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from Photographers Blog:

In the darkest corner of my soul

Dado Ruvic

May 2, 2012 12:30 EDT

By Dado Ruvic

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Bosnian war.

I was only three years old when the war broke out. Although I was only a child, I keep the dark images of horror, blood and the suffering inside me, buried deep in the darkest corner of my soul. I was only a child, but the memories of war will never fade away. It is something all of us carry as a burden on our souls, each every one of us in our own way.

Regardless of my memories, I try to do my job impartially and without any influences. I want to see things rationally. I want to cover the stories that matter; the stories that carry the message. I want to say and express what some people dare not say. The photos are not merely photos, they are tears. They are screams of the desolate despair. They are pain.

from Photographers Blog:

Srebrenica: The story that will never end

Damir Sagolj

May 31, 2011 10:57 EDT

I've been to more than one hundred mass graves, mass funerals and witnessed the long, exhaustive process of victim identification. I took pictures of bones found in caves and rivers, taken from mud, recovered from woods and mines or just left by the road.

Most of these terrible assignments were around the small, used to be forgotten at-the-end-of-the-road town called Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.

The international criminal court said the most terrible crimes of genocide were committed in Srebrenica area when the Bosnian Serb forces massacred thousands of Muslims after the enclave, ironically under U.N. protection as a safe heaven, was overrun by an army led by its ruthless commander.

Ratko Mladic, a typical officer from what used to be the Yugoslav people's army, was the commander of the forces that overran the enclave. He commanded what he said was the revenge upon the Turks for the events from the early 19th century. Thousands of white Muslim gravestones at the terrifying and extremely sad Srebrenica memorial remain as a symbol of that “revenge”. Thousands are still missing, their bones hidden in heavy Bosnian soil.

Muslim scholars recast jihadists’ favourite fatwa

Tom Heneghan

Mar 31, 2010 14:29 EDT

Prominent Muslim scholars have recast a famous medieval fatwa on jihad, arguing the religious edict radical Islamists often cite to justify killing cannot be used in a globalized world that respects faith and civil rights.  A conference in Mardin in southeastern Turkey declared the fatwa by 14th century scholar Ibn Taymiyya rules out militant violence and the medieval Muslim division of the world into a “house of Islam” and “house of unbelief” no longer applies.

Osama bin Laden has quoted Ibn Taymiyya’s “Mardin fatwa” repeatedly in his calls for Muslims to overthrow the Saudi monarchy and wage jihad against the United States.

Referring to that historic document, the weekend conference said: “Anyone who seeks support from this fatwa for killing Muslims or non-Muslims has erred in his interpretation.  “It is not for a Muslim individual or a Muslim group to announce and declare war or engage in combative jihad … on their own,” said the declaration.  Click here for my full report on it.

The declaration is the latest bid by mainstream scholars to use age-old Muslim texts to refute current-day religious arguments by Islamist groups. A leading Pakistani scholar issued a 600-page fatwa against terrorism in London early this month. Another declaration in Dubai this month challenged the religious justification for violence used by Islamist rebels in Somalia and calling for peace and reconciliation there (more on that here).

Fatwas may not convince militants, but they can help keep undecided Muslims from supporting them, the scholars say. Because Islam has no central authority to define the faith in all its details, militants who hijack it by twisting texts for their own purposes need to be confronted by moderates who cite chapter and verse to refute them.

Outside the Muslim world, declarations like these risk the fate of trees that fall in the forest when nobody’s listening. This conference was held in Mardin, a medieval town near the Syrian border, and the media present were mostly Turkish and Arabic speakers. It got good coverage in the Turkish press and Al-Jazeera television ran extensive footage in Arabic.  But getting the message out to the rest of the world, including the majority of Muslim who speak neither Arabic nor Turkish, means getting it out in English.

Mustafa Akyol, an Istanbul journalist and blogger known to readers of this blog, was there writing in English for the Hürriyet Daily News. And one of the main speakers was Aref Ali Nayed, another name regular FaithWorld readers will recognise, whose Kalam Research & Media theological think tank provided the quick English translation of the final declaration. They helped complement the basic information provided by the conference organisers.

Vatican to probe claims of Virgin Mary apparitions at Medjugorje

The Vatican has opened an investigation into reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary at the small town of Medjugorje in southern Bosnia which have drawn more than 30 million pilgrims and divided the Catholic Church.

Since six children first reported visions of the Virgin Mary on a hillside near Medjugorje in 1981 — reminiscent of famous apparitions in the French town of Lourdes and Fatima in Portugal — Catholics have debated whether the visions were a modern-day miracle, wishful thinking or an elaborate fraud.

“This commission, composed of cardinals, bishops, theologians and experts, will work in a confidential manner and submit the result of its investigation to the Congregation (for the Doctrine of the Faith),” the Vatican said in a statement.

Unlike Fatima or Lourdes, the Vatican has not officially recognized the apparitions in the small town, some 100 km (62 miles) southwest of Sarajevo, and claims about it are controversial. Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar, the nearest city in Bosnia, warned Catholics last year against uncritical belief in the Medjugorje sightings and issued a series of restrictions on the parish.

Read the full story here.

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Vienna cardinal’s Medjugorje visit stirs emotions, speculation about Mary visions

Daria Sito-Sucic

Jan 6, 2010 07:33 EST

A highly-publicised visit by Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn to the disputed Roman Catholic shrine of Medjugorje seems to have deepened the divide between Catholics who fervently believe the Virgin Mary appears to visionaries there and those who suspect the Bosnian pilgrimage site may be a hoax.

The visit over the New Year’s holiday provoked a surprisingly undiplomatic public complaint from the bishop of Mostar, the Bosnian region that includes Medjugorje, and that has set the Catholic blogosphere buzzing (for example here … here … here… here… here… here… here… here…). It also prompted a little-noticed theological comment from Schönborn that might point to where the debate over Medjugorje may be going. More on that later…

We reported here in October that Bosnian Church officials expected the Vatican to rule soon on the apparitions at the village supporters see as a “new Lourdes.” There has still not been any such ruling, so the issue has remained unresolved. This also heightened the interest in a visit by a leading “prince of the Church,” a cardinal who is also a close adviser of Pope Benedict and editor of the official Catechism catechism.

Schönborn engaged in a bit of Church one-upmanship by visiting the pilgrimage site without consulting the local bishop, a noted sceptic about claims that the mother of Jesus has been visiting the place almost daily since 1981. While his visit was described as private, his public comments there were so positive as to raise the question whether the Vatican might change its long-standing reservations  regarding events there.

“These days, we have all come to Medjugorje to be especially close to the Mother of the Lord. To be more exact, we have to say that we have come here because we know that the Mother of the Lord wants to be close to us,” Schönborn told believers who attended his New Year’s Vigil Mass in Medjugorje.

Back in Vienna, he explained the reason for his visit by saying: “One has to ask what the tree that bears so many good fruits looks like.” He said he wanted to “take the drama out of [entdramatisieren] the Medjugorje phenomenon” and integrate it more into the Church’s pastoral work. The cardinal noted that the Vatican had still not ruled on whether to recognise the apparitions there as genuinely supernatural. But the fact that millions came there every year to pray made Medjugorje “a school of normal Christian life,” he said. “The focus here is on faith in Christ, on prayer, on the Eucharist, on putting charity into practice, on the essential core of Christianity, on giving strength to everyday Christian life,” he said. “Maybe we in the Church should let ourselves be more inspired by this pastoral concept of Mary.”

The visit prompted a sharp reaction by Mostar Bishop Ratko Peric, a leading sceptic about Medjugorje. He declared himself surprised by the visit and said it could encourage “a growing number of new communities and disobedient associations of the faithful.”

Catholic schools form rare oasis amid Bosnia’s ethnic strife

Daria Sito-Sucic

Nov 25, 2009 12:09 EST

I was caught by surprise recently when a Western diplomat told me that Serb students were in majority in the Catholic high school in Banja Luka,  a town that had become predominantly Serb after persecution of other ethnic groups during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Banja Luka is the largest town of the Serb Republic, which along with the Muslim-Croat federation makes up postwar Bosnia .

Then I learned that Bosnian Muslims account for 80 percent of students in the Catholic school in the western town of Bihac, where Muslims are in majority. It turned out that the situation is similar in all seven Catholic centres opened across Bosnia during and after the war. These schools paradoxically became rare multi-ethnic oases in the country where public schools are largely dominated by a majority ethnic group.

This got me wondering why the Catholic Church wanted to open school in Banja Luka, for example, the town in which only seven percent of 44,000 Croat Catholics that had lived  before the war remained to live today.  The result is a feature that just ran on our newswire. That tells the story, but let me tell you a bit more about the background.

“I am a Banja Luka native, my family had lived here for over 300 years and I regard myself obliged towards this town and towards Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Banja Luka Bishop Franjo Komarica, a driving force behind the opening of the Catholic school in the Serb-dominated town. “I don’t have the right to feel less worthy for being what I am – a Croat by ethnicity and a Catholic by religion,” said Komarica, who had stayed in Banja Luka throughout the war and fought for the return of Croats in the town.

“Our goal is to bring people closer again, to bring back mutual respect and remove unnecessary barriers imposed onto us by politicians,” he said.

The education system in Bosnia has been in chaos since the once multi-ethnic country split along ethnic lines into two autonomous regions. The Muslim-Croat federation, the larger half of Bosnia, is itself divided between Muslims and Croats, while the Serb Republic has become largely mono-ethnic after the wartime policy of mass killings and persecution of other ethnic groups from its territory.

Consequently, largely mono-ethnic public schools have become the places of discrimination for minority groups in many ways. An Orthodox Serb or Catholic Croat pupil in a Sarajevo public school must take days off  during Islamic religious holidays even though Bosnia is officially secular country. In the same way, Muslims and Croats must take holidays during Serb Orthodox holidays. The students who don’t take the optional religious classes (usually from minority groups or atheist families) are forced to sit outside the classroom, waiting for the next class. Some kids opt to take classes of a religion they don’t belong to in order to be accepted by a majority group.

Vatican ruling on disputed Medjugorje shrine expected soon

Has the Virgin Mary been appearing daily for many years in the once obscure Bosnian village of Medjugorje to share religious messages with a few local believers? Is the site visited by over 30 million pilgrims a hoax? The question has long divided Catholics who have debated whether the visions are a modern-day miracle, wishful thinking or the result of an elaborate fraud.

After observing events sceptically for many years, the Vatican may soon issue firmer guidance for Catholics on the claim that the mother of Jesus has been visiting the Balkans, Cardinal Vinko Puljic, head of the bishops’ conference in Bosnia, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. That guidance, if it clearly expresses the scepticism the official Church has long shown towards the Medjugorje phenomenon, could deal a serious blow to a site some Catholics see as a “new Lourdes.”

“We are now awaiting a new directive on this issue,” said Puljic, the Sarajevo archbishop who survived the city’s long wartime siege in the 1990s. “I don’t think we must wait for a long time, I think it will be this year, but that is not clear… I am going to Rome in November and we must discuss this.”

Official Church scepticsm about Medjugorje has become more public in recent months. In June, Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar, the nearest city in Bosnia, warned Catholics against uncritical belief in Medjugorje and issued a series of restrictions on the parish. “Brothers and sisters, let us not act as if these ‘apparitions’ were recognised and worthy of faith,” he said in a sermon (full text here in Italian translation).

Then in July, Pope Benedict defrocked Rev. Tomislav Vlasic, the former “spiritual director” to the six visionaries, after a year-long probe into charges he exaggerated the apparitions and had fathered a child with a nun.

The investigation, according to a Catholic News Service report, focused on alleged “dubious doctrine, the manipulation of consciences, suspect mysticism and disobedience towards legitimately issued orders.” One account of his story called him “a modern-day Rasputin with a taste for sex and séances” and another placed the Medjugorje story in the context of anti-communism and Croatian nationalism.

Six children first reported visions of the Virgin Mary in 1981 in a scenario reminiscent of famous apparitions in the French town of Lourdes and Fatima in Portugal. In the following years, the Bosnian village became a major pilgrimage site, giving many visitors a renewed sense of spirituality and locals a steady source of much-needed revenue. It also became the focus of controversy as local Franciscan priests running the site promoted their claims in such open defiance of warnings from the Vatican that 10 of them were expelled from the order and the local bishop called them schismatic.

Serbian Orthodox bishop extols the virtues of quality wine

The Serbian Orthodox Church’s Bishop Grigorije of the diocese of Zahumlje and Herzegovina is not only a prominent figure in the Church who’s seen as a possible candidate for Patriarch. He is also a major vinter whose operations have earned praise and good money for quality wines.His Tvrdos Monastery, located in Trebinja in southern Bosnia, produces 500,000 bottles of wine per year and exports it to Serbia, Montenegro and even further afield to Germany, the United States, Switzerland and other countries. “It is a very good business, but it is very difficult,” he said during the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God late last month. “It is good, but it is very difficult because we have wine from Italy, France, Spain.” (Photo: Bishop Grigorije leads service at Trvdos Monastery, 28 Aug 2009/Adam Tanner)

The Trvdos Monastery also has a minority partnership with a Serbian-American investor who owns 440 hectares of Trebinje land, of which 200 are now vineyards, an unusual tie up between the Church and profit-seeking investor (click here to see that story).The monastery’s wine, which they sell for six euros a bottle but can retail for 30 euros in a restaurant, was available in ample amount during a late morning feast of fish and vegetarian dishes. Believers from Trebinje, Bosnia’s southernmost town of about 30,000 people, crowded onto benches around long tables to enjoy the meal.Although other Serbian Orthodox monasteries and churches grow wine (and monks and priests privately say food and wine is one of the few indulgences afforded them), Bishop Grigorije said the Tvrdos operation is the largest.  “Wine, it is very good for people, it is so good,” said the bishop, who as a boy picked grapes in this largely Serbian region of southern Bosnia. “If you drink wine, and you don’t drink too much, you will be so happy and so healthy.”“If you drink bad wine, you are going to feel bad.  All the southern people, Italians, French, Spanish are so much happier than the Germans, the Czechs, as they are drinking so much wine!”The Trvdos Monastery wine production came to a halt in the 1990s Bosnian war and restarted a decade ago. Every year they are boosting production by 15,000 bottles and they recently took out about a two million euro loan to buy a series of shiny new Italian Defranceschi 30,000 litre wine storage tanks, Grigorije said. After some time in those tanks the wine goes into hundred-year old barrels to acquire the wine’s hardy, full-bodied flavour.In grape-growing and wine-making, you have to have a little faith, Grigorije said, because so much depends on uncontrollable factors such as the weather: “The most difficult thing is if we won’t have grapes – it is in the hands of God.” (Photo: Lunch at Tvrdos Monastery, 28 Aug 2009/Adam Tanner)

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“Obama was elected by God” — Bosnian Grand Mufti Ceric

The Grand Mufti of Bosnia thinks the election of Barack Obama as American president is a gift from God that could help foster greater international tolerance of Muslims. “I believe that Obama is a divine sign to humanity,” Mustafa Ceric told me in an interview in Sarajevo. Americans “think that they have elected him, but I believe that he was elected by God.”

“Barack Obama is one of these most noble goods of our time and our civilisation, that is why I think he is a gift of God,” he said. “At the moment we feel a trend to change. Whether this change will be really in practice and life, we need time to see.”

Sometimes called one of the world’s most liberal grand muftis, Ceric is considered a voice of moderation with an international reputation. He is active in dialogue with other faiths and discussions of how Islam can integrate into European societies.

Bosnia may be the European country where this integration is most evident. The call for prayer from Sarajevo’s hundreds of mosques wafts over cafes where alcohol is served in abundance and young couples cuddle in a mix of East and West traditions that has long characterised the capital. Women wearing headscaraves walk in the old quarter alongside others with revealing tank tops and uncovered flowing hair.

Yet the post-Sept. 11, 2001 atmosphere has impacted the image of Muslims everyone, from Bosnia to Indonesia. Ceric blames former U.S. President George W. Bush for fuelling further suspicions by using charged words such as a “crusade” against terrorism. The Republican president “will be remembered for creating a sort of Islamaphonia,” said Ceric, who was educated at Al-Azhar University in Cairo before receiving a doctorate at the University of Chicago.

Even with tolerance embraced by Obama, the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are likely still to face stigma, the Grand Mufti said. “We are going to live with Islamaphobia for the rest of our lives, with the same way Jews are living with anti-Semitism from time to time,” he said.