Election for Reis-ul-Ulema: Choosing Between Democracy and Autocracy

By: Armin Aljović

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The Assembly of the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Saturday established a list of three candidates for Reis-ul-Ulema, who will be elected at the Assembly on October 12 in Sarajevo.
The candidates are the current Reis-ul-Ulema Husein ef. Kavazović, the Mufti of Mostar Salem ef. Dedović, and Muamer ef. Zukorlić, president of the Party of Justice and Reconciliation and a member of parliament in the Assembly of Serbia.
Analysts have no doubt that the new seven-year mandate will again go to Husein ef. Kavazović, due to the enormous support he enjoys - not only within the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in international circles, especially among Western countries, primarily because of his emphasis on the fight for human rights.

Ef. Dedović, also a respected member of the Islamic Community, who has worked extensively on reconciliation in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, although possessing exceptional qualities, can hardly have any serious chances - with Kavazović as his opponent.

Although with the least prospects - and the fewest nominations - analysts and journalists have in recent days drawn a parallel precisely between Kavazović and Muamer Zukorlić. Among the most interesting theses is perhaps that the members of the Islamic Community Assembly will be able to choose between “democracy (which Islam by its nature is) and autocracy (which Islam does not support).” 

Born in 1970 in Tutin, graduated in philosophy of Sharia law at the Islamic University of Algeria, Muamer ef. Zukorlić is a controversial figure, torn between religion and politics, and even between religion and what religion forbids. At a time when national policies in Belgrade and Zagreb are working to break up multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina - which was primarily the goal of the war against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s - in the post-war period strengthening ethnic feelings among Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats to the detriment of Bosnian identity (!), Zukorlić responded in kind, aggressively promoting Bosniakhood - primarily through his private Bosniak Academy of Sciences and Arts - which Zukorlić sees as a vital need for Bosnian Muslims, consciously or unconsciously killing the spirit of civic Bosnia and Herzegovina, which ultimately is the goal of the other two nationalisms. Furthermore, as president of the Party of Justice and Reconciliation in the Assembly of Serbia, Zukorlić sided with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, a bearer of ethnocentric politics, which in the context of the Western Balkan countries is repackaged and much more dangerous nationalism. Serbian independent media, such as KRIK, have written about Zukorlić's lavish lifestyle, flashy vehicles, suspicious bodyguards, as well as illegal construction of buildings in Novi Pazar.

Husein ef. Kavazović, born in 1964 in Jelovče Selo near Gradačac, graduated from the Gazi Husrev-beg Madrasa in Sarajevo and the Sharia Faculty of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, earned his master's and doctorate at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo in the field of Sharia law, is accepted as a pro-European religious leader of Bosnian Muslims, who in turbulent times, strong populism and Islamophobia in many European countries, manages to preserve the basic foundations of Islam, but at the same time integrate the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina into modern world currents, at least when it comes to religion.

English and Bosnian media reported that at the request of the family of the late Lord Paddy Ashdown, Reis-ul-Ulema Husein ef. Kavazović at the beginning of the month recited verses from the Qur'an at St. Peter's Collegiate Church in Westminster, London, which represents a very serious shift in the boundaries of tolerance between the two largest monotheistic religions in the world - Islam and Christianity!