Bosnian reception of a “Muslims of Europe” charter

How to be a Muslim and a citizen of Europe? And who gets to define it? There is a vogue for high-sounding Charters and Declarations trying to answer the first question, and by so doing, promoting their framers as the answer to the second. One of these, the “Muslims of Europe Charter”, has been eight years in the making, with minimal media interest. Still, in Sarajevo some are taking notice.

The Muslims of Europe Charter (PDF here) was signed in Brussels by (reportedly) some 400 Muslim groups on 10 January 2008. It has been prepared by the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE). The FIOE is an umbrella organisation for several of Europe’s large Muslim organisations representing, to a greater or lesser degree, a “political Islam.”

There was a bit of buzz around the Charter in the summer of 2006, when the Islamonline.net website devoted a page to the project. It also raised knee-jerk Islamophobe fears; apparently, the very term “charter” immediately had some people thinking the Muslims were making a constitution for Europe, so were planning a political takeover.¹

But the document is not a Muslim “constitution” for Europe, nor is it a “constitution” for Muslims in Europe; it is sort of a pledge of good citizenship. It pretty much does what it says it aims to do, “to define a number of principles in accordance with the common understanding of Islam within the European context and to set thenceforth [sic] the foundations of greater positive interaction with society.” In the name of Islam and of “Muslims of Europe” as “one religious entity within a framework of Islamic principles united by fraternity”, the document declares support for principles of democracy, human rights, respect for national laws, secularism in the sense of state neutrality, and pluralism. Foundational questions of agency, authority, and representation in Europe’s heterogeneous Muslim populations are set aside: the various paragraphs are introduced by simple claims that Islam “calls for,” “considers,” “enjoins” and “respects” this or that. The language is not always crystal clear.

In the context of my last post on the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is noteworthy that the Charter does not call for public recognition of Islamic law in any way, except possibly as a matter of conscientious exception (see its art. 17).

Other declarations seeking to make sense of the Muslim presence in Europe include the Bosnian religious leader Mustafa Cerić’s “Declaration of European Muslims” (2005), which does call for recognition of Islamic family law; and the more recent “Topkapı Declaration.” There have been some critical writings on these in the Bosnian press.

It was therefore something of a surprise to see Sarajevo’s BH Dani weekly give quite positive press to the Muslims of Europe Charter. The weekly belongs to the so-called independent press, has a multi-ethnic staff and a secularist bent, and pays intermittent, critical attention to Islamic goings-on. After suggesting that “Muslims Can Unite Europe”,² no less, the last issue followed up with an in-depth interview with Dr. Fikret Karčić, an expert in Islamic legal history.³

Dr. Karčić gave a guided tour of the Charter’s provisions, placing it in the context of long-standing debates and dilemmas among Muslims in Europe. The stress on citizenship, he explained, was because classical Islamic jurisprudence did not have a concept of citizenship as understood in the modern world. The charter says a decisive yes to the question whether citizenship in a European country is compatible with being a Muslim: a question, Karčić says, that Bosnians solved already in the time of Austro-Hungarian rule (1878–1918).

Karčić highlighted i. a. parts of the document supporting individual freedom of conscience (art. 9); jihad only as defensive war waged by states in accordance with international law (art. 10); and as a particularly important novelty in such a document, support for the neutrality of the state in religious affairs (art. 18). He has himself recently given a paper on the compatibility of Islam with the secular state conceived as “neutrality with respect”, based on state-religion separation, religious freedom guarantees, and citizenship not tied to religious affiliation. By making reference both to Islam and to relevant international documents, Karčić thought, the Charter arrived at solutions that are already accepted in Bosnia.

One final note: Karčić held up Norway as a model for the Muslim world as regards the combination of an established religion (Lutheran state church) with a high degree of human rights and freedoms. Sure, though I have my reservations about that model. More on that, perhaps, in connection with another and considerably more heated Bosnian debate… if time permits this week.