Islam classes cause uproar

Sarajevo council’s decision to teach kindergarteners about religion raises fears of more ethnic division

The tiny students, some in their first year at a Sarajevo kindergarten, are led away from their classmates by a woman peering out from a headscarf who will give them a lesson on the basics of Islam.

“Kids have been asking me why they are being separated and what a religious class is,” said a teacher, who asked not to be named. “It was so difficult at the beginning.”

The “bula” – an intermediary between an imam and the family – grabs their attention with animal pictures on a laptop. She then goes on to explain how the Prophet Muhammad traveled from Mecca to Medina.

The lesson seems innocent enough for 3- to 6-year-olds. But the decision by the Muslim-led county council to allow religious instruction in Sarajevo kindergartens has met a chorus of outrage from critics who fear it is part of an attempt to “Islamicize” Bosnia’s capital.

In a country still smarting from a 1990s war that coined the term “ethnic cleansing,” one vocal opponent warns there could be payback.

“Every wrong move could... come back and hit us like a boomerang,” said psychologist Jasna Bajraktarevic, who feels such teaching should be confined to the family home. “The introduction of religion classes in kindergartens is a kind of a Trojan Horse hiding a desire to provoke conflict among different confessions,” she said.

Not all agree. But the start of the classes in October ratcheted up tensions across the country, still split among rival ethnic groups – Muslims, Serbs and Croats – who shed each other’s blood in the 1992-95 conflict.

“All of this will just deepen divisions among people here, and that is wrong,” said Helena Mandic, a non-Muslim mother who leads a group of parents challenging the decision.

Muslims account for around 40 percent of Bosnia’s 3.8 million inhabitants. Some 31 percent are Christian Orthodox Serbs and about 10 percent Roman Catholic Croats.

Religious instruction in state schools is optional, and has been offered in primary and high schools throughout the country for the three main confessions since the end of the war.

It was offered for the city’s 2,000 youngest students after a survey found that one-third of the parents were also ready to enroll the kindergarteners in such classes.

The county education ministry defends the initiative, saying it is in line with a religious freedom act in force since 2004.

“We would have been violating that law if we did not organize religious teaching,” said Srecko Zmukic, an official with the ministry.

Each faith has been invited to prepare a curriculum, but so far only Islamic classes have been organized in Sarajevo, where the weekly 30-minute lessons are funded by the city’s Muslim government.

The Catholic Church is expected to prepare its program soon but its Orthodox counterpart as yet has shown no interest, Zmukic said.

May be ‘terrible mistake’

Opponents say the Islamic kindergarten lessons place Sarajevo’s children on the front line of a populist political battleground to capitalize on post-conflict nationalist sentiment. They argue that such young children are unable to properly understand the subject, and warn of the consequences of separating them for the classes.

“It could prove to be a terrible mistake in a postwar society deeply divided along ethnic lines,” psychologist Bajraktarevic told AFP. “I’m afraid that in 20 years from now we could have a country that is ethnically divided far deeper than today, and we would be very close to another conflict.”

Supporters say many parents’ time is already stretched and they happily hand over the responsibility of religious instruction to educational institutions.

The kindergarten teacher who requested anonymity found the separate lessons disruptive, as only 10 percent of her classes attend them. “It is totally unnecessary. Kids are taught much more about religious holidays through a regular curriculum,” she complained.

Another eyebrow-raising move may have fanned the fire over the religion lessons in kindergarten.

At the end of the year, the head of the Sarajevo public kindergarten network, Arzija Mahmutovic, banned New Year’s celebrations and “Grandfather Frost,” a secular version of Santa Claus, ending a cherished, decades-long tradition.

The decision triggered public protests, pressuring Mahmutovic into allowing parents to organize New Year’s celebrations in kindergartens by themselves only two days before the holiday.

Nedim Dervisbegovic, a journalist and Muslim father of three, said the developments were worrying for the future of Sarajevo, a multiethnic city though overwhelmingly Muslim.

“It is yet another step in an obvious attempt to Islamicize the city,” he charged, adding, “I wonder what will be the next.”

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