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My good friend Abdullah Faliq sent me this photograph today. He is in Srebrenica with a group from London.
It shows the burial yesterday of the remains of over 600 men and boys at the Potocari cemetery.
Mourning the dead from 1995 at Srebrenica yesterday (photo Abdullah Faliq)
Around 8,000 Bosniacs (Muslim Bosnians) were killed when Serb forces overran a UN safe enclave during the civil war in 1995. It is the worst European atrocity to take place since WWII.
They are still discovering the remains of brothers, sons, uncles, husbands, grandfathers, nephews, fathers and friends – these are buried at a special service once a year.
Find the BBC report on yesterday’s events here and a post from my 2009 visit to Bosnia here.
Bloggers across Europe have been hopping on Eurostar to get to today’s gathering here in London at the new Europe House in Smith Square.
I’m hardly a Euroblogger, but making some progress towards networking across Europe between intercultural and multifaith grass roots groups – and blogging and twitter are a cheap way to make and maintain contact – so I’m going :)
Carreaux de la mosquée, Kreuzberg
Quand on peur qu’on ne peut pas parler la langue étrangère qu’on apprenait à l’école il y a beaucoup des ans, mon avis est: allez au pays plus étrange et essayez de parler leur langue. Voila! Un peu de magique et immédiatement tous les mots de la langue de l’école reviendra . . . au temps quand on a besoin de parler l’autre.
A Berlin en Juillet, j’ai prends le petit guide de conversation allemand. Mais le peuple de Berlin est très gentil et un peu d’anglaise, un peu de française et un petit, petit peu d’allemande était suffisant.
Appartements à l'est de Berlin
J’ai resté à Mitte, près du centre ville.
Je m’intéresse à relations entre les groupes religieux et entre les gens qui suit une tradition religieuse et les gens qui ne l’ont plus – comment nous vivons bien ensemble. J’ai fait une promenade de Kreuzberg.
Sankt Michael Kirche, Berlin
J’ai rencontrée des chrétiens d’une église, St Michael, avec une paroisse qui avait été divisé par le mur de Berlin. L’église, avec des autres églises, des mosquées et des synagogues au niveau local, rassemblent leurs membres de temps en temps pour le dialogue interreligieux et pour des fêtes.
Empreinte du mur de Berlin
Il y a beaucoup de familles qui viennent de Turquie à Kreuzberg. Chaque pays de l’Europe a une histoire particulière et chaque pays à son propre mélange de population et de religions. Beaucoup de gens Turques est arrivés ici pour travailler, comme «Gastarbeiter», depuis les années 1960s.
L'extérieur de la mosquée
La mosquée et l'église, Kreuzberg
Sankt Marien-Leibfrauen, Berlin
Je suis trouvé une petite mosquée près d’une très grande église. La mosquée n’est pas encore finie, mais elle est déjà belle, avec des carreaux bleus et rouges.
L'intérieur de la petite mosquée
Les ouvriers m’ont invitée à l’intérieur – ils appartenaient à la communauté Turque. Ils m’ont montré l’église qui a été tout près et m’ont dit qu’il y a bon relations entre les deux.
J’ai aimé Berlin – c’est très vivant. J’ai regardé la Coupe du monde finale à l’extérieur du café (il faisait chaud) avec plusieurs gens. Certaines personnes ont bu la bière et les autres ont fumé la hukka.
La Coupe de mondial (hukka à gauche, bière à droite)
Le lendemain matin, j’ai essayé de voyager en train à Londres, via Bruxelles. Mais une tempête a perturbé les trains. J’ai eu de la chance de rencontrer Daniel, qui travaille à l’UE. Il était très gentil et je l’ai suivi à plusieurs trains jusqu’à Bruxelles. Nous avons mangé un repas a Köln – la gare est tout près de la cathédrale.
Heureusement, Daniel parle anglais très bien et a un grand (comment on dit « dry » ?) sens de l’humour – j’ai appris beaucoup au sujet d’Allemande et l’UE. Herzlichen Dank Daniel!
Daniel cherche le train prochain
Nous sommes arrivés trois heures en retard et j’ai raté le train à Londres – mais quel surprise! Eurostar m’a donné une chambre de l’hôtel pour la nuit gratuite et j’ai eu l’occasion de visiter le Grand Place et de me souvenir les temps heureux avec mes amis à la course CEJI en Octobre 2009.
Je travaille pour faire les liens plus étroits entre les groupes multi-religieux de la base à Londres et ces groupes des autres capitales ou villes a l’Europe – à l’intérieur de l’UE et à l’extérieur.
J’ai des relations en Bosnie, Wien, Bern, Bruxelles et maintenant Berlin. J’espère que « London Boroughs Faiths Network » sera en liaison et encouragera le début d’un réseau pour échanger des informations, des idées et des visites. Mettez-vous en contact avec moi si vous êtes intéressé.
Pour le moment, regardez Semaines de rencontres islamo-chrétiennes, Our Shared Europe, BEPA, Caux, Women without Borders Wien, All Faiths and None, WCEN et LBFN blog (venant bientôt).
Merci à Antonia pour l’idée de la journée du blogging multilingue – bon chance à tout l’Europe !
Quick post before I catch the train to Vienna. I’ve just seen this news item about a photo exhibition (Nick Danziger & Rory MacLean) which will be travelling from London’s South Bank to the western Balkans (including Sarajevo), Brussels, Strasbourg, Ottowa & Bern – so not far from several friends who sometimes see this blog. More info from ICRC.
Stef O’ Driscoll (award-winning theatre director) and Mark Griffin (St Mary’s University College, London), friends I’ve made through my thespian daughter, are off to Sarajevo on Friday. They want to dramatise some of the wonderful stories in Miljenko Jergovic’s Sarajevo Marlboro, a collection of short stories on how the young people of Sarajevo from the different communities – Croats, Serbs and Bosniacs – helped each other to survive during the siege. They plan to stage performances in London and in Bosnia.
They’ll spend much of their time listening, I suspect, and it will be hard.
Amila and Niko at Blackburn Cathedral
We had a wonderful time in London this evening with some of the Bosnians who have been taking part in the Forgiveness Project exhibition at Blackburn Cathedral. They fly home tomorrow morning. Stef met Silva (a young woman from the Croat community), Amila (who teaches English in Tuzla and is connected to the beautiful madrassa there) and Niko (Deputy Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Tuzla area).
In a wholly uninspiring hotel lobby, conversation ranged from the dreadful and continuing pain of multiple and unexplainable bereavement, to justice denied, the thirst in Bosnia for creativity, beauty and the arts, the power of women’s stories and of the life-giving and transformative possibilities of carefully devised theatre. It’s impossible to have conversations like these with our Bosnian friends without a great deal of laughter, too – I love it.
I also caught sight of Chris and Anjum from Blackburn Cathedral, who worked hard to bring our Bosnian friends to the UK. We’re hoping that the final report of the original UK visit in October 2009 will be the kind of document that people will say, “If you’re going to Bosnia, read this”.
Identity at the Wellcome Collection, London
Identity – inherited, formed, forged or chosen?
I haven’t visited yet – hope it includes ideas from post-essentialism geography and cultural theory.
Exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London.
Alexandra Estate NW8
A great evening with old friends from Papua New Guinea days (now dividing their time between Timor and the US). Then TV news footage of the devastating earthquake in Haiti and a ‘phone call from someone with connections there.
Before turning off the television, surprised to find an Anthony Minghella film on BBC1, based in London (Alexandra Estate NW8), which includes characters (and a copper coffee ibrik) from Sarajevo – Breaking and Entering. Bit of a syrupy ending, but the distant and rather romantic view of Bosnia portrayed probably comes close to my own view before travelling there last year.
Glad to find Doreen Massey’s For Space mentioned in Stephen Greenblatt’s Cultural Mobility – a Manifesto, one of the books I shouldn’t really have bought from the London Review Bookshop the other day. Greenblatt reckons that cultures or patterns of meaning have rarely been stable or fixed. The kind of radical mobility that is taking place today is in fact an old, old story.
To grasp the shaping power of colonization, exile, emigration, wandering, contamination, and unexpected, random events, along with the fierce compulsions of greed, longing, and restlessness, cultural analysis needs to operate with a new set of principles.
It was good to mull over with friends how Papua New Guinea is doing nowadays, how Timor is getting along, how Bosnia is working its way to becoming part of the “international community” – and what our role is, as citizens of far more powerful nations. Although I associate the word ‘protectorate’ with days of empire, some small countries struggle to rise much above this status, even in the C21st, or perhaps particularly in the C21st.
The Royal Town Planning Institute‘s strapline is “mediation of space – making of place”. The Swiss referendum on a blanket ban on new minarets throughout the country (instead of the local planning authorities deciding each application in the usual way) has highlighted the contested nature of space and place, especially for religious buildings.
16th century town plan of Diyarbakir
How do we decide who can build what where, or what a building can be used for? The RTPI goes on to define what planning is:
Planning involves twin activities – the management of the competing uses for space, and the making of places that are valued and have identity.
Places of worship, along with many other kinds of building, are valued and have identity – but it’s hard to obtain permission either to change the use of an old building or to build a new place of worship. In London I’m told there are hundreds of pending planning applications, particularly from independent churches, newer Christian denominations and from minority faith traditions.
Anglicans from the Caribbean arriving in London in the 50s & 60s received, at best, a mixed reception from the Church of England. It’s no surprise that some of those who felt the chill wind of exclusion joined newer churches which offered a warm welcome.
Fifty years on, these churches have grown in size and number and their leadership and congregations are often from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. But many of them still meet in church buildings belonging to older denominations, in sports halls and in schools. This restricts not only their ability to gather for worship, for marriage and funeral services but also to run community programmes such as Saturday schools – in other words, decades later, they are still at a disadvantage.
Planning Aid for London gives professional advice to faith (and other) groups. The GLA commissioned a piece of research. Maybe it’s time to look again at how we mediate space, how we share our city and to explore more fully the basis on which we make planning decisions.
The beautiful town plan above is from Turkey and included in 1001 Inventions.
Not a great turnout for SIOE in Harrow
Brrrr – cold in Harrow this afternoon. I spotted the new mosque (scaffolding still around the minaret) at about the same time as I noticed huge numbers of police in hi-visibility jackets, others on horseback and about 30 police vans surrounding the bleak carpark on the opposite side of the road.
It was harder to spot the demonstrators. I counted about 13 of them, just enough to hold up a long banner STOP ISLAMISATION OF EUROPE. They were surrounded by police and one man seemed to be speaking to them via a megaphone.
Happily I bumped into a few friends from Three Faiths Forum and the London Jewish Forum amongst the 200+ counter-demonstrators. I heard Harrow Central Mosque say that SIOE had been invited to the Mosque to discuss their concerns, but that they had declined. Canon Giles Fraser (Church of England) had earlier joined people from other faith traditions, the British Humanist Association and local political leaders to emphasise the importance of protecting freedom of worship.
Harrow Central Mosque
SOIE had encouraged Belgians, Serbs, Papua New Guineans and others to display their flags. I saw none of these (SIOE was banned from demonstrating in Brussels on the 9/11 anniversary this year).
Demonstrators were also urged to refrain from ‘racist chants’ and ‘nazi salutes’ – ‘remarks such as “deport all Muslims” will NOT be permitted’. These guidelines rather give the game away as to what SIOE is all about. They appear to be trying to form a Europe-wide network.
Just as well that those who value freedom of expression and worship and who promote an equitable way of living in Europe are also pretty good at networking.
How we live well together, in spite of our differences, is bound to be the topic of a public conversation for some time. We need to find ways of approaching it in ways that reduce anxiety and enrich our understanding.
