By: Josip Vajdner/ Catholic weekly

Thinking about what is collectively called "religious freedom", in a country that emerged from a bloody war almost 30 years ago - Bosnia and Herzegovina, one can see that the real problem is what cannot be defined at first, and in practice it is clearly recognized in the creation and strengthening of already created mental fences that create a space of lack of freedom for the other and different, and keep the individual and the community in question who do so, in the pen of their own complacency and chauvinistic exclusivity. This is a story about a case from a Sarajevo elementary school, which in any other context would require denouncing and precisely stating the names of all the actors and their statements, but due to the requests of those who are most vulnerable here, it remains within the framework of "general" (with the note that the details are known, and the evidence is in the possession of the author of this text).

Can a Muslim not have a non-Muslim friend?

Although this certainly exists on different sides and in many forms, the real event from Sarajevo, which was accidentally discovered by a parish priest, truly falls into the realm of the shocking and raises questions about what kind of society we live in and what values we are guided by.

In one elementary (!) school, an Islamic religious education teacher, who was also a hafiz (a person who knows the Quran by heart), among other things, taught children about socializing and friendship and gradually differentiated the terms: acquaintance - colleague - comrade - friend.

He pointed out that Allah defines that only a Muslim can be a friend to a Muslim, and other previously named terms, it can be anyone. He also quoted the verse that says: “O believers, do not take Jews and Christians as friends. They are friends of one another” (Quran, Al-Ma'idah, 5:51).

Several children objected to this, mentioning that they had real friends among Christians. Moreover, one girl said that her best friend, whom she “loves like a sister,” was actually a Catholic and attended the same class (she also gave her name), and asked the religious education teacher if she had committed a haram (sin) by doing so and whether this meant that “Allah no longer sees her as His Muslim slave.” Hafiz answered in the affirmative, explaining that those who accept someone of another religion as a friend “become his religion.” As a conclusion to his message, he told the children that they should not associate on a friendship level with this girl, their classmate, who is not Muslim.

And when the children still insisted that it was simply not right, he "explained" everything by saying that Muslims should not be friends with non-Muslims because "the Chetniks and Ustashas killed Muslims during the war"...

It is no coincidence…

When the whole case reached the parish priest, he contacted the school administration and expressed his dismay and shock that something like this was happening in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which should serve as an example to everyone else in this suffering country. The principal suggested that he and the hafiz meet at the school and talk as “religious figures”. The parish priest accepted this and in the meantime invited the Catechetic Office to – given that it was a religious education subject – have someone from that institution, which is responsible for everything related to Catholic religious education in schools, attend the meeting. The principal initially agreed, but shortly afterwards said that they “had to implement their protocols” and “postponed” the meeting through their deputy.

In the meantime, the school administration invited the parents of the Catholic girl to a meeting with the Islamic religious education teacher. The effendi apologized, but also "explained" that the children did not understand and that those who reacted in this way were usually not paying attention to the lesson. However, he did not deny the content and ultimate intention of his message with a single word. The same one that he had conveyed to previous generations...

The same message was also heard by the president of the parents' council, who is politically active in the "civic option" party (not some "green", "black", "nationalist" party, etc.), but he did not find anything strange. Moreover, he explained to the priest who had contacted him at the very beginning that the children really did not understand what the religious teacher had "explained nicely" to them: that no one forbids them from associating with non-Muslims, but they cannot be their friends in the manner that the hafiz had established.

At the same time, the Islamic Community was informed about everything through the Catechism Office, which – as far as the writer of these lines knows – “invited” the said religious teacher for a conversation and at the same time politely informed him that this was not their position and that they had nothing against this case being “written about in the media”. However, after all the “protocols” and “conversations”, the said hafiz still remained teaching at the same place.

To make matters worse and more tragic – in a conversation with parents and/or those who had recently attended that school, whose names we are not mentioning for the aforementioned reason – it turned out that the person in question had also been teaching children for years and in the same way, using the specific names of their non-Muslim colleagues at school, “explained” that they should not consider them friends or be anything more than “comrades” with them. And not only that, but he also devalued those students who were of other religions, as well as the religion itself that was not Islam.

And so that there is no "coincidence" in all this: the same religious teacher once walked up to the schoolyard, while several school employees were standing together, and shook hands with all of them, skipping over one who was Catholic...

Many will probably say to this: "Oh, what a fool!" However, regardless of the fact that "there are fools and crooked wood everywhere", it is truly devastating that such a person has been teaching religious education for years; that no one "knows" anything; and that the existing "system" is actually protecting him.

Two Sides of the Story

What remains in the end are two sides of this story. One is dark, provincial and ultimately destructive; and the other is bright, cosmopolitan and constructive. The first's misguided path leads the society and state of Bosnia and Herzegovina to ruin, while the path of the second speaks of prosperity and a way of manifesting the richness of life in diversity to the entire world.

The content of the first includes: the sick ideology with which the specific religious teacher was obviously poisoned, and who then transmitted and instilled the same in young souls; the hypocrisy of the school leadership, including representatives of the parent council, who took the matter laconic and covered everything up, just as, undoubtedly, past structures covered up the same thing with previous generations that the hafiz: poisoned some with hatred and labelled others as second-class citizens; part of this side are all those who knew about this and never reacted, who watched their colleague being "jumped" by the religious teacher and did nothing...

What makes up the bright side are: the children, who felt deep in their being that it was not normal for God to reject them just because they did not choose, but it happened that their best friends were those who did not belong to the same religion as them; who did not allow their growing up and their future to be essentially marked by something that happened 30 years ago, when they - as the people say - were not even in the plan. This circle also includes all those who agree that this is being talked about, written about and reacted to with the aim of denouncing everything deviant, even if it comes from a religious position…

To make it a little clearer for the aforementioned hafiz and his tacit or explicit like-minded people, just ask yourself: how would a Muslim child feel and how would his parents react if, for example, in Ljubuški or Modriča, a Catholic or Orthodox religious teacher told the students that that child could not be their friend just because he was not of “their religion”…

It is precisely because of these children that people like the aforementioned Islamic religious teacher should be banned from having any contact with the school at all; and the school leadership should be ordered, if they are already putting the “good name of the school” before the “good of the children”, to be the builders of school buildings, rather than the guardians and shapers of young beings and future generations. (By the way, in the same school, there is also a female religious teacher who teaches Islamic religious education, who, according to the children, has a completely different approach and for whom everyone has only words of praise.)

Because if people are taught from a young age that because of religion, nation, race, etc., they cannot be true friends without any "buts", then no society, especially not a complex one like Bosnia and Herzegovina, needs any separatist policies or pressures and enemies "from outside" to fail - it is simply doomed to fail, it is only a matter of time when it will happen. Therefore, it is undeniable that these children and the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina deserve much more than the pens into which unsettled and deeply unhappy people are pushing them for the sake of mindless interests known to them.