Authors’ Note:
There are few things more important than promoting understanding and bridge-building between people of different religions and cultures. It is not as simple or easy a task as it seems. On the contrary, it is complex and subject to push-back from the different parties as too often some interfaith practitioners end up arguing that their point of view is better or more valid than that of their dialogue partners of other religions. Conversely, sometimes religious differences or the unique worldviews and perspectives of the “other” are glossed over or not adequately discussed—thus allowing questions and stereotypes to remain. Muslims in the early twenty-first-century in general are having a tough time in this environment. It is critical that they are involved in dialogue and promoting both the understanding of their faith and the faiths of others.
With this in mind, we the authors who are committed to building bridges and promoting understanding, are proud to present three towering spiritual leaders who have been vigorously promoting interfaith dialogue especially involving Muslims wherever they could. These three figures represent the three Abrahamic faiths and each one of them has reached the pinnacle of his society–Lord Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Christians, Lord Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the UK for Judaism, and Dr Haris Silajdzic, the Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for Muslims. All have seriously considered the major challenges facing interfaith and intercultural harmony in the twenty-first century and how they may be overcome. As such, they each have much to teach us about how to practically move forward with this essential and urgent task.
***
I first met Haris Silajdžić, prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the 1990s in London during the height of the Bosnian war. A Bosnian Muslim, or Bosniak, Silajdžić was leading a country that was at war for its very survival. The Bosnian capital, Sarajevo was then under the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. And yet, I found Silajdžić to be a thoughtful and humane person passionately dedicated to intercultural and interfaith coexistence. Facing genocide, Silajdžić upheld Mingling at a moment and in a region when it easily could have been extinguished. We reconnected during our fieldwork in Bosnia for Journey into Europe, and we have remained in touch, for example, meeting later in Washington, DC.
The reasons for the dire position of Bosnia lay in the breakup of Yugoslavia, which coincided with the collapse of communism in the late 1980s. The crisis began during this period when Slobodan Milošević, a communist party official in the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia, began his ascent to power by projecting himself as the defender of the majority Serbs across Yugoslavia. His vision was to unite the Christian Orthodox Serbs in one unitary state in a contiguous territory—a “Greater Serbia.” It was a substantial change from the Yugoslav policy of rendering discussions of ethnicity and nationality taboo in favour of a communist Yugoslav identity. Milošević was not alone. The Catholic Croats under their leader Franjo Tudjman in the Yugoslav republic of Croatia, for example, sought the same for their people. The Balkans descended into a bloody confrontation which gave the world the term “ethnic cleansing” and saw concentration camps opened in Europe for the first time since the Second World War. The term captured the aggressive nationalist impulse to engineer ethnically “pure” territories through killings and expulsions.
In Bosnia, however, many people did not think of themselves in such ethnically and religiously exclusive terms. The reason lay in history—Bosnia had the majority of Muslims in Yugoslavia who had a continuing memory of the Ottoman period, in which different communities had coexisted. Sarajevo had more ethnically and religiously mixed marriages than any other place in Yugoslavia. Many Serbs, however, saw the Muslim period in the opposite way, as that of the domination of the “Terrible Turk.” In fact, Milošević cast his goal of “Greater Serbia” as revenge for the Ottoman victory against Serbs in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, and his 1989 address to a million Serbs on the battle’s 600th anniversary immediately preceded Yugoslavia’s breakup and the Serb campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Not only did Muslims not belong in Serbia, the Serb nationalists argued, but they did not belong in Europe at all. Muslims were called “invaders” and even “Turks”—regardless of the fact that the Bosnian Muslims are not Turks. In three years, 100,000 people were killed in Bosnia, and most of the civilian victims were Muslim.
Silajdžić, a classic European intellectual statesman in the mode of Václav Havel or André Malraux, the French minister of cultural affairs under de Gaulle, is equally an Islamic scholar—as such he confidently projects Bosnian Muslim identity that is at once European and Muslim. Silajdžić once ran the office of the grand mufti of Bosnia, his father headed the largest mosque in Bosnia, in Sarajevo, and his grandfather was a religious judge. Silajdžić himself has degrees both in Islamic studies from Libyan University in Benghazi and a PhD from the Pristina University College of Philosophy in Kosovo, then in Yugoslavia.
Silajdžić grew up in Sarajevo, which, he recalled, “was beautiful. Sarajevo was a monument of tolerance, of civility, of coexistence, which Europe wants to be. It was another Jerusalem. From my window in my house, I see the Orthodox church, the Muslim mosque, the Catholic church, and I live next door to the Jewish synagogue—four cultures who have lived together for hundreds of years without any problems.”[1] A university professor in the 1980s, Silajdžić stated that “I was never a Communist. That means I was deprived of whatever the benefits of being Communist were by very subtle means—I was persona non grata everywhere.”[2] In 1990, he joined the electoral campaign of the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, who founded the Party of Democratic Action (PDA). Silajdžić said, “we went to the elections to defeat the Communists, and we won in fair and free elections in 1990.”
It was a fraught time as the war broke out, and Silajdžić became foreign minister and then prime minister of the fledging nation. Yet the Bosnians had a serious problem. In 1991, the UN placed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia which it intended to help bring peace. Instead, the embargo served to allow the Serbs under Milošević to carry out their campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide while the Bosnians were denied access to weapons even to defend themselves. It fell to Silajdžić to travel the world lobbying for the removal of the arms embargo, support for a Bosnian state, and a resolution to the Yugoslav conflict.
While speaking in foreign capitals to gain support for the Bosnian cause, Silajdžić repeatedly argued that in contrast to the way the Balkans were being commonly perceived—as a place of “ancient hatreds” where people did not know how to live together—Bosnia already had a model of coexistence, and the international community should just let it be itself. Bosnian identity was already multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious, and Silajdžić and the Bosnians were determined to keep it that way. Silajdžić began a February 1994 speech in Washington, DC, for example, by noting that he was a Bosnian Muslim and that delegation which accompanied him that day included the president of the Bosnian parliament, an Orthodox Christian Serb, a Croat Catholic member of the Bosnian presidency who was also the head of the national council of the Croats in Bosnia, and the Bosnian chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Washington, DC, who was Jewish. “I could as well stop here,” Silajdžić said, “because this is what we are and this is what we want to be. Nothing else.”[3]
It is, “amidst our admitted ignorance” the “one prevailing certainty; we know little but we know there is no God.” The actual “religion” of Europe, Silajdžić said, was “doubt and profit”
But, he said, “we are alone.” The Bosnians “are fighting the aggressive nationalism, the only ideology that seems to persist in Europe after fifty years of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, that is still there and sometimes I wonder whether we Europeans are able to produce anything else other than aggressive nationalism.”[4] While the Serb government sought to create “Greater Serbia” by seizing and “cleansing” parts of Bosnia and the Croat government sought to create “Greater Croatia” by resorting to similar measures, Silajdžić said, slicing up Bosnia by ethnic nations is a recipe for disaster: “Creating national states in Bosnia is counterproductive—that is the cause of war, casus belli…drawing lines there. If you draw lines, if you create national states, you exclude the others.” This is because “Bosnia is one. It’s a living flesh, you cannot cut through it without bleeding, there are no borders there.”[5]
There was a need for the international community to act in Bosnia, Silajdžić urged, not just because there was a moral imperative to save human lives, but also to stop “the dangers that are coming very soon to this world” in far-right aggressive nationalism.[6] Bosnia, he argued, is “a monument, a landmark of what the world must become, like it or not” if the world is to avoid succumbing to aggressive and exclusionary nationalism.[7] “Aggression and genocide must not be rewarded,” he stated, “This must not be a precedent for other dictators and tyrants to take heart and do it to their neighbors if they have enough tanks to do it.”[8]
In the end, Silajdžić and the Bosnians were successful in lobbying the United States in particular to intervene, particularly following the genocide of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs at Srebrenica in 1995. The US and NATO launched a major bombing campaign against the Serbs which brought them to the negotiating table later that year. The US convened the parties together at Dayton, Ohio to negotiate, with Silajdžić conducting the talks on the Bosnian Muslim side. Speaking to reporters at the conference, Silajdžić said, “We cannot revive the dead. We cannot revive the 17,000 children who died in Bosnia. But we can get some justice here and justice means a fully functional Bosnian state.”[9] Silajdžić had wryly and famously remarked of an earlier conference to which Serb perpetrators of genocide were invited, “If you kill one person, you’re prosecuted; if you kill 10 people, you’re a celebrity; if you kill a quarter of a million people, you’re invited to a peace conference.”[10] Indeed, at Dayton Silajdžić engaged in direct and intensive talks with Milošević, and in the end a deal was reached to end the war.
Although he could now accurately be described as one of the founding fathers of modern Bosnia, he was not entirely satisfied with his creation. The Dayton Accords resulted in a strange unworkable concoction of a state which remains paralyzed by the clash of interests of opposing ethnic groups. Although the Serbs were given their own national entity within the larger country, and Bosniaks and Croats another sub-entity, Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats still hold one-third interest each in Bosnia. While the agreement successfully ended the violence and brought peace—which Silajdžić considered the most crucial imperative—the very people who the Bosnian Muslims viewed as the aggressors in the genocide against them now had veto powers over their lives.
Silajdžić himself, one of the two most prominent Bosnian Muslim leaders along with Alija Izetbegovic, was forced out of the post of prime minister in 1996. He split publicly with Izetbegovic, breaking from the PDA to form a new political party, the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH) in 1996. He now felt the PDA was too nationalistic, and remarked, “I entered politics to defeat the one party, one minded, police system, and I’m not about to make peace with another one.”[11] A notable characteristic of the SBiH was its focus on incorporating Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, and Silajdžić was described as “the strongest advocate of a multi-ethnic Bosnia” by the Associated Press.[12] Shortly after he founded the party, while speaking at a political rally, he was attacked by around 100 PDA activists who struck him on the head with a metal bar and sent him to the hospital. Silajdžić was undeterred, however, and remained a prominent player in electoral politics and government, serving as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the head of government), and the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Silajdžić has had a profound impact on Bosnia. As early as 1995 a prominent Serb journalist recognised that he had helped to establish the very identity of the new nation: “Silajdzic’s reputation, his confident charm, multi-lingual abilities, negotiating skills, European smoothness and sophistication, are already considerably incorporated in the Bosnian state and nation and Silajdžić cannot extract them from the foundations, even if he wanted to.”[13] He has remained an infatigable proponent of interfaith pluralism in Bosnia, advocate for the Bosnian Muslims, and a promoter of reform of the administrative system set by the Dayton Accords. He told CNN in 2021 that while Dayton brought peace, “we need another constitution. We need a reform that would give us a normal civic democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina…like anywhere else in Europe. Why can’t we have it?”[14] He noted continuing Russian support for the Serbs and reported that the ideology of “Greater Serbia” is once again rising. He observed a “repetition of 1991 and 1992—with more smiles” and explained that the goal is “Greater Serbia by force, that is the problem of the whole region, not only of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Democracy is in danger here, in the whole region because of that.”[15] Even the Dayton Accords, he said, had not been fully implemented, for example its clauses allowing for the return of refugees to areas from which they were expelled.
When we met him in Sarajevo during fieldwork, I sensed a certain resignation creeping into his reflections, as though he felt he had done what he could for his nation and people and was perhaps leaving active politics. Our meetings allowed us to see Silajdžić the man, at once both philosopher and national statesman; the former forever fascinated and in despair at the human condition and the latter embodying the hopes and aspirations of the people in spite of it. He was constantly amazed at humankind, remarking, “We are a miracle!” What was remarkable was, like the other Minglers, his compassion had survived the mephitic hatred and anger that genocide engenders. He is also a poet, acutely aware of the world around him and the pain, joy, tears and laughter in it, and he shared some of his poetry with us.
The topics agitating Silajdžić are common to the Minglers—how, in an environment of tribalism, exclusivity, intolerance, and violence, can people coexist and connect with each other? Silajdžić argued, “I believe civilisation is one. We may have different cultures, but it is human civilisation.” The true mark of civilisation is the treatment of the weak: “I believe that you are civilised if you protect weaker groups within your society.” Yet this human civilisation is in trouble, faced with threats including “Nuclear annihilation, climate change, famine, lack of water, inequality, relativisation of truth, anonymous authority after deliberate decomposition of traditional sources, family, school, religious institutions, and degradation of social communal cohesiveness.” We also “still store weapons that can kill millions in seconds, and we call it a civilisation.” Humanity, he believed, requires all the help it can get to face the future—yet it is mired in conflict and exclusivist thinking. Today, “Everyone can see what is going on but few are prepared to act. There is an increase of nationalism and, generally, right wing ideas in our part of the world but, again, little action, like everybody is tired of it and is waiting for all of this to fade out on its own. How short is our memory!”
Although he could now accurately be described as one of the founding fathers of modern Bosnia, he was not entirely satisfied with his creation. The Dayton Accords resulted in a strange unworkable concoction of a state
Silajdžić wondered if this is in fact part of human nature, and what could be done to transcend the limitations humans are placing on themselves: “We need all ideas in order to see what can be done about us today. We are in possession of nuclear arms, we are in possession of horrific power that can destroy us—so we need all these ideas, we need people who can help us.” While “we have been talking about religions and our spirituality for ages,” he asked, “Where did it go? Did anyone listen to this?” “The base, the needs, the greed, the arrogance, it goes with human beings, but where is our spiritual superstructure? How come a critical mass of people still want war? Where have we failed?”
Indeed, Silajdžić felt, “The paradigm never changed: the dominant ones always think they are culturally superior, this did not escape any civilisation. One, domination, next confrontation, looking for enemies, looking for broadening its influence. Unfortunately, it’s all about human nature, humans,’ if you like, physical and mental nature.” While humans are reaching for something higher, he felt, “we are still somewhere in the beginning—might is right. You can call it this way, or that way, wrap it in very nice papers, but that’s what it is and we see it today.” In Europe, Silajdžić said, the carnage has been “unsurpassed.” He named figures such as the Spanish conquistador Pizzaro, King Leopold of Belgium, Hitler, and Stalin and noted, “At the end of the 15th century, both Americas had roughly 100 million natives, making one fifth of world’s population. One million survived, one fifth of the world was murdered! It is beyond greed, it is something very dark. And all that with primitive tools.” Today, “God knows what new tools science brings.” Why, he wondered, did this happen, “could it be that the Europeans developed some sort of claustrophobia being pressed by consecutive migrations against the Ocean for centuries? The lebensraum? There must be some explanation.” They did all this, Silajdžić noted, despite the presence of those calling for humanism, pluralism, equality and coexistence—“Despite Goethe, Shakespeare, Aristotle and many others. Despite Jesus! Atilla did not have that reference, they did.”
While Europe sees itself as unique and distinct from Asia, Silajdžić asked us to see Europe from another perspective. There are many ideas in Europe which “are foreign, like many ideas in Asia are foreign too. So that is why I say we are talking about one civilisation, you cannot put up walls and barriers of ideas, it’s impossible.” Europe is “an Asian peninsula…Part of it, if not a bigger part of it was in Asia, interacting with the Asian cultures, with the religious movements and so on so…a strong component of the identity is Christian, as you all know, it also came from Asia where the idea of monotheistic culture was clearly formulated.”
Despite these strong Asian links in history, Europe is now apprehensive of “the rise of Asia. This is the twenty-first century, it is the Asian century, there is no way to deny it, so all the corridors of power, of influence, of culture are now changing direction. I believe instead of embracing the change, these right wing parties are trying to stop the time, stop the change, which is impossible.” “If they continue this way,” Silajdžić told us, “they will close the horizons, go back to the core, sit behind the wall and wait to die. That’s why they do not want to accept Turkey within the European Union. Turkey being the bridge towards Asia, this is the bridge towards taking part in the proceedings of the twenty-first century. Some prefer sitting behind the walls.”
Today, “the ascending paradigm holds that there can be no other but one…not really any other people but one, the rest being untermensch, servants at best, no interfaith dialogue for there can be no other faith but one, and no other way of communication except monologue.” Silajdžić associated “euronationalism” and tribalism—in both, “in times of danger, true or perceived, they tend to go back to the core to meet the challenge. In the stable it smells bad but it is warm.” “If they continue this way,” he said, “they will close the horizons…sit behind the wall and wait to die.” In this environment, “Universalism, humanism and similar notions are too thin to be credible. It will take a lot of time and effort to quiet the call of the motherland and blood.” He noted that “The Prophet of Islam knew that very well and worked hard against asabiyya [tribalism, group feeling] promoting new allegiance. The Qur’an introduced the revolutionary notion of brotherhood amongst men.”
Currently, Silajdžić affirmed, “people are afraid of losing their identities” and are “looking for a culprit. Of course, rarely someone says well, I am to blame. It is always the outsider who is blamed. So where are we going?” In Europe, he said, “the right wing parties, to me, reveal a hidden fear. All living organisms, including societies, do step back when threatened, and what is threatened in Europe is the feeling of domination.” In Europe, “There are negative demographics as you know, the problem of strangers, some people do not like strangers coming to Europe—but then without those foreigners you cannot have clean streets and so on. So, this I think is a reaction to all the threats conscious or unconscious. The blood goes back to the vital organs in order to protect life.”
Speaking of the migration that Europe was dealing with, Silajdžić felt “It has become a litmus test of sincerity for all who talk about humanity, solidarity and lofty principles. For rich Muslims too who can do more to save the dignity of the migrants by improving their lot in their own countries, since no new continent is about to be discovered.” He expressed that he felt that Europeans are saving lives and “offering some help…Considering the conservative state of mind in today’s Europe, I frankly expected less. It appears that this predicament has an awakening effect. At the end of the day, it is the state of heart that counts.” He recounted a story he published which captures the plight of the refugee: “Long ago I published a short story in which I meet a Bosnian Man in Mexico who tells me that a refugee is like a stone in the air, wherever it falls it is not welcome. I wish to be proven wrong. The story is titled ‘Stone in the Air,’ long before war in Bosnia.”
In their encounter with the migrants, Silajdžić believed Europeans were failing to connect the relationship between colonialism and immigration: “If you pay a visit, you should expect a return visit…So the Europeans went to the Subcontinent, North Africa and so on, so these guys are now paying a return visit to them, and some of them don’t seem to like it…They don’t even ask for their artifacts to be given back to them which were taken by the Europeans. So they are coming in peace, they want to work, and this is their right. You cannot go to the Subcontinent and take what you want, come back, and say we nothing to do with this. That is not how it works. That’s not life.”
Of the Europeans who say Muslims cannot be European, Silajdžić said, “Who is that person to say, you are not of this, does he own a monopoly of what is culture and religion? They are talking about freedom of this, freedom of that, what is freedom?” “I do genuinely respect someone who says well I am a Buddhist,” he continued, “Great. That’s your choice, but do not step over my freedom. I respect you but you should respect me. That’s all.” People who are saying that Muslims cannot be European, for example, are actually conveying, “I don’t respect you, you have to be what I am. And I am sure that is not a good Christian. Maybe a good fascist, but not a good Christian, that is not a believer. A believer knows that God is one and we are all God’s creatures. That is how it is. So, respect it, I choose this way, you choose that way so what’s wrong with that?…That’s why in the Quran it says that we have created you tribes and peoples in order for you to know each other...what’s wrong with that? And if we follow this, we just know each other so it’s good to know and it may enrich me.”
Speaking of his people’s own horrific experience with European ethnonationalism, Silajdžić noted that during the war in Bosnia, “over one thousand mosques, cemeteries and Islamic sites were destroyed, not as a collateral, but as a planned effort to erase the memory and extinguish the spirit.” He contrasted this aggression with the Islamic ethos which he said his Bosnian Muslim community lived. He pointed to the lack of revenge strikes by Muslims on Serbs who had perpetuated a genocide against them—in Sarajevo today there are 20,000 Serbs, he told us, including 10,000 Serbs from Srebrenica itself. And yet, “Not one single act of revenge occurred, not even an accident. To me this proves that the people from Srebrenica carry civilisation in their bones and their faith has to do something with it. The Muslims in Bosnia submitted petitions to the German authorities during World War II appealing for the safety of their Jewish co-citizens. Other communities did not.” He elucidated that “Bosniaks did not do what others did to them because they are inherently better; they were taught to respect the Other.”
This is partly why Silajdžić is so upset at the violent actions of groups like ISIS which people associate with Muslims: “to lump a billion of Muslims together with these monsters is a crime against history with grave repercussions for the future.” “They say Sunnis are ISIS in Iraq, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Hamas these are the groups,” he stated, “It’s painful to listen to this, it gives you no hope, it’s so false but it falls on ignorant ears because people don’t know. Like I don’t know about the aboriginal culture in Australia. I know very little so you can tell me anything, you see? I know very little unfortunately, so this is the same thing. They tell them the Boko Haram, you know, ISIS, all these small groups are the representatives of one billion people. If these one billion were terrorists, God forbid, the whole world would be in flames, but it’s not.”
The adverse reaction to the “Other” being seen across the world, Silajdžić believed, is in part attributable to the pace of social change. We are all dealing, often adversely or in a reactionary way, to sudden changes which are all around us in our current time: “the speed of change, it’s happening very fast. Unprepared societies, they do not fare very well, traditional societies do not fare well in this fast-changing circumstance. Some fundamental traditional values are going to be the victim of this period.” This is because “human beings can only take that much of change in a unit of time without breaking down, together with the fragmented world around them.” Ultimately, “We are biology, despite all the progress we still need nine months to be born, we need twenty years to grow up, there are no jumps in nature, these leaps are possible with maybe chips yes but human beings are biological so it’s gradual, things happen incrementally. But we are asked today to go with time, right, and it’s accelerating to such an extent that I think it actually presents the biggest problem of this civilisation.”
“The consequences are clear,” he believed—and they are not positive. Having time to adjust is important: “In Bosnia we have a saying, ‘losing the barakah [blessing, spiritual power] of time.’ We talk about taking care of nature, but time is rarely mentioned, like it is not a part of our existence. When we try to accomplish too much in a short time we show disrespect for time, the order of things. The whole thing might be summed up like this: Speed boat for the few or Noah’s Ark for the many.” Thus, “It is vital that leaders of this impatient world understand this so that those ahead of the pack could learn to wait for those behind them. The real satisfaction is in sharing—not in chasing the More and the New for the few. And it is also safer.”
AI, Silajdžić argued, is only making the problem worse. Individuals and societies—and some more than others—are already at their breaking points in terms of how fast change is occurring, and AI is promising a kind of quick fix, a way to make sense of all the information around us. “We are piling up heaps of info on our fragmented reality in the clouds without the center of gravity of higher, vertical reference,” he said, “and more is coming every millisecond. It is impossible to just forget it (The right to forget is a natural human right). On the other hand, we cannot make sense of it. So we obviously abdicate the effort to the AI to restore order even if horizontal, in keeping with our aversion for the vertical and the perennial inclination to anthropomorphise the supreme principle. After all, we created the AI, did we not?” “We turn to the machines, AI, for direction,” he argued, “to, even subconsciously, perpetuate teleologically our godlike nature as we are the creators of the machines…Such is the yearning of humans to be gods.”
“What’s wrong with getting bored?” Silajdžić asked, “that is the mother of invention, now we don’t have that right anymore. It is entertainment 24/7.” He recounted that a few years before, “I visited one of the Rodin’s statues in an open-air museum in Paris and penned a poem. Two things impressed on my mind: The Thinker in his deep thoughts and crowds milling around him with earpieces in their ears to mute their own thoughts. There was a woman hurrying by and dragging her little daughter, while talking on the phone. The little girl pauses and says pointing to the statue: Mom, this man hasn’t got a phone. Would you give him yours?”
Considering developments around AI led Silajdžić to discuss the relationship between religion, secularism, and science. He affirmed, speaking of common secular views, “We have been humble enough to admit we know that we do not know (Socrates) except for one thing—God does not exist.” It is, “amidst our admitted ignorance” the “one prevailing certainty; we know little but we know there is no God.” The actual “religion” of Europe, Silajdžić said, was “doubt and profit.” Yet while “generations have been conditioned to this materialistic understanding of the totality of our existence,” even this assumption is now being “shaken” as science itself seems to be leaving materialism behind. Today, he explained, “matter seems not to be the matter we know, rather bundles of energy, frequences and vibrations (strings perhaps). What now? What will the temples of science preach now?...Some in the temples have started talking about ‘unified, universal vibrating field of pure intelligence.” But, “They will keep discovering how and the public will keep forgetting that to discover is not to create and that how cannot replace why.” He again came back to the point of humans feeling directionless, under threat, and retreating inward—thus contributing to tribalism. “We are between various Scyllas and Charybdises”—the paradox is that on the one hand we have “walless cyberspace” and on the other “ever more walls on the ground. Is it the fear of our own invention?”
Ultimately, the notion of the divine, Silajdžić said, is an inclusionary one and he noted different traditions who interpreted God as “one”: “There is a hymn in Rigveda that talks about Hiranyagarbha, ‘the Creator...God of Gods and no other but Him.’ In Upanishads it is Brahman, hence Brahmanism, then Ishvara and so forth.” The “South American and North American Indians” speak of the “Great Spirit” and “all monotheistic sacred texts talk about a big number of messengers, and it is safe to assume that they were not confined to one locality.” At the same time, he argued that monotheism has also been “used to create a global social hierarchy an ideological cover for colonialism, la mission civilisatrice, a not-so-subtle way to ‘civilise’ the pagans for which they should almost be grateful.”
Interpreted philosophically, it is the relationship between the “self” or subject, for example from the European perspective, and the “Other,” the “object”—it “is the story of the subject-object dynamics, and how to make it stick in the minds of the perceived objects.” The assumptions based on the subject/object relationship are still with us: “The consequence is that we take this order for granted, so deep it is. A couple of thousand people rule the world despite all the talk about democracy, everything changes but not that.” Is there a way to transcend this dynamic? “Depending on the angle of observation,” Silajdžić explained, “subject can be object and vice-versa, but this is not popular with those deeply imbued with the spirit of the vertical order. Edward Said clarified it in his Orientalism.” He noted the work of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk who offered a framework whereby “subject-object evolves into subject-subject.”
While we met Silajdžić in Sarajevo, Israel was conducting one of its wars in Gaza, which would reach even greater levels of destruction after the 7th October attacks in 2023. Yet Silajdžić was already interpreting Gaza as test for the world: “Gaza is disgrace for all of us. People are bombed and people dying under the occupation in our time of human rights and talk about democracies—it takes the credibility away from all of us. From international organisations, talk about democracy, talk about this, it’s all talk.” “You will hear a lot of justification for this massacre,” Silajdžić said, “which is not the first time. But that does not have any credibility anymore, no explanations, no justifications of this and that, no tricks with consequences, not talking about the underlying causes and realities…It’s caveman’s behaviour, we are not far away from that. What changed is the stone, we can now throw a very big stone far away, but it’s is still stone and it’s still killing our neighbour in order to steal his meal or what have you.”
Silajdžić was particularly moved at the image of a young boy in Gaza which he saw on CNN, and he was moved to write a poem using the scene and Gaza as a metaphor for our current world. He described the image: “a boy, he turned towards the wall crying…like saying this is my world, the world gave me the wall so I don’t want to look at you. This is my world, I don’t want to know anything else because everything else is worse than my wall.” This is “is all he has been given, that’s all his father has been given, and his grandfather only talked about the fig trees, olives, grass. That was all taken from him, from his grandfather, so the boy may have a memory only.” Then, Silajdžić saw another image of Gaza, this time of two donkeys—one was breathing heavily and dying but the other had a bandage around his leg—indicating to Silajdžić that “someone took care of this donkey in this hell. So I can say that humanity is dying in Gaza, the question is only who will survive? The hand that put the bandage on donkey’s leg or the hand that killed the man and the donkey? This is what it is, this is where we are.”
He explained, “what I ask in my poem from that boy is not to turn his back to the world that has turned its back to him, but to turn his face towards us and allow us to be ashamed, looking him in the eye…If he does not allow us to be ashamed, then we are finished. If we do not have shame than we are finished if we can go and kill innocent people…We may have whatever you can think of but we are not human beings, we are something else.”
We reproduce his poem here:
“Save the World: The Young Boy in Palestine
The wall in front of you
The wall behind you
The wall is all
This world has for you
But in your heart
Don’t let it grow
Young boy in Palestine
Don’t turn away
From the world
That has turned
Away from you
Allow the world
To feel ashamed
Looking you in the eye
The eye of a boy
Without boyhood
Say
Whose hand
Ignoring death
Whose steady hand
Put the bandage
On your donkey's leg
Say
For you see farther
Facing the wall
Which hand
Will lead the world
The one that
Pulled the trigger
Or that which healed
Your wounded donkey
Turn around
Show the face
Of a boy that never was
Help the world
That has not helped you
For the sake
Of brave people from afar
Sharing with you
Death and Honour
In the name
Of the children in Nigeria
Syria, Mexico, Iraq
Abducted children. In Australia
Dead children
On the bottom of the Mediterranean
Children still alive
In the mines and sweatshops
Children on the borders and wires
Waiting for a raindrop in deserts
Sleepless and dreamless
Children in the slums
Children in the Philippines
Somalia Palestine and Bosnia
For the sake
Of all those
Unafraid of your memories
Of wells with clear water
Of uncut olive trees
Last seen
In your grandpa’s eyes
When he talked of home
The memories unscathed
By bullets and barbed wires
For the sake of children in Israel
Who bear no guilt
Turn around
Young boy in Palestine
Save this world
Help it be ashamed.”
To move ahead, Silajdžić said the answer is to “open up, don’t be scared, the devil is not so ugly as you think. Get to know people.” He loved the work of Goethe, “because he opened this window; Europe without him would not have been Europe” and “Goethe opened a big window to look outside Europe, broaden the horizons of Europe.” He explained that the current world order that we have was “made by the winners of World War II. That in itself carries faults exacerbated by time being a forced consensus.” Yet this paradigm is not sufficient, “a shift of the paradigm is necessary.” Too many walls are being erected between peoples, and “walls are symbols of fear and defeat. Something must give and if History is true to itself, the walls will give. This time it must happen peacefully. Waiting for the Third World War to take place to install a new world order is not pragmatic. We may not be around to see it.”
“There must be a way to synergise human experience in all fields,” Silajdžić stated, “There are things to learn from China,” for example the example of Confucius. Generally, “The world needs a trusted anchor which would include teachings of all faiths, ideologies.” “Many can identify with saving nature,” for example, “it is in their faith and tradition.” He mentioned Native American traditions and also the example of the Quran, which states that animals are “peoples like you.” Another problem he identified, the “acceleration in technology and Time itself is dealt with in many traditions,” for example Surah Al-Asr of the Quran “begins with Time and ends with Patience.”
The problems humanity faces, such as ethical questions associated with AI, are global. To address these problems, education and making connections between peoples are an imperative: “Now, what tools do we have? With multilateralism diminished and unilateralism and nationalism on the rise and the seats of power, learning and influence abdicating the responsibility for all practical purposes, there must be an initiative to summon our capacities globally to try and see beyond the next quarter. In the long run, education is the answer. If there is an agreement, priority could be given to inclusiveness, learning about the Other. People fear what they do not know and emphasise with what they know. In a couple of decades, we can have a new, better generation. Arts and entertainment, the popular culture can be mobilised to that end. With modern tools at hand it is possible.”
Like many other Minglers, Silajdžić discussed the importance of international organisations and cooperation: “In the short run we have the UN; that organisation cannot be managed by a number of big states if we want it to succeed. The big ones will not be excluded from the problems to come. The UN had the non-aligned, 100 countries, to temper the big to some extent. Now the big ones are on their own and it is not a good prospect. Giving the UN another dimension by adding a Global Committee in charge of ethics might be one way. That body would have to have a sanctioning mechanism and members should be elected in their countries to have weight. The Committee might deal with issues ranging from historical responsibility to ethical questions of abuse of technology. Do we really need the G6 while millions die of hunger and disease? How to deaccelerate (the concept of Sabr [patience in Islam]) with the view of others catching up? How to give the small ones the relevance they deserve, their place under the sun, to mitigate their condition giving them true respect at the very least.” He even questioned the utility of talking of big and small powers because the “small ones are in billions now” in terms of population and “the big ones should take that seriously.”
While, “I certainly shall not live to see the world without frontiers, I think we are going there because this is the only way to survive. All these walls—when you wall out something, you wall in something. Wall out, wall in all the time and this leads to wars and then we shall not survive. I do not know what the rest of the universe thinks of planet Earth but I believe, you know, we are not that bad, you know? We should last a little bit more, but if we choose to kill ourselves, annihilate everything, I think it’s stupid thing to do, but we may do this. It’s not excluded if we teach our children hatred…Or if you press and oppress people to the point that they are desperate, then again it’s not very wise.”
Silajdžić urged, “humans have to unite in their quest for survival, using science and spiritual traditions, turning diversities into opportunities.” “Cohabitation, inclusiveness, respect for the Other are not matters of choice; It is the imperative,” he said. “I always thought that someone with wide horizons should finally connect the world. From the Subcontinent to the west, Tagore and Galib sitting with Rumi and Goethe, Shakespeare and Emerson, with Greeks and Arabs in the middle, having a tea with Lao Tzu and Octavio Paz in Mexico.” “The cure is opening up, not closing itself within the walls. This is the cure. But that is conditional, open broad horizons…I believe we not should tolerate each other, we should embrace each other. Embrace cultures, learn from the cultures.”
References
[1] Phil McCombs, “At the Bosnia Crossroads,” The Washington Post, May 4, 1993.
[2] Phil McCombs, “At the Bosnia Crossroads,” The Washington Post, May 4, 1993.
[3] “Conflict in Former Yugoslavia,” American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, February 23, 1994: https://www.c-span.org/video/?54801-1/conflict-yugoslavia
[4] “Conflict in Former Yugoslavia,” American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, February 23, 1994: https://www.c-span.org/video/?54801-1/conflict-yugoslavia
[5] “Conflict in Former Yugoslavia,” American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, February 23, 1994: https://www.c-span.org/video/?54801-1/conflict-yugoslavia
[6] “Conflict in Former Yugoslavia,” American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, February 23, 1994: https://www.c-span.org/video/?54801-1/conflict-yugoslavia
[7] “Conflict in Former Yugoslavia,” American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, February 23, 1994: https://www.c-span.org/video/?54801-1/conflict-yugoslavia
[8] “Conflict in Former Yugoslavia,” American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, February 23, 1994: https://www.c-span.org/video/?54801-1/conflict-yugoslavia
[9] The Death of Yugoslavia, BBC, Episode 6, “Pax Americana.”
[10] Hilmi M. Zawati, “Geneva III: The Stillborn Conference and the Endemic Failure of the International Community,” HuffPost, February 6, 2016.
[11] “Bosnia: Haris Silajdzic Profile,” Associated Press, September 11, 1996, YouTube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg9BYeY8h7E
[12] “Bosnia: Haris Silajdzic Profile,” Associated Press, September 11, 1996, YouTube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg9BYeY8h7E
[13] Ljiljana Smailovic, “Silajdzic's Resignation,” Vreme News Digest Agency, no. 202, August 14, 1995. Archived at Rutgers University Libraries: http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/serbiandigest/202/t202-10.htm
[14] Amanpour, CNN, November 26, 2021.
[15] Amanpour, CNN, November 26, 2021.
