THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL COLLOQUIUM
ON UNITY AND PLURALITY IN EUROPE RELIGION, DEMOCRACY AND PLURALISM
″MUSLIM QUESTION IN EUROPE″
(Mostar, July 12, 2004)
(Speech by Raisu-l-ulama Mustafa Cerić)

Religion, as we know it, is teaching moral principles  whereas politics, as we think of it, is applying democratic models .
But if a principle does not have a model, it cannot fulfill its purpose and if a model is not based on a principle, it cannot last for long.     
So, here is our problem:  religion possesses the principle, but often fails to provide the model and politics adopt the model, but often omit to implement the principle.

Freedom is a principle of religion, but historically the institutions which represent the religious attitudes have not been good models for the principle of freedom.  

For instance, the institution of the Spanish Inquisition is a religious institution which has embarrassed all religions because it is a model which is contrary to the principle of the universal rule of God which says that: “There shall be no compulsion in religion (لا إكراه في الدين).”
Similarly, politics claim to follow the model of freedom, but historically the politicians have broken all forms of the principle of freedom.

For instance, as John Gray has observed:
The death camps of Nazi Germany and the gulags of Soviet Russia and Maoist China killed many millions of people, far more than in any earlier century. Yet it is not a number of the dead that is peculiarly modern. It is the belief that as a result of these deaths a new world would be born. In former times, the Inquisition tortured and killed on a large scale; but it did not imagine it would remake the world through terror. It promised salvation in the world hereafter, not paradise in the world below. In contrast, in the twentieth century, industrial scale killing by states (read by politics, our remark) of their own citizens has been practiced in the belief that the survivors will live in a world better than any that has ever existed.  

Hence is our question: What is Europe for Muslims – religion or politics? If Europe is religion, what is the model of its religious principle? Is the model of the European religious principle the plurality of faiths or is the model of the European religious principle the exclusivity of Christian tradition?
Besides, Europe has yet another possible model of a religious principle: the Religion of Humanity as a substitute for all traditional religions.

Whether its religious principle is based on Christianity or on the Enlightenment of the Religion of Humanity, Europe cannot escape the fact of the historical contribution of both Judaism and Islam to the shaping of its religious principles both in terms of its Christian and Humanistic traditions. It is a historical fact that if it had not been for the Muslim Ibni Sina (Avicenna) , the rationality of the Christian Theology of Thomas Aquinas  would hardly have been possible; and if it had not been for both the Muslim Ibn Rush (Averroës)  and the Jewish Maimonides  in Andalus (Spain), it would not have been possible to think of European Humanism and Renaissance as early as the fourteenth century.    

It seems that it is not difficult to establish the common principle of all three religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam - that arrived in Europe because they all came from the East, they all found their time and space in Europe, they all have faithful followers in Europe and they all direct their face to the Orient in their prayer.

Our difficulty lies in finding a model or models for the application of the common principle which says that we are all children of Adam and Adam is made of clay and so there shall be no superiority of one over another man except by good character.

It is not difficult, however, to notice that we live today under the impact of a modern myth which says that “with the advance of science one set of values will be accepted everywhere” . But is it really so? Is it not the other way around as John Gray would ask us:
Can we not accept that human beings have divergent and conflicting values, and learn to live with this fact? It is a strange notion that humanity is destined for a single way of living, when history is so rich in conflict and contrivance.

It is this modern myth of a single model of life that should be applied on all humanity despite the principle of its diversity that has brought the ideas of Fascism, Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Bolshevism, Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide. Auschwitz and Srebrenica are two black holes of modern European history because of the idea of a unified and monolithic universal civilization which was to become a result of the Enlightenment ideal.
Is it possible for Auschwitz and Srebrenica to be repeated? I think it is possible if Europe does not appreciate the principle of the diversity of faiths and if it does not realize that there is not one but many models for the implementation of that principle.

The faith of Islam is both a religious principle of Europe and its unique model not only in terms of a European religious and cultural diversity but also in terms of a Muslim world diversity of experience. There is nothing new in the fact that Europe has realized by now that Muslims are here to stay and so it is better for all that their presence be regulated in the manner of human equality and religious diversity.
But if Europe is only politics, what is the principle of its political model? Is the European democracy of the nation-state a final political model? On that question John Gray has this to say:
There is nothing natural about the nation-state. It is distinctively modern construction. In time, other forms of political order may supersede it. But for the present the nation-state marks the upper limit of democracy – on which the legitimacy of government today depends. In effect, the European attempt to move beyond the nation-state is an attempt to move beyond democracy. Some such movement may be inevitable, but it gives the far right a dangerous appeal.  

We believe that Europe should appreciate the overall spirit of Islam not only because it saved Europe’s own philosophical tradition but also because Islam, by its cosmopolitanism, keeps today’s Muslims from the demand of their own nation-state in Europe. Contrary to a common belief that Muslims are incompatible to the European values we can see that the Muslims of different backgrounds know how to work and live in a European environment very successfully.

It is a sad fact though that the today’s Muslims in Europe live in kinds of ethnic enclaves. The reason for that lies not in Islam, as many Europeans want to believe, but rather in the notion of a national and ethnic pride, which is basically a European invention.
For example, Bosnia and Herzegovina is not the nation-state of the type of the nation-states in Europe, not because the majority of Bosnian citizens do not have enough national pride to desire their own nation-state, but because the majority of the Bosnian population are Muslims who, by the fact of their Islamic tradition, have no difficulty in sharing the political power with other nations.
On the other hand, Turkey is the nation-state and by some standards is more secular in its political doctrine than the United States of America, but Turkey cannot become the member of the European Union because it is, by a historical definition, Muslim, a fact that Europe still does not like.
On the other side of the Globe, the Eastern Timur with a Catholic majority has refused to share the political life with the majority Muslim population of Indonesia. In the same way we see the religious-nation-state of Israel cannot or does not want to adapt its existence to the fact of the overwhelming majority of the nation-states of the Muslim identity.

The point I am trying to raise here is the fact that the European principles, such as freedom and human rights do not always have right models and the European models, such as democracy and plurality, do not always follow proclaimed principles. The most illustrative example of such a state of affairs of Europe regarding the “Muslim Question” in Europe is the genocidal example of Srebrenica, where Europe betrayed all its principles and failed to maintain any model of democracy and pluralism.

But despite all that, the Bosnian Muslims are supposed to trust the European soldiers who betrayed them. In addition to that, the Bosnian Muslims are suspicious of any wrongdoing by any Muslim, from Afganistan to Chechnya.
The “Muslim Question” today in Europe is the question of trust. And the process of trust-building needs time and patience. I have to tell my son that the Dutch soldiers, who happened to be Christians, have failed to protect Muslims in Potočari, but also I have to tell him that al-Qaidah is an irresponsible group which makes Muslim life in Europe very difficult.

Nevertheless, I will tell my son that Europe is his home which is determent to live by the principle of freedom for all and by the model of the plurality of faiths after all.