American journalist on Dr. Cerić: With people like him, there might still be hope

Renowned American journalist and foreign policy columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, known by the nickname GG, wrote a text about Dr. Mustafa Cerić, an independent candidate for the Bosniak member of the BiH Presidency, whom she met after more than 20 years.

Geyer has been following global political trends for decades, and throughout her career, she has had the opportunity to interview people who have marked world history in various ways. As a correspondent, she also covered the bloody events after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, and it was then that she first spoke with Dr. Cerić.

The text was published on uexpress.com, and the Patria agency is reprinting it in its entirety:

The autumn of 1992 in the Balkans was alive, not because of the rustling of falling leaves, but because of the thunder of war spreading through Croatia and Bosnia. The nights in Zagreb were particularly terrible. The Serbs were only about fifty kilometers away, and the shooting and bombing seemed like they would never stop.

In fact, there was widespread fear in the Croatian capital that the enraged Serbs could take the city at any moment. But it was then that I met a man who was either extraordinary or crazy, who did not shy away from the fight but went right into it.

I tried to interview Imam Mustafa Cerić, the leading cleric and leading voice of Islam in Bosnia, finally finding him on his way to Sarajevo, once a magical city that was under constant, day-and-night Serbian artillery attacks. A strong, good-looking man, in a neat Western suit, this imam had a surprising story. He had returned to Bosnia from Northbrook, Illinois, where he had been the chief imam of a mosque. He earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago after coming to the city in 1981 without knowing a word of English.

"My message to the Western world is that we, the Bosnian Muslims, want to live in Europe, and we want to be Europeans," he told me.

"But after what is happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it seems that Europe does not want us," Geyer recalls. He then appealed to his "Christian colleagues... to do something, to stop the destruction of villages and towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to prevent the opening of concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate massacres of civilians, mostly Muslims.".

I wrote then, and rightly so, that it was no longer unimaginable that his historically peaceful and tolerant community of two million people, which emerged after five centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, could, in fact, be wiped off the face of the earth, as a people, that winter.

And now, this autumn, Mustafa Cerić, who soon after our meeting was appointed the supreme mufti of Bosnia, is here in the capital of the United States. He did not come for a tourist visit, but to talk with members of Congress, the State Department, and Muslim groups about his race, which will be held on October 12 this year for the seat of the Bosniak member in the unique, three-member Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. What a pleasure it was to sit together again, but this time in a period of hope.

The idea of an imam as president of a beautiful small country, so beautiful it takes your breath away. This had never been seriously discussed before. Moreover, almost since the end of the war in 1995, Dr. Cerić has become one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the Muslim world, advocating for a modern, tolerant "European Islam," and he could be one of the great hopes for ending Islamic extremism.

His well-recognized and appealing wisdom, which could be recognized in the world as an antidote to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, could not only strengthen peace in Bosnia and facilitate its path to the European Union (which is his ardent desire) but could even convince the skeptical world that Islam is, indeed, a peaceful religion that can happily coexist with other religions. He is known in Bosnia for jokingly saying: "My sultan is not in the East. My sultan is in Brussels.".

But even his equally recognized and charming humor can only temporarily alleviate the terrible memories, including that of the more than 8,000 men massacred by Serbs in Srebrenica in 1995, while UN peacekeepers stood by helplessly.

"The hardest thing for me as a mufti was to talk to the mothers of the genocide victims, actually to those mothers who lost their sons in Srebrenica," he told me. "When I asked them to overcome it or forgive, they would say - 'No, we have the right to revenge.' Then I would tell them: 'Yes, you have that right, but think, if you forgive, God will forgive you too.' No act of revenge has occurred in Bosnia.".

"Physical pain is bearable," he continued, returning to those years at times, "but the pain in the soul is unbearable.".

Today, when you meet him, it's like meeting a man full of youthful energy. His hope, so deeply tested, has endured everything it has been through. So far, he has won all imaginable awards and recognitions (I will mention only the UNESCO Peace Prize) and led almost every international organization for interfaith understanding and reconciliation, all while returning to the basics and foundations of everyone's faith.

His speeches here – at Georgetown University and the Woodrow Wilson Center – were deeply consistent and significant for our time, and unusually eloquent.

"Muslims today must concretize and regain self-respect, and in order for others to respect them, they must know that today's world functions on the basis of mutual trust, which requires much more time to build than to destroy," said Dr. Cerić.

In this world of "violence of genocidal proportions... the greatest of all is the responsibility of religious and political leaders.".

From Washington, Dr. Cerić went to the Vatican, where he personally met with the Pope and presented him with a reminder of Srebrenica (he pinned the Srebrenica Flower on him). With people like him, there might still be hope...