Biography

Husein Kavazović is a Bosnian Islamic cleric and the New Bosnian Grand Mufti since September 2012, after Mufti of Tuzla. Mr. Kavazović is the 14th Bosnian Grand Mufti since 1882. As Grand Mufti, he is the successor of Mustafa Cerić.

Mr. Kavazović studied Islamic Law at Al-Azhar University in Cairo between 1985 and 1990. In his election program, Kavazović stressed the promotion of cooperation with other religious communities and a wider "integration of women into the work of the Islamic religious community."

The Role of Religious Communities in Peace Promotion - Bosnian Model

A lecture by His Eminence Husein ef. Kavazovic, Grand Mufti of Bosnia & Herzegovina

Dear Excellencies, ladies and Gentlemen and dear Friends,

Peace in a human is a priority for its good health and peaceful life. Peace in a society is the priority for development and improvement of the community in all parts of the world. Peace that is founded on freedom and justice is by itself a great value and it’s the main goal and ideal of most human beings. Peace is a natural way how it should be the balance that the Lord himself has made and the humans day by day don’t do it as they should. When humans don’t treat themselves and the others with peace it leads to wars and killings. Along with human life and material distractions there is a collateral damage that it hurts also the trust between people without which the human organization cannot function normally. That anticivilized situation has caused the wars in the recent history of Bosnia-Herzegovina.  From all the religion organizations in the post-conflict period it is expected to help ensure that the damage will be fixed that the war has caused and to build up together the peace and to regain the trust which is their mission. As soon as that mission comes along with a good will and the good will of religion communities and the authorities, the question is how to make it happen. The post-war experience of Bosnians can offer some answers on those key questions on how to promote peace.

First of all, the religion communities should be willing to work together to build a common goal which is trust and peace. It is much easier to work with the communities where the causes or the active people in the war but for those that have been the actors during the conflict it is much harder. The Bosnian experience shows that it is needed to have an external-external helpers and people who give back the will to fight for the peace as well as the logistic support to overcome the barriers that have been caused by the war traumas. For example we have a good way of explaining this; the religion communities in Bosnia with the help of the World Conference Religion for Peace and with very good leader of the Religion for Peace, William Vendley, and the American Ambassador Suani Hunt. They were trying for more than a year to combine the forces and to bring the peace together to ask all the human beings to bring the peace and the international trust. Therefore it is not enough just to have a good will to work on the peace reconciliation. It is needed to have good human resources and to fill out all the things needed to do it.

Every religion organization has an individual or different instruments that should work on the cooperation with others. This cooperation improves the building of different bodies or different instruments that are needed to do the international peace reconciliation and to work on the common goals. The Islamic community in Bosnia and Herzegovina has made a good platform for dialogue in which all of their officials are needed to do it with the others. Along with that the Islamic community in Bosnia-Herzegovina has formed the Commission for Interfaith Dialogue and has the permanent associate for inter-religious interfaith relations in the Cabinet of Ray Surlam along with the other religion communities.

These things are performed by a lot of interfaith communications and interfaith corporations to build the peace and they are making it mostly through seminars and conferences that are supported by NGO’s though the whole world as well as diplomatic offices in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The experience has showed that there is not enough room for one person to act but to promote the peace and dialogue it has a better efficiency if many people are doing it together. Working together is much easier to accomplish the goals. That’s why the four traditional faith societies in Bosnia-Herzegovina which are Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Catholic Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Jewish Community, they have a common goal to fight along, to create peace and to regain the trust that has been broken and they have formed the Interfaith Religious Dialogue Council in which all of those communities are represented. They have a permanent peace and inter religion dialogue as well as the religion pluralism; this has been formed by the Council.

First of all it’s the law group, group for young people, group for women, education group and group for media. One Bosnian Muslim expert from the beginning of the 20th century has said that in the world there are lot of educated people but not people that are raised well with good manners. This thesis has shown that even today the worst crimes committed including the Genocide has been made by academics, academic professors, doctors and others. They had all the knowledge needed but they didn’t have morals and they didn’t have faith. Regardless of the fact how much the religion communities have helped to improve this they have been invited to help. Bosnia-Herzegovina is a good example of not investing enough on to education.

For generations young people were taught that they have to see others as an enemy, a person that they have to revenge or punish. Those ideas have killed Bosnian women, children and old people. These ideas and not the dynamites have distracted the Bosnian houses, religion institutions and other main things of one culture, one civilization and the Bosnian state. These ideas are the biggest threat to the peace, not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina but in the whole world. The only way to reduce this is by education and tell people that the others shouldn’t be seen as their enemies but as their next door neighbor or even potentially a friend. The religion institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina along with Inter religion Council have made significant moves in reducing these judges and the wrong picture of others. In this sense many books have been published about religion, religion customs of these four biggest religion traditions as well as their history and community. Also they have made significant moves and together with others doing a radio show about different religion topics and questions.

A big step can also be made with religion as a permanent subject in the public schools and as part of the material that talks about the others. It has been agreed that all the religion communities should have their representative who writes about his religion and the books that people are learning from. To reeducate someone is much harder and it takes a longer process than educating them. As the Great Al-Ghazali said the first step that should be done is to remove all the prejudice that people have and in their way to put the new more exact thoughts about the difference between people that should be respected and should be the priority in retaining peace.  To conclude, I would like the say that the permanent peace and trust along the people, nations and religions is very important. If there is no trust there is no peace.

Lies and lack of trust feeds itself with prejudices and misinformations as well as not with good knowledge. The trust is built by true justice and authentic knowledge. Trust is along with other feelings the feeling that a person has inside of it. In its built there are some religion institutions that are crucial and that have the best infrastructure to do so. The main method of building the trust is one of the basic things that religion institutions deal with. People that have been raised badly this is the method of how it should be done to reeducate them. For everyone, they should see that religion institutions are a good way of promoting peace and trust and it is good to invite people to ask them to do well  and not bad. Thank you for this opportunity.