and much of this primary goal was achieved through the genocidal slaughter of Serbia's Muslims during the Serb rebellion against the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The foundation had been laid for creating a core state around which Serbia would arise again as 'the resurrected empire of Dusan'. In the political arena, the deep-planted nuclei of the political plan for Greater Serbia were gradually evolving. They make various appearances in the works of a series of political essayists, over a period of nearly two centuries, ranging from Vuk Karadzic to the authors of the infamous Memorandum of the Serb Academy of Sciences and Arts.14 Although many ethnic groups already occupied the Balkan territories over which Greater Serbia was designed to expand, these territories were declared Serb, on the basis of 'sacred historical rights'. All populations in these geopolitical regions were therefore declared Serb and required to submit to the 'general unification of all Serbs'. Subduing or expelling those ethnic communities which are not Serb and which do not consider themselves to be Serb, is a core element of the Greater Serbia project. These communities are, chiefly, Bosniac, Croat, Albanian and Montenegrin; the key component for the realisation of the Greater Serbian state is implementation of this policy against the primarily Muslim communities of the Bosniacs and Albanians. Only with the final rationalisation of Greater Serbia's borders do the concepts behind the project lead to conflict with the Bulgars, Hungarians and Croats. With regard to the destruction of the Bosniacs and their culture, the drafters and backers of Greater Serbia believed they could count on the inertia, if not the support, of all international polities founded on, or inspired by, Christianity. The Design of 1844 identifies Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina as the main areas where Greater Serbia should be imposed. The plan for Bosnia assumed the support of Bosnia's Catholic clergy. 15 Jovan Cvijic remarked in 1908 that 'as the incontrovertible minimum of the principle of nationalism, it must be established that it cannot be permitted to give to another, foreign state the central authority and core of one nation, for this is what Bosnia and Herzegovina means to the Serb nation'. 16 Accordingly, any Bosniac efforts to express a separate national identity should be denied and quelled by internal action. At various—and overlapping—points in history, the possibility arose of physically destroying the Muslim nations via the means faithfully transmitted by Cubrilovic in his description of the historical Albanian and Bosniac experience of genocide: The Displacement of the Arnauts17.

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'Saint-Savaism', the ideology of the Serbian state, named after a canonised member of the Serb royal family who helped create the Serb national church in the thirteenth century, performed the role of uniting all members of the Orthodox religion living in the territory once covered by Dusan's empire. Nikolaj Velimirovic, bishop of the Serb Orthodox Church, saw the realisation of Saint-Savaism in the events of the twentieth century. 'Respect must be given to the current German leader Adolf Hitler, who as a simple artisan and man of the people realised that nationalism without a faith is an anomaly, a cold and unsafe mechanism. And here in the twentieth century he arrived at the idea of St. Sava, and as a layman undertook for his people this most important labour, which is suited to a saint, a genius and a hero.' 18 The Greater Serbia dream must be imposed, peacefully or by force, on all who are not Serbs or do not feel themselves to be Serb. Failing this, they must be destroyed or driven out wholesale, and all traces of their culture and existence (houses, mosques, cemeteries, schools, arts, customs, traditions, names) erased. Throughout historical Bosnia—which spreads far beyond the borders of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina—systematic obliteration of the Bosniacs, and everything connected with their presence, was practised over a period of three centuries. It is easy to trace the various acts of genocide committed in the course of a series of Serb uprisings involving mass murder and the looting and confiscation of Muslim property—subsequently confirmed by the passage of new agrarian legislation. 19 The' concept of the 'Serb State' is a thoroughgoing refusal to recognise the rights of separate ethnic, national or religious communities in contemporary Europe. It demonstrates an arbitrary selection of values: its advocates have centred all on the struggle for their own recognition. Serb nationalism as a feeling or as a movement can best be defined as the demand for the equating of a political entity with a single nation. Serb national feeling is revealed as based on hate: centuries-old resentment at the major powers' denial of the Serb demand for recognition, seeking satisfaction in the fulfilment of its revenge fantasies. 20 The force of the fantasy is evident in the violence of the Serb denial of others and the campaigns for their total annihilation. However democratic the 'Serb State' may perceive itself to be, it cannot be liberal, for it utterly ignores the concept that human beings are equally God's creatures. The insights offered by Christianity and by the totality of European history are ignored in favour of the urge—seen as backed by both Christianity and European history—to build a comprehensive nation state.

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Bosnia and its history are distorted by the needs of this project into an image which reflects the aims of the 'Greater Serbian State'. But the real history of the Bosnian Orthodox (Bosnian Serb) Church and people 21 is inherently opposed to this design.

Croathood In relation to Serbhood, which is explicitly aggressive and expansionist, Croat national policy takes a defensive—even a reactive—position. It is frequently a mere reflection of, or response to, Serb national policy, and thus receives its central raison d'etre from its occasional enemy. The Croatian national territory is confined to those areas which the perpetrators of the Greater Serbia project are prepared to see 'amputated' from their own design. The Serb project covers, for preference, all or part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and significant portions of modern-day Croatia. Croat national policy endorses the concept of Greater Croatia, which also covers all or part of Bosnia and Herzegovina; it also justifies itself by the claim of historical rights—based on precisely the same greater-state logic which we find in the Greater Serbia political manifestos. This attitude to Bosnia and Herzegovina can be encountered in the writings of leading Croat politicians—from Ante Starcevic, one of the nineteenth-century founders of Croat national ideology, to Franjo Tudman, the recently deceased Croatian president. The concept of Croat national sovereignty presupposes the creation of a Croat state incorporating all Croats. This is inspired by the need to rescue Croatia from its current state of geopolitical fragmentation: this in turn necessitates the takeover of large parts of Bosnia. Thus all areas of Bosnia where Croats live in significant numbers have been declared 'Croat ethnic territories'. Since Serb and Croat designs on Bosnia clash, and since the presence of Bosniacs is an obstacle to both greater-state projects, both view the political future of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an explicitly Serb-Croat question. Bosniac national interests are ignored out of existence by both parties. As far as the Croatian project is concerned, all territory where Bosniacs constitute the majority of the population can be abandoned to Greater Serbian hegemony if they cannot readily be incorporated into the Croatian project. When Croat greater-state politics criticise their Serb counterpart, the squabbles are primarily over the exact division of territory: a remarkable

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harmony is maintained regarding the question of Bosnia itself and the Bosniacs. There was plenty of Croat opposition to the Memorandum of the Serb Academy of Sciences and Arts—seen as launching 'the destruction of brotherhood, unity and the possibility that Croats and Serbs may live together, with the purpose of replacing community in accord, and mutual respect, by the legalisation of Greater Serbian imperialism and the direct and open imperialism which demands the creation of a Greater Serbian state'. 22 The Croat author of the Antimemorandum, quoted above, defines Bosnia and Herzegovina—the target area for Greater Serbian expansionism—as 'the Serb-Croat regions'. 23 Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia both summon up exactly the same explanation for their imperialist policies towards Bosnia. Both use the mediaeval title of Antemurale Christianitatis ('The Rampart of Christendom') to justify themselves before the West, implicitly expecting unity and support among Christian nations and Christian supra-nationalism. For, as Stjepan Radic, leader of the Croat Peasant Party in the twenties, wrote, 'every European nation must be in the front line, according to its Christian culture, according to the political desires of Europe, and according to their correct understanding of Christianity and Europe as one and the same'. 24 Christian rejection of Islam as God's message has had deeply destructive effects in the areas where Muslims have built their culture and where Croats have now established themselves in absolute majority. Behind Croat national sovereignty stands the Catholic Church, since this is explicitly linked with the Croat identity. This results in a direct or implicit ideological denial of Islam, which in turn accords perfectly with the Croat design of establishing a united Croat state—which should incorporate Bosnia and Herzegovina in part, if not in full. Huntington's discourse on the world's eight civilisational entities, in which Croatia, with its overwhelmingly Catholic population, can be defined as 'the West' 2 5 , as opposed to the 'Orthodox-Slav' East, suggests that Croatia and Croathood must 'fight for recognition' on the basis of both nationalism and liberal democracy. Croat nationalism incorporates, theoretically and in practice, forthright exclusion of the rights of Muslims (Bosniacs) and the Orthodox (Serbs). This direcdy discourages any policy incorporating the concept of human equality before God. The effort of Croat national policy to legitimise its truncated form of liberalism via democracy conflicts with the demands of minority groups for the 'general recognition' of the rights of all citizens—the key definition of liberal democracy.

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Bosniac Identity 'Bosnian' or 'Bosniac' were names given to, and used by, the inhabitants of Bosnia for most of its history. All the peoples of Bosnia used to call themselves Bosnians: an identity freely shared by all religious affiliations including the Krstjani (members of the Bosnian Church), the Catholics, the Orthodox and the Muslims. With the rise of national ideologies, accompanied, in general, by nationalised religions, in the late nineteenth century the Bosnian Orthodox were recruited into Serbhood and the Bosnian Catholics into Croathood—ideologies formulated and orchestrated from outside. T h e Bosnian Muslims, meanwhile, have hesitated to identify themselves as Bosniac, in the sense of an ethno-national category, since they would appear to be excluding the members of different religions from sharing the same rights to the country of Bosnia. In the final decade of this century, however, when the Bosnian Muslims found themselves more and more isolated in the defence of Bosnia, they ceased to hesitate over adopting the name of Bosniac. The decision was made in the thick of war, when siege, expulsion and genocide—and diplomatic pressure at international negotiating tables— were all being deployed to force Bosnia's Muslims to accept the ethnonational division of Bosnia. Although Orthodox and Catholics have inhabited Bosnia throughout its history, the country has never been a part of either a Croat or a Serb state. It has been for over a thousand years a separate entity, incorporating a diversity of different religions. The distinct Church of Bosnia, which ceased to exist with the coming of the Ottoman Empire, represents a desperate attempt to unite these differences in the face of the aggressive designs of surrounding churches. If we take the Bosniac identity as a symbol of this resistance, it cannot be categorised purely under the modern European concept of nationhood: it is most profoundly characterised by consciousness of the essential unity of all sacred traditions. When Islam made its landfall in the complex archipelago of Bosnian diversity, already complicated by the uneasy relationship between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, it was logical for the members of the beleaguered 'heretical' Church of Bosnia to embrace this powerful, welcoming religion—hence the rapid extinction of that Church. As Muslims, they continued to accept the Christian community, since Islam accepts Christianity as a part of the message of God. The Orthodox and Catholic communities, however, backed and instructed by their respective supra-nationalisms, could not accept Islam—although this is a general rather than a precise picture, due to

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the various shifts and crossings-over between the groups. Thus the members of the Catholic Church of Bosnia became open to becoming Croats in the national sense, while continuing to maintain their sense of Bosnia as their country. In the same way, the Orthodox Christians of Bosnia came to see themselves as primarily Serb, while, if to a lesser extent than the Croats, due to the specifically national nature of their church, they continued to see Bosnia as their homeland. The Muslims were left to deal with the dilemma of identifying themselves as Bosniac, and thus enabling the final destruction of Bosnia. For, if the Muslims are forced to try and claim their own 'Bosniac national territory', this territory would be seen as primarily 'Islamic', thus placing the Bosniacs in direct conflict with the anti-Islamic West. This would also justify the Serbs and Croats of Bosnia in the creation of their own national territories in Bosnia, which could then be added to those of Serbia and Croatia. The question of national sovereignty takes on one of its cruellest and most complex manifestations in Bosnia. The Croats are a nation and therefore cannot be denied their right to national sovereignty—and therefore their right to unite in a single state. This also applies to the Serbs. Yet this denies Bosnia the right to sovereignty as a state, dividing it instead into three 'ethnic territories', each occupied by one of the three nations— which in practice means that Bosnia ends up divided piecemeal by its neighbours. T o a greater or lesser degree, the greater-state designers of both Serbia and Croatia long ago foresaw and prepared for this outcome. T o legitimise this division, and make it permanent, the European and Christian perception of Islam as hostile and alien could be exploited. The refusal of the Bosniacs to play their allotted role of ethnic Muslim nationalists seeking a pure territory for their Islamic state, however, was the primary obstacle. The only course to pursue was that of radicalising those members of the Muslim population who survived the campaigns of ethnic cleansing, until they should become positively eager to embrace the prospect of a Bosniac-only mini-state. This course was pursued efficiently. Externally, it was accomplished through straightforward violence on a mass scale—nothing new in the centuries of Balkan experience. The internal course—of removing any remaining desire for coexistence—was accomplished more subtly: by diminishing all awareness of the historical continuity of Bosnia as a cultural and state entity. The retreat of the forces fighting for Bosnia was manifest in the withdrawal of Bosniac political focus from regions cleansed of their Bosniac population and placed under ethnic Serb or Croat rule.

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33

While Serb and Croat nationalism enjoy the benefits of numerous efforts, past and present, to strengthen awareness of their historical continuity, this stimulus is denied the Bosniacs. They have been torn away from the foundations of their inheritance and deprived of their historical rights within Bosnia and Herzegovina. The narrowed outlook which has resulted from the loss of vast numbers of homes and vast amounts of land can only be re-expanded by promoting the awareness of Bosnia as a cultural, historical and state entity, its unity of diversity integral to the survival of the Bosniac nation. On the other hand, the state sovereignty of Bosnia must be realised without danger to the due rights and sovereignty of Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs alike. Bosniacs in particular cannot separate themselves from the unity of Bosnia, since in their case national sovereignty does not automatically result from adoption of a national identity. The Greater Croat and Greater Serb politics are a clear testimony to this: they have tried to impose an alien sovereignty, external to the sovereignty of Bosnia, a sovereignty that automatically excludes the Bosniacs from realising the right to be a sovereign people in a sovereign country. In the Balkans, Christian and Islamic forms of supra-nationalism interweave with Serb, Croat and Bosniac nationalism. No supra-nationalism has succeeded in prevailing over nationalist partisanship, and the concepts of national and state sovereignty have been used as tools by the strong to impose their will on the less strong. The result has been the creation of alliances for the destruction of historical, cultural and state identities, such as those of Montenegro and Bosnia, in favour of Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia. The religious prejudices of the Western world have been used skilfully against the Bosniacs, on whom was superimposed a simplified and mythological image of Muslims and Islam. This has helped justify the continuation of genocide against this ancient European nation, squeezed to the edge of existence between two militant nationalisms. The Bosnian riddle—of the conflict inherent in absolute demands for recognition and sovereignty—raises fundamental questions about freedom, and the accompanying issue of recognition. Both should protect the rights of the individual, regardless of ethnic, national and religious membership: this principle is at the foundation of all supra-national traditions and is the foremost precondition for world peace. Humanity, seen by both Christianity and Islam as the highest of God's creations, is free to choose its religious laws and ways of life, just as it is free to choose good and reject evil.

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Political Downslide Commenting in 1924 on René Guénon's, D'Orient et Occident, Leon Daudet suggests that it might be possible to summarise Guénon's arguments as follows: 'Since the time of the encyclopaedists, and even earlier—since the Reformation—the West has been brought into a state of intellectual anarchy, which is true inhumanity ... the civilisation on which the West prides itself so greatly relies on a sum of material and industrial achievements— which multiply the chances of war and invasion—these are built on a very fragile moral and intellectual base, and on no metaphysical base whatsoever. The West is in greater danger from within, through feeble-mindedness, than from the outside, where it has to be admitted that its situation is not totally safe either.' 26 Since Bosnia is 'the thin place of the West', it inevitably suffers the effect of intellectual anarchy, the multi-faceted possibilities of war and invasion, the danger of division from without and within. Above all, it risks the loss of its highest role, that of expressing unity through diversity. In addition to facing the onslaught of violent internal and external forces, Bosniac politics have for a long time lost their way. But a true path, the opposite way to the endless slippery slope, must exist. It is impossible for this nation to find it, however, without the courage to meet and do battle with its own weaknesses and failures, both of understanding and of action. Today, when most of Bosnia has been 'ethnically cleansed' by armed conquest, it is necessary to re-examine the projects which planned and inspired the attacks. In the course of history, single unified awareness of Bosnia as a country has divided into a series of differing and contradictory perceptions. When the Croat and Serb nations adopted greater-state projects as an essential part of their national identity, Bosnia became the destined arena where these projects would seek their realisation. Serbia attacked Bosnia with the intention of incorporating this country into its own territory, wiping out its individuality, destroying everything opposed to this process. Similarly, according to the Croat national project, a considerable part of Bosnia was allotted to the Croat nation state. Bosnia is thus the target of twin take-over plans, with a sinister component of ethnic totalitarianism. The only possible response to these campaigns is to strengthen and unite awareness of Bosnia's archetypal nature as a model for unity in diversity. Bosnian unity in diversity has its foundation in the core of religious tradition, and has survived with this core intact for a thousand years. Its unique

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identity is close to the transcendent sources of goodness. Yet for this very reason this identity came to be seen as a potential danger to the first god among the gods of Western civilisation: global stability, on the basis of the Western-backed concept o f ' t h e end of history'. T h e nationalist regimes in Serbia and Croatia, the sources of the antiBosnian campaign, are mere reflections of the various forms of rule prevalent in the contemporary world. Bosnia can no longer oppose them if she shrinks to a mere reflection of the ruling systems of her enemies. Bosnian statehood, now fighting for survival, is faced with the question of the future constitution of the ruling system and the direction of its development. This points to the need to test the whole structure of government, in order to assess the changes needed. W e are principally aware of only two forms of rule in the contemporary world—democracy and dictatorship. In order to define what kind of government the majority wants in Bosnia—starting from the principle that every nation has the government it deserves—we should take a brief look at the various possible types of government structure which have engendered both democracy and dictatorship. Plato, in his Politeia (Republic), explores, from a theoretical standpoint, the question 'What is the model form of government?' As far as his conclusions are concerned, it seems their correspondent models have all materialised, at one time or another, in history. For our summary consideration, it is important to establish the scale between the imagined model and the lowest manifestation of its evolution. This scale ranges, according to Plato, from aristocracy (the rule of the best)—which for Plato is the model government—via timocracy, oligarchy and democracy, to tyranny. T o re-work Plato's concept in contemporary political language, we could say that aristocracy corresponds today to theocracy, and tyranny to dictatorship or demagogy. Governments are chiefly oligarchic in nature, as manifest in the various modes adopted by a king and his tribe or chosen few. Some of these governments can be called principled autocracies, since transcendent principles are at least recognised within the frame of these governments, regardless of how often they may be violated in practice. Principled autocracy is always in danger, however, of becoming, de facto, unprincipled dictatorship. T h e next step on the evolutionary road from principled autocracy is democracy. This is, according to Plato, the most complete expression of freedom and equality achieved by humanity to date. Democracy is, however, always vulnerable to displacement by dictatorship or demagogy. Since the

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evolutionary trend does not follow a straight path but fluctuates around a central movement, illusory disruptions in the process sketched out by Plato can occur and the chaos of democracy is temporarily replaced by a form of principled autocracy—a lesser evil, it could be argued, than demagogy. Moving on from the rather primitive principled autocracy of Communist Yugoslavia, the road to formal democracy was halted at a transitional stage in Bosnia, caught between the unprincipled autocracies of Belgrade and Zagreb, both of which were descending rapidly into unprincipled dictatorship and demagogy. Both intended that this same descent—-steeper and speedier if possible—should take place in Bosnia, enabling Bosnia's renascent 'Serbhood' and 'Croathood' to join forces with the two external nation states, while Bosnia itself would disappear. The establishment and maintenance of principled democratic rule in Bosnia was, and is, therefore, the most appropriate form of defence against Bosnia's immediate neighbours. To remind the people of Bosnia of 'the strait gate' 27 , and its Kur'anic counterpart, the 'steep way that leads to the heights' 28 —means to remind them of the 'general good' which is realised by following transcendent principles. This would ensure the presence of sources of strength, which could be drawn upon in opposing the forces of destruction. This in turn would require fundamental re-examination of lower forms of freedom—consumerism, shallow moralism, communalism, demagogy—and the re-establishment of order. The people of Bosnia need to be able to recognise and identify the operation of various forms of rule, not only within their own communal environments, but also in the state and its neighbours. W e should analyse the position of every governing system on the ladder of eternal values, for in the context of this scale of values we can see more clearly whether a system is geared towards political pragmatism alone, or is genuinely founded on principle. The projects aimed against Bosnia are most readily described by the adjective 'fascist'. The complex phenomena displayed by the various regimes engaged in the destruction of this country are revealed as simply evil: evil visibly incorporated in external and internal structures meeting all the most important specifications of what we call Fascism and Nazism. The three most significant examples of fascist ideology—that of Italy in the twenties, Germany at the beginning of the thirties, and Spain towards the end of the thirties—developed in conditions of great social change and stress. Although they reflect a perversion in the consciousness of individuals and society, of a kind recurrent throughout the history of humanity, their link to specific geopolitical policies and exceptional technological and organisa-

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tional capacities deserves closer comparison with the current Balkan regimes. Bosnia today is in a state of social chaos, and the stresses show no sign of diminishing. The outbreak of neo-fascism in Serbia and among Serbs throughout the territory of the former Yugoslavia has led to the flourishing of neo-fascism among Serbia's neighbours, particularly in Croatia and among the Croats. Bosnia is caught in the middle, at the centre of the maelstrom these two regimes have created. Both are working, directly and indirectly, to produce a corresponding neo-fascism among the nations they consider an obstacle to their imperial goals: the Albanians and the Bosniacs. Bosniac fascism cannot reach sufficient strength to deter or prevent the actions of Serb and Croat fascism: it can only, in the long term, enable their absolute victory, since it justifies the crimes which both are now implementing against the Bosniacs. The available military and economic power and the predictable behaviour of the world community are very much to the advantage of the Greater Serbian and Greater Croatian projects. Both sides are busily encouraging and compelling the Bosniacs to adopt a position of nationalist exclusivism and to construct their own form of neo-fascism: this prospect is central to the Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia designs to split Bosnia. Bosniacs are being offered—as compensation for their disappearance from most of Bosnia and Herzegovina—various hypothetical alternatives: a 'Muslim state', 'Islamic Jamahiriya', 'the tutelage of distant countries', and so on. The parties making these generous offers have openly and privately accused the Bosniacs of inclining towards these very options, and have thus succeeded in justifying their campaigns against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the eyes of world leaders. Many Bosniac leaders, encouraging, perhaps unconsciously, the growth of fascism among the Bosniacs, have spoken of facing a political reality in which preservation of Bosnia and Herzegovina's unity is impossible. The alternative, which they offer obediently, although without much conviction, is the 'Muslim State'. This suggests an attempt to hide the obvious incompetence of the state leadership in defending the state entrusted to them. The talk of political reality is used to justify the false claim that the current condition of the Bosniacs is the will of destiny—and that what they are being offered is genuinely 'for their own good'. Since the Greater Serbian and Greater Croatian projects of destroying Bosnia and Herzegovina's existence as a unified state will never die, the danger of Bosniac (or Muslim) fascism will always be present. Therefore it is of great political importance to the Bosniacs that they should persist in

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identifying and unmasking all forms o f fascist consciousness and their manifestations in the political reality of this country. T h e first sign of fascism is the raising of the collective—most often the state—above the individual. T h i s leads to the suppression and persecution of all genuine forms of liberalism and democracy, promoting instead the strict identification of the individual with a single political party (or a coalition of like-minded parties), a single nation and a single state. Political thinking, in these conditions, follows the call of mysticism: division, persecution and killing become a background and framework for the messianic role of individuals and their loyal followers. N o broader-based decision making takes place, although plenty of representations are publicly m a d e to inspire confidence in the illusion that the people are getting what they want and are standing firm in support of their leader. T h e able fall silent or withdraw, and their places on the political stage are grabbed by the incompetent and the power-hungry. Shown evidence which condemns the actions of the leader, his followers retort, 'we have no alternative to him'. Instead of a dialogue of suggestion and advice, the omnipotent leader, backed by all appearances by the entire society, carries every decision. T h e environment of chaos and social drama encourages the permutation of the majority's desperate hopes into cheaply purchased support. T h e i r backing is readily secured for the fight against the 'enemies of the nation and the state'—the classic and timeless designation of everyone perceived as disloyal to the leader. A Utopian vision of a new state and world order replaces the active ordering of state and society. T h i s classic evolution of systems of rule and their structured incorporation of evil (as we can perceive in the political inheritance of Europe), can be reduced to a three-cornered framework of satanic rule: Karun

(Korah—'the rulers of money'); Fir'awn ('Pharaoh'—the political managers) and Human ( ' T h e H i g h Priest'—the ideological priesthood). T h i s Kur'anic model demonstrates the predictable order of the downward slide, as societies and individuals evolve. In this triple framework, which ensures the stability of all systems of government, transcendent principles tend to be pushed from the top of the scale of values down to the lowest rungs. T h e interests of the rulers of money move to the top, acquiring the terminology of state and political ideology on the way up. T h e rulers of money operate anonymously and under cover: their centre of power and decision is protected. T h e political managers and ideologues always take precedence in public. T h e state government seems capable of democratic change, as far as nominated leaders are concerned, but is in fact

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steady and obedient in its manipulation of legislatory, executive and judiciary powers in response to the real rulers. The ideological priesthood—the advocates of political ideology—act as the advocates of the changes produced by the legislatory, executive and judiciary authorities. Once the system of government is solidly structured in accordance with these three forces, they act in a stable manner for a considerable period, but their power grows through the subjection of increasing numbers of people, rendered dependent on the system. T h e most highly developed ruling system is that which, in the language of modern political theory, we call 'developed democracy'. The reduction of democracy to dictatorship takes place through the coalescence of these three forces, which in a genuine democracy operate with a measure of independence, into two, or one. The balance is broken, and every form of evil and violence is the result. 'As for good government', said 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, 'the pious man performs good acts in it, while in a bad government, the wicked person enjoys this until his time is over.' 29 Since the transcendent principles of good are reduced, in the model of Karun—Fir'awn—Haman, to the lowest level, the ruling structure attracts only false or mindless supporters—together with those who have departed from principle and who are simply 'wicked', and therefore 'enjoy' bad government. The system promotes its own survival to the highest level: it quashes any visionary proposals for the future if these are unacceptable to 'the rulers and managers of the world order'. Bosnia and its people are confronted by the nascent struggles of democratic development—perhaps already doomed to stillbirth. The rulers of money are insufficiently organised to build a system for the protection and development of even their own interests—while state rule and political ideology cannot achieve either stability or effectiveness. T h e only alternative, in this bleak drama, is that of establishing a programme with clear aims, capable of producing a clear political ideology, a developed and organised system of state management and an efficient financial system in the service of these aims. Among many dubious courses, the most promising seems to be that of aiming for the highest models of government, the light towards which we grope in the darkness of our present-day situation. W e learn that it is our duty to seek the highest, as in the message of Christ: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and its righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you.' 3 0 Or, as the Prophet said, 'We guided him on the two highways, yet he has still not assaulted the steep; and what shall teach thee what is the

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steep?' 31 W e are implicitly shown the ideal, or the peak to which the ascent will lead. T o reject it is to travel deeper into darkness. Bosnia and its people face a searching question: which principles, which kinds of freedom should they be looking and working towards—and where will they find the source of strength to oppose evil? Whether Bosnia will be totally overcome by evil depends on the answer to this question. For the obsession with lower forms of freedom—obvious in the call for peace at any price—means nothing but surrender to the forces of evil. Discouraged by the complex tangle of possible ways out of our current situation, we yield to evil as the only reality, convinced that the road to salvation does not exist. W e are told to ignore or forget all our losses, and to accept our current, reduced state as a true home and motherland. The lowest forms of realpolitdk prevail today in Bosnian consciousness: shallow projects for the future are seen as representing the realisation of our profoundest desires. But such projects drain rather than stimulate human energies. The dual nature of humanity remains unfulfilled, since we are attempting to resolve the drama without accepting the existence of the 'Heavenly Treasury', giving purpose to the 'earthly exile'. The future of Bosnia depends on our awareness of the highest principles of our earthly purpose, since Bosnia in essence is more than just a reflection of the prevailing trends of modern thinking. The state order in Bosnia, if state governments reflect the ideological environment, will always be at war with the essential Bosnia. Only if this government can be brought closer to the transcendent principles of goodness, demonstrable in a permanent commitment to the promotion and protection of these principles, will there be a possibility of halting the divisive forces now assailing Bosnia from inside and out. Perhaps—while the battle for Bosnia rages—the foundations can still be laid which will enable us to build upon the highest principles of freedom. These foundations will provide means and ways for opposing all forms of government which are in conflict with the pluriform identity of Bosnia. For although Bosnia today is surrounded by enemies of its state order, it is threatened to a greater degree from within by the possibility of developing tyranny. Bosnia, in the totality of its centuries-long tragedy, has been the victim of evil forces—which, we hope, with humanity's ingrained optimism, have no future. The future of the world depends on the strength of those factors or principles which have brought into being the uniquely pluriform spiritual identity of Bosnia. Awareness of these principles is the 'strait gate' which looks to many, at the present moment, too narrow and too distant—so re-

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mote, in fact, that there appears to be little point in pursuing it. The option, of course, is the 'broad way' leading downhill. But the minority who are aware of that narrow road to the heights, and who are dedicated to it with every fibre of their beings, are the guarantee of Bosnia's future.

Modernity and Beyond It is impossible to separate the latest Bosnian tragedy from modernity. Therefore, whatever interpretation we attempt to impose on the most recent outbreak of slaughter and destruction, it must include a reappraisal of the dominant perceptions of the present era. The latter is based on the search for identity, and the struggle for its recognition. The sacred tradition of Christianity promoted the human self to the centre of both the terrestrial and the celestial drama. It is possible to find a doctrinal basis for this sequence in St. Paul's epistles, where he advocates the movement from the external to the internal, from the law to faith: 'The Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.' 32 Martin Luther concurs: 'Wherefore, when thy conscience is terrified with the law, and wresdeth with the judgement of God, ask counsel neither of the reason nor of the law, but rest only upon grace and the word of consolation and so stand herein, as if thou hadst never heard anything of the law, ascending up to the glass of faith, where neither the law, nor reason do shine, but only the light of faith... ' 3 3 It can be claimed that this shift of perspective puts a direct emphasis on human well-being. This also has a religious source. 'It springs from the New Testament and is one of the central themes of Christian spirituality. Modern utilitarianism is one of its secularised variants. And as such it relates to a more fundamental feature to Christian spirituality, which comes to receive new and unprecedented importance at the beginning of the modern era, and which has also become central to modern culture.' 3 ^ This can be described as the affirmation of the common life: it has become one of the most powerful ideas of modern civilisation. The duality of this self, which is expressed through the simultaneity of autonomy and heteronomy, found its modernist form in liberalism and secularisation. In the public sphere, independence from heteronomous

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authority has been granted to human individuality. The self is the supreme source of rights. 'The individual is not the possessor of rights through the state, but by his own nature he has inalienable and indefeasible rights'—in the words of Georg Jellinek, in the conclusion to his exposition on the American Declaration of Rights. He asserts that it does not 'attempt merely to set forth certain principles for the state's organisation, but seeks above all to draw the boundary line between state and individual.'35 The self is, accordingly, the fundamental identity. It is the source of the inexhaustibility of the human enigma, but at the same time is only the first step in solving the riddle of identity. 'To create one man is the same as to create all men' and 'to kill one man is the same as to kill all men'. Every individual self can establish relationships with others through negotiations. This is the source of trust, determined solely by the parties to this relationship, and not by any mediating source or belief. Humanity's potential for disregard of transcendent principles is called freedom in the modernist project. Its foundation is freedom of choice and belief in the possibility of general justice. Since the self is conditional, every relationship with the other is similarly conditional. Therefore, every decision made on the basis of trust alone has none of the foundations of a decision made with reference to a transcendent authority acknowledged by both parties—that is, confidence, or shared faith. Confidence is a term specific to the relationship between individuals mediated by a common external authority: for example, God, or forms relating to the sacred. Thus religion endeavours to harmonise relations between individuals through their common relationship with Perfection. Goodness is manifest in the multitude of its reflections—and this leads to the vexed question of their hierarchy, and the 'conflict of different goods'. The latter-day emphasis on utility, and the assumption that the acquisition of knowledge knows no bounds, ensure that in the course of the modernity project, trust will increasingly replace confidence. The revealed truths lose their importance and, by implication, heteronomous authority as their source. The project of liberalism presumes the substitution of the rule of reason for this mediation: reason is assigned the authority to determine the standards of life, well-being and wealth. Only by freeing the individual as completely as possible from every external authority, and by establishing relationships purely on the basis of negotiations and the realisation of individual rights will it be possible to achieve the final goal: 'the last man' and 'the end of history'. These assumptions seem to have gone almost unquestioned until

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the final third of the present century. But from that time forward, an obvious and increasingly frequent return to tradition has occurred, as the basis of a different identity from that offered by modernity. The remaining religious structures, most often secularised in themselves, are seen to embody tradition. The reaction to the rationalist relativisation is the growth of religious fundamentalism. These two phenomena are two sides of the same coin. The concept of individual rights, which, applied to others, implies their duty, remains nothing more than 'freedom of choice'. This opens the way for the imposition of ideological constructions which claim to be sacred and deny the role of negotiations. The scale of values is fortified by postulating the irrefutability of the ideological knowledge and its advocate. Here then we have the essential paradox of modernity: the existence of a heteronomous authority has been denied, and the autonomy of the self is used to confirm the prophetic character and the prophetic position of the power holders. The most typical contemporary expression of this phenomenon is nationalism: its epistemological arrogance; its violence. From the perspective of tradition, nationalism can be viewed as the epitome of false prophesying by false prophets. The modernist revision of authority has not been accompanied by any corresponding intellectuality. It encourages sentimentalism and moralising, while adopting a grimly utilitarian attitude regarding the ways and means to be used in the struggle for the set goals. The identity of the individual is transferred to the identity of the collective, primarily the state, as the highest authority. (This is then joined by an increasingly present confrontation between the language of modernity and the language of tradition.) In communist societies, this was the only alternative: the state was identified with the party. Both were interpreted as the incontrovertible expressions of the totalitarian ideology. The autonomy of the self, together with the concept of a transcendent authority, were all denied. The denial of these forms of authority opened a power vacuum, which was promptly filled by a perverted affirmation of the powers of both the autonomous self, and of religious forms. The autonomy of the self was identified with the autonomy of the collective and its demand for recognition, while religion was identified with those of its forms which survived in subjection to the ideology, or as sentimentalist, moralist opposition to it. Such opposition is neither the ideological antithesis to the destroyed communist forms nor the traditional substitution for the lost identity. It is now common to see such sentiment and morality used to sway crowds, urging them into acceptance of ethnonational programmes. As we have seen, the direct result is the slaughter of

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others and the destruction of their cultural heritage—for the sake of affirming the group identity. We are confronted with the need to understand precisely what constitutes the self. Talk of its 'autonomy' is clearly an over-simplification. The concept of heteronomy and the concepts offered by tradition provide a somewhat profounder insight—as suggested by the present return to religion. However, there is no form of religious intellectuality available which would be capable of satisfying our needs and fulfilling all expectations. The language of modernity has failed to offer us the dual concept of the autonomous self acknowledging a transcendent authority, while the return to religion is potentially a return to the religion of ignorance, exclusivity, intolerance, and destruction. Ignorance generally tries to portray itself as knowledge, weakness as power. The religious revivalists therefore see themselves as prophets: uniquely wise amid the evil and ignorance of others. They feel obliged to deliver judgements on all that they uneasily perceive as being superior to themselves, on everything above them, and to change such a condition even by force. Thus the essential component of freedom is removed from obedience: humility, which must always be voluntary, is lost. Also lost is the perception that everything on earth may point to the Centre, but nothing on earth can be that Centre. The loss of this perception means the loss of the humility and lack of dogmatism which are the antithesis of arrogance. Lack of dogmatism opens the way to tolerance—and thus to a greater disposition to acknowledge the ways and laws of others, and, by understanding and accepting those ways, to approach the vision which is central to all. Having arrived at this conclusion, we are now faced anew with the question of identity. If this is to take the form of 'Who am I?' the question must include 'Where do I come from?' and 'Where am I going?'—requiring redirection of the self within the coordinates set by these questions. Acceptance of the value of life and dignity, the rejection of death and degradation, turn the self towards what we can call Goodness. But this process demands an insight into the sources of morality—together with insight into the nature of the modern identity. The map charting the sources of morality is divided into three great continents. The first is the original, religious foundation of moral standards. The second is centred in the naturalism of the separate reason, which in the present era receives a scientific form. The third contains the cluster of world-views produced by romantic expressionism, the progenitor of most modernist conceptions. These areas are far from separate and independent: influences and borrowings link them closely.

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Modern identity is essentially determined by secularism, but incorporates plenty of historical influences. The concept of a superior good, formally excluded from the concept of modern identity, although naturally very much present, stems from the natural inclination of the self, and from inherited tradition. A sense of the past is an inseparable part of every identity: it produces fresh perceptions of society and its relationships. A free society is built by free individuals who accept this undertaking on the basis of a contract freely entered into. Such a society is therefore built by the possessors of individual rights—modern civilisation's fundamental concept of society. Given its accepted degree and kind of expressionistic self-understanding, it is possible to determine the image of a society as a nation—that is, the roots of the common expression can and must determine, according to this self-understanding, human inclinations and loyalties. Modern nationalism therefore needs its own narration.36 Such narration is always a construction in which, in the process of its self-justification, others are denied and rejected. Although it may contain references to the inviolability of human life and dignity, to general justice, sacred authority and transcendence, it is nevertheless directly opposed to their true content. Where Bosnia is concerned, the opposing nationalisms endeavour to deny and reject the substance of the forms they attempt to hide behind. Thus the question 'What is "Bosnia the Good?"' can only be answered by gaining an insight into the substance of Bosnian identity.

Tolerance and Tradition It is a widely held view that differences in culture are no obstacle to a stable society—as long, that is, as one accepts that the self is an autonomous agent, a concept central to the secular-liberal agenda. This agenda sees the self as empowered with freedom of choice, by which it openly negotiates its place in the social structure. Religion is accepted, but it has no right to participate, by dint of some preordained authority and sanctity, in the process of public negotiation between free individuals. This attitude is revealed in the division of the social whole into private and public. Striving for identity defined by even a heteronomous image of the self, presupposes tolerance, which implies tolerance of different attitudes. Any conception of the self as non-liberal and non-secular is regarded as a thing of the past. This encapsulates liberal secularism's sense of superiority relative to Tradition.37 A pluralistic harmony of cultures is possible as long as it remains a secular concept, whereby the view that the moral code

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derives from freedom of choice or the irrefutable primacy of reason is taken as the supreme good—a good to which cultures themselves are subordinate. Any culture in the true sense of the term, however, is an extension of an irrefutable authority—which, in the case of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is God and His unity in full transcendence, as proclaimed in human speech through His prophet (or prophets). Here, when it comes to identifying the ultimate source of moral decision making—that is, what each understands by self, authority and transcendence—theism and secularism take different paths. It is an undeniable fact that religion is playing an increasingly important role throughout the world, which makes the question of tolerance ever more crucial. What we now need to analyse is the basis of tolerance in Tradition and in religion. Tolerance might be seen as testifying to a rationalist solution, for those who tolerate have no other choice. This, however, is a purely instrumental, realpolitdk view, which lacks a foundation in principle. Tolerance might equally be seen as an expression of an all-pervading relativism: something is tolerated because what makes the tolerated different is unimportant in the eyes of the one who tolerater it. Central to this approach is a direct or indirect appeal to an anthropological world-view, which is the source of the liberalist concept of self: seeing the public sphere as a framework of rights, it tolerates different beliefs and behaviours as the private and essentially irrelevant choices of others. This in turn implies that what is tolerated is unrespected, inferior—this kind of tolerance can all too easily become transformed into intolerance of others' rights, that is, into oppression. Faced with this impasse, might religion itself be a means of explaining and defending religious pluriformity? And if so, how? With the increasing globalisation of cultures and the relationships between them, this question is becoming ever more crucial. Harmonious relationships between and within states and nations can only be possible if, at the very heart of the various Traditions, we can rediscover the principles which account for tolerance. It can be shown that the sacred Traditions—here we are speaking primarily of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that is, the branches of the Abrahamic tradition—see the human self as the locus or mirror of sanctity. Hence the path to Reality must pass through the human self. But the self is indivisible from the totality of the world, which reflects the self and which is reflected in the self. Thus the self is linked vertically to sanctity and horizontally to the world. Through the first link, the self can be God's image, sublime verticality. This means that plenitude is humanly possible, though its Reality cannot be comprehended. Through the horizontal link, human

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beings are open to the outside world, which enables them continually to renew the relationship between inner and outer amidst the constant current of change. This duality—verticality and horizontality—speaks in two directions: from plenitude towards the world of multiplicity and motion, and vice versa. Religion has always known plenitude, the ultimate possibility, to be an attainable human goal. This knowledge is communicated by a messenger or by the founder of a religious form. The messenger or founder is an example which individuals can strive to resemble, though they can never become as one with that person—just as it is said that God is all, but all is not God. Conversely, this focusing of the self can be proclaimed by the messenger himself— a concept at the heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There is no messenger but the Messenger. Those who say that they possess this knowledge in its fullness, or that they are his messengers, must not be listened to. Of the Messenger as the one who brings knowledge from above, the Revelation says: No! I swear by that you see and by that you do not see it is the speech of a noble Messenger. It is not the speech of a poet (little do you believe) nor the speech of a soothsayer (little do you remember).^

Or: And who does greater evil than he who forges against God a lie, or says, "To me it has been revealed", when naught has been revealed to him, or he who says, "I will send down the like of what God has sent d o w n ? " ^

Here Jesus says: Because narrow is the gate, and hard is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Beware ye of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You shall know them by their fruits.^

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The sacred traditions accept that the Messenger is no longer present today: only the Messenger's heirs remain, and the whole of human individuality. No person may lay claim to the link with Transcendence which the Messenger possessed, for in so doing, he or she denies the essence of Tradition. So what remains for the messenger's heirs in each Tradition is for each to make his or her own individual interpretation, none of which can be called final and sacred. Closeness to a sacred example must not be grounds for arrogance. On the contrary, those who are close to the example reveal themselves to the outside world by the fruits of humility and modesty: for man is nothing in the face of God, and God is all in the face of man. This implies the acceptance and confirmation of an epistemological modesty. The act of striving towards a higher level of knowledge means accepting the relativity of what one possesses. And when believers read the holy writ, they do not see it as the whole of sanctity: it remains open to the infinite, the ultimate possibility which no one individual can attain. Therefore believers cannot pass judgement on others, for they too are conditional in their knowledge and being. By joining their path, which also means joining its sacred founder, they confirm that other paths exist. This is the true source of tolerance, a tolerance that is grounded in principle and upheld by the acceptance that all human knowledge is relative and ever-changing as the self treads the path towards its source. With this acceptance in place, allembracing negotiations can take place where only force is excluded. These can help bring transcendent models closer to earthly reality, for no one can take the place of the Messenger. The reality of today's Bosnia requires this sort of tolerance. A secular— liberal model means that the other will only be tolerated provisionally. Once the opportunity presents itself, such a situation always risks degenerating into greater or lesser outbursts of violence. And the driving force of this violence is an arrogant absolutisation of the self, which turns to cruelty if its freedom is restricted by the community as a whole. If the conflicts within the Bosnian identity are interpreted only from the dominant modernist perspective, there is little prospect of resolving them. Thus it is vital to breathe new life into the language of tolerance which has its source in Tradition. A model of tolerance based on the autonomy of the self and the primacy of reason provides no solution to the key questions that face us, even in those parts of the world where the liberal concept of self is most prevalent. The globalisation of cultures and the relationships between them demands that oneness, a oneness rooted in the sacred Traditions revealed to humankind, become a key issue in relations within and between

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nations and states, so that diversity may be perceived as confirmation of a sacred unity. This question is the crux of the Bosnian drama and has been throughout this country's history, woven as it is through all the closely knit relationships between the components of her diversity. But it is also a question for the world as a whole, one that will become even more crucial with every day that passes. If this question cannot be resolved in Bosnia, what hope is there for the rest of the world? The question concerns the source of respect for life, and it has two possible answers. The first is the theistic version: human nature is as it is because God created us all. The second rejects this on purely secular grounds, probably backed up by an appeal to the primacy of rational life. But this second position is based on a contradiction, for the individual view is not necessarily the most authoritative. Hence any interpretation of identity is dependent on the relationship between both perspectives, for the state of humanity today requires that both be examined. The reality of murder and destruction denies any individual the right to assume an adequate knowledge of the make-up of the modern age. 'Bosnian' can be seen as a label for an identity built of identities. Each of the identities included in its unity is defined by two crucial elements. The first is general, that is, the acceptance of the sanctity of human life and human dignity; and the second is specific, based on religious tradition, history, ethnicity, and so on. All these identities are inter-related, like a set of frames arranged within a larger frame. They are also defined by the need for dialogue: no one can exist without the others with whom they are in constant conversation. Starting from the assumption that these identities now find themselves manoeuvred, by popular concepts, into ideological conflict, their frames murky and opaque, reduced to chimeras such as the 'Bosnian Croat/Bosnian Serb language', the complexity of these identities founded in Tradition needs to be analysed and explained. As their inner content is continually striving to separate the unreal from the real, which can only be done through constant dialogue, the revelation of what has been forgotten will enable individuals and communities to work towards the goal by which they will become not only reconciled, but also justified, both a priori and a posteriori. In so doing, forgotten languages need to be learned, for only then can we answer the question 'Who am I?' The answer to this question also answers another question: 'Why am I speaking, and to whom?' This is the essence of the human need for orientation in moral space. Without an awareness of this need, the diverse elements are left with only conflict, destruction, and murder.

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NOTES 1 See Ibn Khaldun, Mukaddima (Beirut, 1956-9), p. 53. 2 See 'An Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View', in Immanuel Kant, On History (Indianapolis, 1963), pp. 11-13. 3 See Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction a la lecture de Hegel (Paris, 1947). 4 This view is characteristic of so-called political realism, advocated in recent times by Henry Kissinger. O n his understanding of history see, e.g., Peter Dickson, Kissinger and the Meaning of History (Cambridge, 1978). 5 Samuel P. Huntington, ' T h e Clash of Civilizations?', Foreign Affairs 72 (1993), p. 48. 6 Arabic islam ('allegiance', 'submission', 'complete surrender to the O n e God') is a verbal noun of the fourth class of verbs derived from the root s-l-m. ' T h e one who submits himself to God' is muslim, of which the Arabic plural form muslimun is used frequently in the Kur'an. Islam, however, appears only eight times in the Kur'an, but this word is to be considered in relation to the widespread use of the verb aslama with its two interwoven meanings: 'submit to G o d ' (an inner act) and 'profess Islam', i.e. adhere to God's Message and God's Prophet. Islam is the truth of all existence and the way that will bring all creatures back to God (3:83). T h e Kur'an (3:19) says: " T h e only true faith in God is the surrender to His will (el-islam)." Disposition to that religion is inherent in man; God gave it to him and it has always been there (30:30). God reveals this religion through all His Prophets and Messengers, its essence remaining unchanged, although forms of its presence in the world have changed, reaching their culmination and summation in the Last Message and the Last Prophet of God, which set the seal on the long succession of messages and messengers. Faith in God is, therefore, single, but its expressions throughout history are manifold. It is, given its eternal essence, always new yet within time and space, limited by its exposure to oblivion, changes and corruption. It is therefore every now and then revealed by God in all the glory of its freshness through His messages and messengers. T h a t revelation leaves different holy traces in the passing of time. Imam Zayn al-'Abidin says: ' O God, surely T h o u hast confirmed T h y religion in all times with an Imam whom T h o u hast set up as a guidepost to T h y servants and a lighthouse in T h y lands, after his cord has been joined to T h y cord!' (Imam Zayn al-'Abidin 'Ali ibn al-Husayn, The Psalms of Islam: Al-Sahifat AlKamilat Al-Sajjadiyya, trans, by William C. Chittick [London, 1988], p. 171.) 7 Verse 95:4: "Surely W e created man of the best stature." This signifies man's original goodness, but also his subsequent weakness, which is the result of his alienation from Principle. Consequently, man encompasses possibilities from "the lowest of the low" (95:5) to "perfection" attained by "those who believe and do good works" (95:6). All quotations from the Kur'an are given with the respective number of Surah and verse.

Notes

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Quotations from the Kur'an and Haddith (the teachings, sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad, as reported and collected by his followers) are, as the reader will be able to see in the following text, an integral part of the chosen discourse. Sources of knowledge are receptacles of imparted information, combined with rational exploration and personal experience of Reality. Traditional wisdom teaches that the Truth depends neither on language nor on form: it can be revealed in any language and in any form. These revelations therefore have different meanings in different cultures and at different moments in time. These are conditional revelations, reaching towards the Oneness of the truth. However, they become an accepted and widely known part of the discourse that inspires and testifies. Considering the nature of this text, only one aspect has been chosen out of the multitude of facets of the revelation of truth. T h e choice of any other aspect would enable progress towards the same goal. 8 49:13. 9 T h e original meaning of Arabic al-madinah is the 'place of din', the 'place of belief, 'place of establishing morality', 'place of government based on principle', 'place of religious law', etc. Din signifies the content of the morally compelling law and obedience to it. Accordingly, din means 'religion' (Greek pistis, Latin religio) in the broadest sense, encompassing everything that relates to the content of its principles and their effects in life, thus including the concept of 'belief. Madina is an eternal model of how to organise the world in general and every place on earth on the basis of 'submission to God' (islam). 10 This is the meaning of Kur'an verse 5:48. T h e concept of'law' corresponds to the original shir'ah (or shari'ah), the literal meaning of which is 'the way to the waterhole', or to the place where people and animals go for the principles essential to life. That concept in Revelation denotes the law system that is essential to the social and spiritual welfare of the community. T h e concept 'way of life' corresponds to the original rninhaj, which denotes 'open road', usually in the general sense. These two terms have a narrower meaning than din, which does not imply only laws of a particular religion but also basic, unchangeable spiritual truths, which were preached by all God's prophets, whilst the laws and ways of life they represented changed, depending on the circumstances and cultural development of each community. T h e Kur'an often emphasises this unity in diversity (e.g. 2:148, 21:92-93, 23:52). Although the Kur'an says of itself that it is the culmination and completion of the revelation, it at the same time emphasises and confirms the validity of the law and way of life of the followers of earlier revelations: for those who have a firm belief in One God and the Day of Judgement, i.e. in individual moral responsibility, and who live righteously, "there shall no fear come upon them nor shall they grieve" (2:62). 11 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London, 1992), p. 45. 12 Fukuyama (1992), pp. 235-236. 13 2:256. 14 This memorandum was prepared in 1986 by a group of leading Serbian intellectuals, among whom were the author Dobrica Cosic, later president of rump Yugoslavia. It offered a programme for the reconstruction of Yugoslavia on the lines of Greater Serbia.

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15 See Ilija Garasanin, 'Nacertanije: Program spoljasne i nacionalne politike Srbije, na koncu 1844. godine' (The Design: Programme of Foreign and National Policy in Serbia at the End of 1844), in Boze Covic, Izvori velikosrpske agresije (The Sources of Great Serbian Aggression) (Zagreb, 1991), pp. 65-77. 16 Jovan Cvijic, Aneksija Bosne i Hercegovine i srpski problem (The Annexation of BosniaHerzegovina and the Serbian Problem) (Beograd, 1908), p. 16. 17 Vasa Cubrilovic, 'Iseljavanje Arnauta' (The Displacement of Arnauts), in Covic (1991), pp. 106-124. 18 Nikolaj Velimirovic, Nacionalizam svetog Save (The Nationalism of St. Suva) (Beograd, 1938). 19 See Mustafa Imamovic, Historija Bosnjaka (The History of the Bosniacs) (Sarajevo, 1997), particularly pp. 485-526. 20 This understanding of Serbian nationalism corresponds to the general definition of nationalism by Ernest Gellner in Nations and Nationalism (New York, 1983). 21 See Srecko M. Dzaja, Konfesionalnost i nacionalnost Bosne i Hercegovine (Confession and Natioiiality in Bosnia and Herzegovina), trans, from German by Ladislav Z. Fisic (Sarajevo, 1992), pp. 87-125. 22 Miroslav Brandt, 'Antimemorandum: Biljeske uz Memorandum SANU' (Antimemorandum: Notes on the SANU Memorandum) in Covic (1991), pp. 209-255. 23 Brandt (1991), p. 239. 24 Stjepan Radiò, Zivo hrvatsko pravo na Bosnu i Hercegovinu (The Living Croat Claim to Bosnia and Herzegovina) (Zagreb, 1908), pp. 7-8. 25 Huntington (1993), p. 25. 26 Quoted from Paul Chacornac, La vie simple de René Guénon (Paris, 1986), p. 70. 21 Matthew, 7:13. 28 90:11-12. 29 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, Nehdzu-l-belaga ('Staza rjecitosti7)-. Govori, pisma i izreke, sabrao es-Sejjid es-Serif er-Radi (Nahj Al-Balaghah ¡'The path of eloquence']: Sermons, letters and sayings, compiled by as-Sayyid ar-Radi), trans, by Rusmir Mahmutcehajic and Mehmedalija Hadzic (Zagreb, 1994), p. 69. 30 Matthew, 6:33. 31 90:10-12. 32 Romans, 9:30-32. 33 Martin Luther, A Commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (London, 1833), p. 83. 34 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass. 1996), p. 13. 35 Georg Jellinek, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens: A Contribution to Modern Constitutional History (Westport, 1979), p. 48. 36 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, 1983). 37 The term tradition, used as a key word in this discourse, corresponds to the usage of this term by the following writers: Réne Guénon, Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines, trans, by Marko Pallis (London, 1945), pp. 87-89; Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Bugbear of Literacy (Middlesex, 1949), pp. 68-91; Frithjof Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, trans, by Peter N. Townsend

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(Middlesex, 1969), pp. 9-24; idem, Light on the Ancient Worlds, trans, by Lord Northbourne (Bloomington, 1984), pp. 7-57; Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (New York, 1989), pp. 65-92. 38 69:40-43. 39 6:93. 40 Matthew, 7:14-16.

CHAPTER 2

KERNEL AND SHELL

Introduction

B

OSNIACS are vulnerable to persecution and humiliation: this makes up much of their history. Yet, they persist in striving for selfhood. Does this involve a perhaps unconscious acceptance of victimisation? And what are they in fact striving for? Self-dedication to principle demands effort and sacrifice, which in turn require awareness of the reasons for suffering, and the ultimate gain. Those who understand the purpose of their suffering are at least supported by a sense of mission: on the other hand, they are prey to the cruel games of history and human weakness. The Bosniac people have not yet formulated a unified response to this dilemma: are they 'a nation with which the fates play cruelly'1 or are they a nation aware of their mission, but unable to transform it into a clear and effective ideology?

Culture is the fruit of a long growth: it endlessly repeats the cycle of sowing and of harvesting seed for a new sowing. History records plenty of efforts to break the cycle of Bosniac culture between seed and sowing. From out of these efforts the whole anti-Bosnian, anti-Bosniac programme has developed: it seeks to destroy the living nucleus of Bosniac culture and its capacity for self-renewal. The Bosniac nation must face this squarely: if our response to our present danger remains that of our grandparents, we cannot hope for the killing to stop. There is an urgent need for the rethinking of our approach. Or rather, it may be more correct in this context to say that

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we need renewal, in order to re-dedicate ourselves to the struggle. W e should look for our renewal in the ancient freshness of Truth, Goodness and Beauty: we lost our links with these principles and forgot the real significance of our position among the nations, and the consequences have been weakness, loss and oblivion. W e should respond to the latest slaughter by actively re-seeking the links to our ancient treasury of knowledge and wisdom: if we fail to do so, then we do not even deserve the pity for which we are asking. Contemporary Western civilisation is a curious growth on history's trunk: it is unique among civilisations in having developed exclusively in a material direction, virtually divorced from transcendent principles. This growth is already several centuries old, and still on the increase—while intellectuality 2 has taken an opposite turn and is increasingly on the decline. As contemporary society continues to develop its material aspects it cannot either halt or reverse the decline of the intellectual: rather there is growing confusion over what intellectuality actually means, and how to define it. Genuine intellectuality, which is discussed here, can be called spirituality. Meanwhile, the term 'intellectual' is incorrectly used to describe the contemporary obsession with the development of experimental science, with the goal of practical gain. There is nothing new or unexpected about the current decline of intellectual thought: it can be traced back throughout the development of contemporary philosophy. The latter has involved, according to René Guénon 3 growing obliviousness to genuine intellectuality and the rise of its alternatives, rationalism and sentimentality—apparently polar opposites, but in reality closely linked. Where they are dominant, all intellectual knowledge is ignored or denied—a trend apparent since Descartes. Positivism and agnosticism have been the logical consequence, followed by the modern retreat into 'scientific research'. As the sterility of rationalism has become increasingly obvious, our culture has searched for 'something else', always in the realm of sentiment and instinct. T o travel in this direction is, however, to sink below reason, not to rise above it. In the remorseless denial of the spiritual, our capacity to reach for God was relegated to the status of one of the phenomena of the subconscious. Truth, reduced to perceived reality, was graded according to its pragmatic use. For what role is left for truth to play in a world interested only in the material and the sentimental? The consequences of this development in the relationship between humanity and the world are multiple. Since religion is the nucleus of Bosnian

Introduction

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culture we will examine those consequences which are directly relevant to the religious perspective. The primary consequence, however, is clear: modern culture lacks roots; the social order of the contemporary world is not based on traditional principle. From the religious perspective religion and law are inseparable, but modernity has imposed a totally opposite viewpoint: religion is only a social fact and therefore just one element among the many which comprise the social order. Accordingly, we are virtually unable to recognise the true nature of the culture we inherited only to reject, since it grew principally from participation in a world other than our own. In the present-day situation of division and subdivision of religious unity, those who publicly declare themselves to be believers are nevertheless foremost among the forces for division: religion has no influence on either their thinking or their behaviour, and is kept away from the real business of their existence. Today there is no significant difference between believers and non-believers. Both Muslims and Christians see no reality or meaning in the supernatural and the miraculous: they can no longer interpret the key messages of the sacred traditions, joining de facto in the materialist trend. This subconscious erosion is significantly more dangerous than conscious participation, since the participants are unaware of its effects. Religion today for the majority of people is just an issue of personal feeling, without any intellectual importance. It is generally confused with a foggily sentimental 'religiosity' or reduced to pure morality. The role of doctrine, the mainspring of religion, is suppressed. The modern contempt for religion has been dangerously mixed with the nationalistic manipulation of religious membership/identity: doctrine is exposed to abuse and placed at the service of anti-religious ideologies. It is interesting to note how eagerly contemporary writers on religion or religious perspectives use the language of modern materialism—more enthusiastically, indeed, than do the express advocates of materialist ideology. Language is a faithful mirror of thought, and this phenomenon strongly suggests that the meaning of religion is almost wholly forgotten or lost. Doctrine has been frittered away in exchange for moral and sentimental considerations. The latter may satisfy some, but will be rejected by all who are moved by genuinely intellectual considerations—for such there are still. It is increasingly common, however, to argue, in favour of rejecting doctrine, that the majority are incapable of understanding it, and must not be forced into dependence on an intellectual elite. But this begs another question: what alternatives do we have to the materialist 'reign of quantity'? If this falsely democratic principle is maintained, genuine intellectuality will

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lose its power to prevent the imposition of universal material slavery. Suspicion of genuine intellectuality is widespread in all forms of religious establishments today: it is common to most or all religious officials, demonstrable in their—often reckless—alliances with political structures. The nature of true intellectuality is as alien to them as it is to most modern philosophers. The revival of genuine intellectuality, the most important task facing our day and age, must be accompanied by a revival in the values given to teaching and learning. 'It is high time,' said René Guénon 'to show that religion is something other than a matter of sentimental devotion, something other than mere moral precepts on the consolations available to souls weakened by suffering.' 4 A significant transformation must take place in our attitudes towards values if we are to overcome our present state of alienation from Tradition. Otherwise we will be left with a lifeless, rotting inheritance, and be ourselves smothered 'in the power and glitter of modern civilisation'. But we can still achieve this transformation—with the last few pulse-beats of our culture: we can still become reunited with what we have lost or forgotten. If we seek any other basis for understanding we will never find a way to become reconciled with Tradition, which holds that man is created purely for the sake of Perfection. Science does not acknowledge or reach perfection: it is occupied with measuring the phenomena of the mutable world, while the subject which doctrine deals with is permanent and eternal. Yet it is one of the crudest of paradoxes that 'the science of religion' is hostile towards everything which still derives life from genuine intellectuality and the reality of Tradition. The fundamental questions which must be answered for the sake of understanding Bosniac culture include the key issue of symbolism as a method of communication 5 —something which has become alien, or at the most marginal, to modern culture. Symbolism remains the best method of teaching and understanding religious and metaphysical truths, but these truths are largely rejected or ignored by modern thinking. Symbolism is fundamentally opposed to rationalism, and all enemies of symbolism behave like exclusive rationalists. The fact that symbolism today is misunderstood demonstrates the need for more research into the meaning of the symbols of Tradition and the reconstruction of their intellectual content: at present they are dismissed as common sentimental stimuli. Identifying the nucleus of Bosniac culture requires a renewal of genuine intellectuality and the doctrine of Tradition. This is, perhaps, also a precondition for the survival of Bosniac culture, for if it remains unaware of its

The Diversity of Religions

59

intellectual nucleus, nothing will survive but a pure reflection of the militaristic ideologies bent on the destruction of Bosnia and the Bosniacs. This renewal is, therefore, a task now facing every member of our community and every attempted form of group action. By accepting this task we will become redirected towards the secret centre, the heart which is never in any definable place but present everywhere, a treasure house of capacity more infinite than earth and sky. We will gain the opportunity to free ourselves from simplistic 'understanding' of the soul and the intellect by using approaches very different from those which currently prevail.

The Diversity of Religions Bosnia embraces a diversity of religions: Muslims, Christians and Jews are integral to the country's unity. Jerusalem is their holy city: they trace their roots back to Abraham and their perceptions of the world are closely linked. W e can see, in this diversity of faiths that share the single country of Bosnia—which is theirs just as Jerusalem is theirs—an enigma essential to their wider relationship. Is there any viable interpretation of the 'unity of diversity' of Muslims, Christians and Jews which corresponds with the uniqueness of Bosnia? If there is, how can it be demonstrated convincingly and separated from the complex battlefield which Bosnia has become? The differences between these three religions are used to cite the differences among their followers—yet why are their similarities not used to unite them? The unity of diversity can be interpreted to mean that these religions are esoterically alike, but to the external view exoterically unlike. Thus we have several levels of identity: these faiths all look to a single God, but are expressed in a plurality of different expressions in the world of concrete forms. The plurality is visible—the unity all but invisible. The unity in which knowledge and existence—being—meet, is Intellect—what Meister Eckhart calls the uncreated and uncreatable factor of every human individuality. Eckhart is echoed in Islamic tradition in the proverbial saying that the Sufi is uncreated.6 Man is both finite and infinite. The esoteric view shows us the eternal perfection underlying every transient form of religion: the external, exoteric components should serve to enrich our perceptions of this unity. However, our perception is being compelled, by modern trends of thought, to confine itself to the exoteric and ignore the esoteric: only that which can be empirically established has any validity. The universal science

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of metaphysics—humanity's attempt to grasp spiritual principle—is disappearing from view. There are many possible answers to the riddle of religious pluriformity— but not all are solutions. Theology cannot provide a confirmation of unity: it tends to justify the judging and subjective I, and suggest the deficiency of the judged and objective other. T h e next answer is the 'objective and detached position'. T h e self of the subject is separated from the object undergoing consideration. From this position all religions are debased in relation to the lofty detachment of the observer. Religion becomes pure phenomenon and is classed with other social phenomena: the class war, ontogenesis and the like. Yet the very subtraction of the self from the thing considered diminishes the value of this approach. T h e crudely individual self, its original purity overlaid by its mutable identity, is left to judge the validity of knowledge which is wholly immutable and independent of any one of its manifestations. T h e next answer we come to is phenomenology, which places all religion on a specifically human plane, divorcing it from the supraindividual. This approach denies pure intellectuality and the universal reach of metaphysics, denying also that their origin may be anything other than human. Bosnia as a whole, with its diverse components of Judaism, Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy has endured many stresses, designed to pervert the unity of diversity into homogeneity. In the current decade the Bosnian Muslim component has become jeopardised through the process of mass killing and expulsion, rape, and the destruction of their homes and mosques. Those responsible for these crimes have been able to justify them in the eyes of the world, at least partially, by calling on the brotherhood of Christian Europe. This is symptomatic of the universal process of withdrawal and isolation at all levels, both individual and group: sentimental and emotionalist reactions are weakening our capacity for, and grasp upon, life. W e need to understand ourselves better: phenomenological analysis of religion can help us to compare ourselves with others, but cannot solve the riddle of religious pluriformity. T h e dogma and ritual of every religion can serve as the base for the claim that it alone offers truth: thus form is claimed to be truth. Forms are, however, finite—at best, they offer an analogy to something which is beyond form. When forms are thus closed and limited they compel other forms to become limited and hardened in reaction. If we confine ourselves to the exoteric view, no religion can be more than one of a crowd of contradictory forms and beliefs: but this contradicts the principle of absolutes, and the

Tradition

61

absolute nature of truth. If there are many apparent forms of truth, then in reality these must all be forms of a single truth. Beyond the limitations of form they point to the presence of an overwhelming absolute. Any religion is a sufficient guide to absolute principle—to that extent, all religions are in themselves comprehensive, absolute. Each has the potential to transcend all borders and embrace all truths. The form is the letter of religion; transcendence is the spirit.

Tradition Phenomenological analysis of all the religions of Bosnia, and their development in this country, confirms the relationship between their exoteric forms, their organic link to this country and its historical experience. Although the religions themselves are supra-national, transcending time and place, their dogma, morality and ritual have been expressed within the compound religious identity of Bosnia and have given character to this identity. In spite of their close relationship, the preservation of their distinctions of form is an important part of this identity: phenomenology shows this process at work. Still more crucial, however, is the unity underlying these distinctions, as we find when we travel from phenomenology towards the origin of every religion. The root is unconditional; its forms are conditional: they reveal the root, but cannot affect it. Like all phenomena of the mutable world they declare the absolute, the unity where being and knowledge combine. The states of being and knowing lose all distinction, all duality when they arrive at the unity symbolised by the multitude of phenomena. Here the symbolised and the symbol meet and are one. The exoteric components of religion serve as guides to the doors of heaven: the means to the end. To know them, however, is the first step: we journey from the exoteric to the esoteric, from the sign to what it signifies. The destructive effect that ideology has on religion is due to the fact that the exoteric aspects of religion are all that ideology requires. Or rather, they are a means to a different end: instead of pointing to the esoteric, they can be turned round and made to point back to the ideology itself. Their presence implies the blessing of heaven on the purposes of the ideology: they are no longer capable of implying anything further. At its best, ideology provides the self with a sense of liberation and limitless potential: we have the concept of the freedom of the individual, of autonomy and its accompanying rights. However, all sense of other human

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states or purposes is lost: there is nothing beyond the individual which could act as a guide or offer knowledge of the self. Acceptance of the principle that the Intellect is everywhere present, enables humanity to confirm and strengthen its ascent of 'the ladder of worlds', to move from the conditional towards the Absolute. Tradition prescribes and enables this acceptance. A structure can be described as Traditional, if, to a greater or lesser extent but always consciously and voluntarily, it declares its dependence on doctrine, which has its foundations in Intellect. Tradition as doctrine may be purely intellectual, or religious when it includes many extraneous elements. Everything which is exoteric in religion—dogma, morality, ritual—has its roots in an esoteric unity. Therefore, if we find the exoteric form alien or incomprehensible, we should look beyond it to the esoteric origin and essence of the religion, instead of allowing ourselves to become distracted by the difficulties of form. For the follower of each religion, its forms are the outward signs of the road towards the Absolute; they offer a living connection with Truth. However, the exoteric form which has no link with transcendent unity remains a landmark rather than a signpost—even this, however, is better than wandering in a void. W e are enabled to turn towards the source of meaning; thus the conditions are created for us to accept the Absolute. This process reveals the presence of two expressions or levels of unity. The first dwells in forms which are authentic, in that they enable transition from the symbol to the signified. The second is the transcendence of the signified. In Christian esoterism, Christ is the symbol or manifestation of God, the Logos or Word of God. Exoterically viewed, Christ is the starting point of the two thousand year-old drama which spread from Palestine throughout the world, with all its historical, theological and phenomenological effects. Similarly, in Islamic esoterism, Muhammad is the most perfect symbol of God's praise or Logos; from an exoteric point of view he is the centre of specific political, theological, and phenomenological developments. When Christ tells us that there is no road to God except through him—a claim also made by Muhammad—the apparent contradiction of these two statements is illusory. The presence of unity points to eternity as a human potential: without acceptance of unity it is impossible to transcend the finite, and the flawed and imperfect becomes the only reality. However, humanity was created for the sake of perfection and eternity: tradition enables us to be, in ourselves, in touch with the infinite, which is neither mediated nor conditional. The infinite speaks to humanity in 'scriptures' which are finite, and in the symbols found in the world and in ourselves. Eternity lies open to

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us: Intellect, present in doctrine, enables us to transcend ourselves and the world, to find the infinite in the finite. Intellect is present in all things, but reason as we know it is only present in humanity. Through the presence of Intellect, every symbol in the universe and in ourselves has its connection with unity. Through reason we establish our relationship with quantity and movement: it can never bring us beyond the measurable, no matter how comprehensive its generalisations may sound. There is nothing universal about reason; but Intellect is eternal. The single confirms the multitude; the presence of many revelations is the process of a single revelation. This expresses itself in finite, concrete forms, which are no more than symbols of eternity. Acceptance of one commands the acceptance of others. Failure to accept is the implicit or willing denial of the contents of all sacred forms, denial of their relationship to the Spirit. The truth of the esoteric content of every religion is today no longer accessible to the majority. The esoteric is offered to us through the forms and actions of the exoteric: once the existence of this kernel is denied, the empty shell is easily broken. The fragments of exoterism are reduced to 'fundamentalism'—which could better be described as literalism, or sentimentality. Once the living kernel is torn from the shell, the shell ceases to signify anything beyond itself, but can be set up as an idol, whose cult is the persecution of other religions and their followers. We have the paradoxical creation of heterodox religion: religion which denies and seeks the destruction of orthodox religion. We need to change our perspective, to accommodate the vast range of exoteric manifestations of religion through the acceptance of their single, esoteric base. And not only our perspective needs to be changed: to change our attitudes within the physical world is also to change them in the spiritual. The spiritual heart, the organ which receives revelations, corresponds with the eye of the physical body: Absolute Principle, which radiates light, is symbolised by the sun; Intellect is symbolised by light itself; the reality of God is what we seek by this light. The spiritual transcends the individual: the will of the individual is limited and passive in comparison. We cannot understand spirituality or religion merely by comparing exoteric forms and attempting to synthesise them on the basis of their similarity: to do so would be superficial since it would confine us to the level of forms. Such a comparison could be of value to the extent that we would become better informed about the exoteric, but only if we bear permanently in mind its esoteric content.

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Forms can be used for evidence for and against similarity and difference: they can serve equally to forge relationships and to break them. T o understand religion and its unity we need to understand that harmony can produce diversity. This harmony is spiritual: the single kernel at the heart of every religion, the nucleus which gives religion life.7

Corruption Religion has three components which stem from different origins: dogma, moral law and cult or ritual. The first is the intellectual component, the second is social, while the third overlaps with both. The stability of a religion depends on the hierarchic relationship and balance between these three components. Since the esoteric aspect of religion—that part which is founded on pure intellectuality—is the least readily accessible, we have dogma as the systematised and structured version of the underlying metaphysics. Dogma is the letter which must not be separated from the doctrinal spirit which created it. Although it can be readily seen as intellectual, since it deals with profundities, it is not in itself purely intellectual, but necessarily includes nonintellectual, sentimental elements. This state of affairs is reflected in the use of the term 'faith', which can be distorted to mean blind acceptance of dogma. Faith is very different from certitude, which is a purely intellectual state. Sentimentality prevails still further where morality is concerned. Although morality has its foundations in religious dogma, it is primarily shaped by societal norms. Meanwhile, ritual has an intellectual aspect, to the extent that it symbolises doctrine, but is social, since it involves a form of behaviour in which all members of the religious community must take part. Whenever the social and sentimental aspects of religion prevail over the intellectual, dogma and ritual lose their true role, and religion declines to socially accepted morality. Morality itself can play one of two roles: it can be a part of dogma, since the latter enshrines its principles; or in philosophical mode it can be seen as independent—a diluted form of the Absolute. Both morality and religion are vulnerable to sentimentality, which today has succeeded in virtually overwhelming intellectuality. The next step is the reduction of religion to the level of nation and state. Wherever this process takes place, intellectuality vanishes, to be replaced by political ideology, which forces religion to perform a specifically anti-religious role. Today, this distortion is all too common. Phenomenological analysis of this rising antireligion, focused on each religion in turn, gives a bleak view of the future.

Islam through Phenomenology

65

Islam through Phenomenology Understanding the presence and effects of Islam at any one time or place requires an insight into the principles and purposes of the Islamic mission, and the environment and conditions in which they are being observed. Islam places the relationship between God as the Creator and humanity as the creature at the centre of its world-view. The nature of this relationship is what defines man's salvation or fall. God is the Creator of all, whose signs can be seen in everything created, yet who is unique and incomparable. At the centre of creation is humanity, itself both internally and externally a symbol. God has placed symbols communicating the divine nature 'in the horizons and in human selves'. 8 Humanity has the right to salvation: all other rights are God's. Humanity's realisation of this right depends on submission to God's laws. Humanity, by submission to God's laws, realises perfect freedom. As God's slave, humanity recognises and understands God's symbols in the environment: everything good is ascribed to God, and is perceived as good in proportion to its nearness to God. God sends humanity prophets and messengers who instruct them in the Truth, thus leading them from 'the depths of darkness towards the light' 9 . The best among humanity is the foremost prophet of God, and, through a series of such prophets, God's guidance and instructions are passed to humanity. All prophets declare a single truth to humanity, acting both as evidence of God's truth and interpreters of God's symbols 'in the horizons and in human selves'. According to Islamic belief, the prophet Muhammad stands at the end and beginning of the series of God's prophets, the Light and Seal of Creation. He confirms the truths of all the previous prophets and corrects blunders and false constructions previously made. His arrival turns the whole world into a masdjid,10 a place where humanity's relationship with the self and the world can be formed on the basis of God's Message and the Example of the Messenger of God. All people are called to this masdjid, and the fundamental goal of Islam is to ensure that all have the right to respond freely and to belong to this masdjid of the world. The concept of this undertaking has taken various forms during the expansion and interpetation of this message: this is the frame in which the presence of Islam in Bosnia should be understood. The examination of Islam 11 should trace its vertical threads through history down to the present day. All prophets of God, from Adam onwards, were within Islam—that is, in submission to God. Just as Christian tradition points to the Word and the Light as the beginning (in the opening chapter

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of the Gospel of St. John, the principal gospel of the ancient Bosnian Church), in Islamic tradition the Creation was also preceded by Light, the light of Muhammad. All prophets—one hundred and twenty-four thousand of them according to Islamic tradition—were aware of this principal light, transmitted through them during the course of time to shine out in the birth and life of Muhammad, the son of 'Abd Allah (the slave of God). This essential Islam has left its imprint in multitudes of languages, times and places. It retains indestructible life and newness, since it reflects the mercy of God: 'There is no God but He, the Living, the Everlasting. Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep.'12 The history of Islam belongs to the wider history of all sacred traditions. These traditions are, in a narrow sense, the historic trends sparked by the various revelations of this light. Our approach to Islam should also be lateral, to include the phenomena which are joined to Islam at the root, but have taken various directions: Islam is a religion of messages and prophecies, and all its forms recognise this inheritance. We should also incorporate the sociological standpoint, examining various social groups and conditions while taking account of Islamic relations towards world unity, balanced against the attitudes of national entities and individual groups. Whichever of these approaches is adopted it will speedily confirm that Islam, like its fellow religions, defined as perfection and the road towards perfection, evades scientific definition. All scientific approaches to Islam, therefore, must necessarily be incomplete, while nevertheless necessary on that account. Meanwhile, there is no complete phenomenological portrayal of Islam: this is therefore the approach used by this book to interpret Islam in Bosnia.13 We will move from examination of outward forms to the deeper layers of the human response to God's instructions and guidance, and finally to the innermost nucleus of Islam. Islam is deeply concerned with the relationship of the external to the internal, the form to the content. According to Islam, the diversity of the world reflects the Unity of God: humanity has always had the capacity to recognise and comprehend this unity. The world is a Book of God, laying God's Message open to humanity in clarity and fullness. This Book, composed of myriad letters, is in all its forms the sign of the Creator. The truth of the World and the Book is measured by what they symbolise. Thus the Deus Absconditus ('And equal to him is not anyone' 14 ) is the Deus Revelatus. The Deus Absconditus leads people through His messages and prophets to the True Road, and then they know him as the Deus Revelatus ('God who Declares Himself 1 5 and 'God Who speaks'16).

Islam through Phenomenology 67

Humanity learns how to find the roads that lead up to the level of becoming the convinced slave of God. All forms of approaching God require first that the illusion of the individual self should be shattered, and commitment to God made. Whoever serves God acts as God's viceregent, the guardian and advocate of Goodness. Those who act for themselves alone, making the blunder of independence from God, act as the tool and advocate of evil. Any part of humanity which has accepted the reality of living in the world as an umma, is under obligation to attempt the transformation of the world into a medina, where relationships towards other human beings are defined by Tradition: 'by religion and by religious laws'. The world will shape itself around 'the best nation ever brought forth to men, bidding to honour and forbidding dishonour, and believing in God'. 17 The phenomenological approach to Islam which we have chosen is the method proposed by the Sufi of Baghdad, Abu'l-Husayn an-Nuri (d. 907), and similar to that of his contemporary al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi.18 Based on the Kur'an, Nuri's concentric formula works inwards from the external forms of holiness towards the most internal core of religion. In this model there is no God but God, and the heart is simultaneously the centre and the sphere in which the unification of the human I with God's I can take place. It is composed of four principal concentric circles, embracing a core or centre: (1) the breast (sadr) is connected with Islam;19 (2) the heart (kalb) is the place of faith (iman20)—the heart enables internalisation of purely external usage of religious forms, and is therefore the organ of the purely spiritual aspects of religious life; (3) the inner heart (Ju'ad) is the place of intuitive gnostic knowledge (;ma'rifa21), where God's knowledge can be approached 'from us',22 with nothing to mediate between; (4) the most internal core of the heart (lubb) is the place of unity (tawhid2i)—this is the place of experiencing the One who is, was, and will be from eternity to eternity, as being both visible and attainable. The circles are made up as follows: the first circle comprises the sacred subject, the good act, the good word, the good scripture, the good individual, the good community. The second consists of God, the Message, Salvation; the third is submission, faith, love; the fourth is Deus Revelatus, holiness, truth; and the fifth, the central, Deus Absconditus. I. The outer circle, or the world of external forms, covers three areas: (1) sacred matter, sacred space, sacred time, sacred numbers, sacred acts; (2) the sacred word; the spoken word (that of God or his chosen prophets); Tradition, teaching, learning; the language of prayer to God (asking, thanking, repenting, recollecting, whispering);

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(3) the written word—the Messenger or Book of God; (4) the righteous man and the righteous community. II. The second circle, the first of the inner circles, is the world of religious imagination, meditation, perception, regarding the invisible being and the visible and invisible actions of God: (1) the concept of God; (2) the concept of creation (cosmology and anthropology), including concepts of the original states of the world and humanity; (3) the concept of the Message, as the nearness of God's will as revealed in history and the soul; (4) the concept of salvation; (5) the concept of the afterworld and the conditions within it. III. The third circle represents the world of religious experience, that is, what happens deep in the soul, as opposed to fantastic or rationalist concepts of God; the religious values which are tossed aside in the conflict between humanity and the sacred, and the accomplishing of sacred acts: (1) respect (for God and His Holiness); (2) fear; (3) faith and total trust in God; (4) hope; (5) love, desire for God, surrender to Him, returning to God's love. Together with these values are grouped the values of peace, joy, the desire to share and take part, and special religious experiences: inspiration, miraculous appearances, the recognition of a call, enlightenment, seeing and hearing, ecstasy, strange physical powers. IV. The real world of religion in the chosen model corresponds to the innermost circle. This centre is God's Reality, which can be encountered in all external forms, inner perception, and experiences of the soul in a twofold sense: (1) Deus Revelatus, or God Who has His Face towards mankind, as perfect holiness, truth, justice and love, mercy, salvation; (2) Deus Ipse or Deus Absconditus, experienced as perfect unity. God's reality can never be manifest in human forms of expression, thought and experience. All levels of our experience can be described only as

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