Big Brother

Ladies and gentlemen, we got 'em!
Bosnia and Herzegovina have a new prime minister, Mr. Nikola Spiric, a Serb, as all media do not not fail to mention.

A little over three months after the elections, BiH has a new government, so it seems at least. Of course, everything still has to be agreed upon, and the positions within the government still have to be divided, but it seems like the coalition talks have ended. The new minister of Foreign Affairs is from a Bosnian Muslim party. He is jewish, though. Things that sound like a paradox in so many countries, are non here.

So, I can rest assured, knowing that this country will be governed again- my monitoring of the monitors during the elections was useful and succesful. Let's hope and pray that the coalition talks in Holland will be as fruitful.

Anyway, happy Orthodox Christmas. Because that's what it is today according to the Julian calendar.

Rythm of life, in pictures

A sample of the pictures taken on Bajram. I did not put the actual killing in the blog. However, the pictures are not for the weak of heart.
Elias Fels took one of the pictures. I took the other one.

The rythmn of life

Tomorrow is the last day of Kurban Bajram. In the Arabic world it is know as Eid ul-Ahda. People in Holland call it Offerfeest, which means something as Sacrifice Holiday. It is a religious Muslim Holiday, celebrated 70 days after the end of Ramadan. The holiday commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ismael to God. For those who do not know the bible, don't worry: he ended up not sacrificing his son, because Abraham's willingness to do so, convinced God of Abraham's love for him. Instead of letting Abraham kill his son, he sent an animal to him, to kill and give to God. For those who do know the bible: indeed, the son celebrated at Eid is Ismael, and not Isaac, as is written in the Old Testament used by Jews and Christians. As is seen in so many situations in the Middle East now-a-days, there were different reports of the same event during the biblical times too....

On the first day of Kurban Bajram it is custom in Bosnia to slaughter a sheep, in remembrance of what happened thousands of years ago. My memory about this slaughtering goes back only one year ago. Last year during Bajram I had lunch at my favorite Bosnian restaurant called 'Kod Biban'. kod Biban is situated near Mount Trebevic, in the outskirts of town, and is overlooking Sarajevo. It was also the scene of the slaughter of the lambs, and since I remembered this, I went there with Elias Fels and 3 other friends. Rational behind this: know what you eat. In the days before Bajram we had seen sheep being sold all over town, and being transported on the backseats of Mercedes cars. This first day of the four days of Bajram, we saw it all, from the sheep being taken out of their shed, to the actual killing, to the stripping of their skin and the removal of their intestines, to the cutting the meat up to sheep/ lamb chops. After watching this for about an hour, we had lunch at Kod Biban. Basically, that day we were the impersonation of the food chain.

I have to say that the it surprised me that the butchering went so quick. It was obvious that the animals hardly suffered- there was simply not enough time for hem to do so. A lot of organisations have voiced their concerns about halal and kosher butchering. After seeing how it goes in practice, I share their opinion even less.

On the first day of Bajram, Saddam Hussein was hanged. My brother called me to tell it. As said, Bajram is in Dutch called Sacrifice Holiday. Colloquially it is called Butcher Holiday too. Thinking about the situation in Iraq, I am not sure which of the two names was more appropriate that day. Oh, irony.

Opium of the people

Sarajevo sometimes makes the claim to be "Little Jerusalem", because of the presence of 4 big monothestic religions in it's city centre. There are a big Mosque, a Orthodox church, a Catholic cathedral and Synagoge in an area of about 200 square meters. The claim does not come out of nothing.

Notwithstanding the war, the religions live very well together. They even use eachother. A nice example:
Jewish evening services usually start at sunset. Last year, during the the evening service on Rosj Hasjana, Jewish new year, the rabbi, instead of using his watch or a Jewish calendar, used the sunset call for prayer by the Muezzin on the nearby mosque as an indicator when to start the service. In most other countries in the world this would be unthinkable.

Of all the abovementioned religions, only the Catholics celebrate something on the 24th of December. However, when I passed by the cathedral yesterday evening before the midnight mass, a big crowd of people was standing in front of the church. The better part of them were not Catholics.
One of my friends told me she had never missed a midnight mass ever. She is a Muslim. It suprised me, and I asked around, but it turned out that her attendance at on of the most sacred masses in Catholisism is not exceptional. Apparently half of the packed church is filled with non-Christians. It is considered a nice outing, the mass, and it is a social event for a lot more people than just the Catholics.

That is interesting. In the Netherlands this would not happen. There religion is defined by believe, and to a much lesser extent by the social connotation surrounding it.
Holland is a secular society. I applaud that. However, as a result society does not really know anymore how to deal with religion. It tends to confuse it with culture, and as a result cultures and religions get insulted. In respons to this, religion becomes part of the public debate. Which than again results in a discussion in which people feel forced to take a stand. End of the story is that the socializing aspects of religion- bringing people together- are lost. No more opium of the people, but opium for the people.......

Although religion is part of society in BiH, it is a topic that is preferrably not discussed at lenght, for reasons that lie in the recent history of the country. The good thing about this is that going to eachothers services is not an issue. Going to a service is a social, more than a religious thing. Here religion as such was and maybe is the devider. However, it is also regarded as the socialiser it was meant to be. Unfortunately I have not figured out how that is possible in a country, that 15 years a go fought a war that was allegedly over religion. Maybe because religion was just the PR-reason. And was the real reason Power. It always was. From the bible onwards already. No matter which one you would read.

The merciful, the compassionate

God is one, apparently.

I am standing next to Tarik. On my other side is a man standing so close to me, that our hands touch. In front of me is a row of men, behind me too. We are all lined up, as if we are reporting for army duty. It is Friday evening, the last Friday of Ramadan, and I am in a Mosque, and I am praying.

Lejla and Tarik are my oldest friends in Sarajevo, and I have been moaning to them for the last two years that I want to attend a service in a Mosque. Tarik complained that he harldy ever goes, and that he has sort of forgotten how it all goes. He says that Lejla and I have forced him to go to the service.
Once we are in the Mosque, I have the feeling as if everybody is watching me. However, there are more green-eyed blond guys like me in the Mosque. Lejla later tells me that Bosnian Muslims sometimes have difficulties getting in a Mosque in Arabic countries, since people there do not believe they are Muslims.
Tarik thankgod (thankallah) does know what to do, and he instructs me to do the same as he is doing. He calls it gymnastics. Thirtythree times we do a rikaat, which is a prayer that is part of terawih, which again is (part of) the evening prayer. It means thirty-three times bowing of the knees, sixty-six times touching the ground with your forehead and 45 minutes of sitting on your knees. It is hard work, the Islam.
In order not to look odd I murmer some prayers I know, and move my mouth when Tarik moves his mouth. He finds this hilarious.

Before the service a man is giving a sermon. He talks about how a good Muslim does not drink, how Allah is merciful and compassionate and that a devout Muslim takes an active part in public life. His words boil down to the same as clergymen on Saturday in Jerusalem say, or on Sunday in Rome.

After the service we have drinks. We are going out, so I call them 'Muslims light', and talk about the 'Sarajevo Islam'.
when I am walking home, at 02.00 and a bit drunk, I rethink the conversations we had about Islam that evening and the evenings before, and I start realising that calling them 'Muslims lights' is a bit unfair. They do live according to Islamic rules, but they interpret them so that those rules are no dogma's but guidelines in how to lead the life of a good person. The same as liberal Jews do with Jewish law, and most christians with christian rules.
I do not call my friends in Holland who go to church but do not live according to all Christian rules 'Christians light'. Islam in Sarajevo is just like Christianity in Holland: people here are predominantly Muslims, but it is not a constant issue. Unlike what sometimes in Western media is perceived, are not all Muslims constantly busy being a Muslim. At least not here. People are just lawyers, partymakers, drunks or feminists, and happen to be Muslims, too. In Holland this kind of attitude by Muslims towrads Islam is seen as the exception. Here it is the rule, and in my opinion a very healthy one. It is the same kind of rule by which people in Holland live.

All political correctness aside, I like the term Muslim light. Whenever Lejla lights a cigarette, ar Tarik has a drink, I will call them that. Just because I can, and just because they understand what it implies.