Even a turban offends the 400-year folk memory of Orthodox Serbs

HAJ Hamdija Effendi Jusufspahic greets us warmly after evening prayers, but his voice is hesitating. "I cannot say much..

HAJ Hamdija Effendi Jusufspahic greets us warmly after evening prayers, but his voice is hesitating. "I cannot say much . . . These are difficult times."

The Mufti of Serbia has a kindly face, with a well-trimmed grey beard, huge bushy eyebrows and smiling eyes. His red fez wrapped in snow white linen forms the familiar turban worn by Sunni Muslim muftis throughout the Arab world.

But to many Orthodox Serbs, with their folk memory of four centuries of Turkish Muslim rule, the mere sight of a turban is offensive. You have only to look at posters all over Belgrade advertising the popular film Knife: while a handsome Serb couple stare into each others' eyes amid blood and flames, a sneering, evil Muslim cleric - wearing the same head-dress as Mr Jusufspahic - looks on.

Nor is the 10-part television series Vuk Karadjic, broadcast nightly on state television, likely to calm anti-Muslim prejudice.

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On screen, turbaned Ottoman occupiers behead noble Serb prisoners with sabres. One nightmarish scene showed Turks garotting a beloved Orthodox priest during the 1804 Serb rebellion.

In Kosovo, Orthodox Serbs are again at war with a Muslim population. Ninety-five per cent of Kosovo Albanians are Muslim, the other 5 per cent Catholic.

"This war is not about religion, but about the lack of belief," the mufti stresses. "The majority of Albanian people are believers, but their leaders are Communists."

Nonetheless, he and half a million Muslim citizens of Serbia proper risk being considered a fifth column. "There have been some attempts by extremist, nationalist elements to frighten and displace us," he admits. "But I must say that these are elements that even the state does not want. We believe Serbia will help us and protect us, based on the good behaviour of our citizens."

The mufti was born in Bosnia and moved to Belgrade in 1967, after studying law and theology at Cairo's Al Azhar University, the seat of Sunni Muslim learning. His Egyptian-born wife, Haji Nabila Mustafa Hosni, was the first woman to graduate from Al Azhar, and the first female Muslim theologian in Yugoslavia. He glows when he talks about her, and she joins in our conversation.

Three of their children, two sons and a daughter, have also studied at Al Azhar.

So many contradictions converged in Yugoslavia; Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, Islam and communism, European and eastern civilisation. Haj Hamdija is a man of religion who says he is "a Yugoslav by political opinion", a believer who proudly displays a black and white photo of himself with the late communist leader, Josip Broz Tito. Serbs, Bosnians and Croats are all Slavs who migrated to the southern part of Europe, he insists.

"We are the same people. We have the same language, and the same blood. The only difference is religion; that is how we were divided."

The Albanians are not Slavs, "but the Albanians who are Muslims are my brothers in religion, and the Serbs are my brothers in blood. My brothers are at war, and I am very sad".

It would be a misunderstanding to think that the US has for the first time sided with Muslims in Kosovo, the mufti says. "Americans always want to fight Muslims: in Palestine, in Somalia, in Libya, Sudan, Iraq . . ." During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the Belgrade Muslim community did what it could to help Bosnian Muslims. "The Serbs outnumbered the unarmed Muslims in Bosnia," he says bitterly. "And the US kept saying, `we will give you guns' - until the Muslims had lost two-thirds of the land they had. They withdrew the international observers from Kosovo so there would be no one to protect the Albanians there. This is why we told our brother Albanians, `Do not to trust the Americans . . . You will see, there will be fewer of you'."

Speaking perfect Serbian, the mufti's Egyptian wife Haji Nabila joins in to condemn US double standards. "When the Palestinians were about to declare a state, the US said, `No, you cannot do it. The other party [Israel] must also sign the agreement.' But in Kosovo, one party [the Albanians] wants to declare a state without the agreement of the other [Serbia], and the US supports this."

Some of the mufti's carefully chosen words can be interpreted to refer to both parties in the Yugoslav war. "God the creator says in the Koran that when we want to punish a people, we give them a bad leader," he says. "When a leader does evil deeds, he deserves to fail. Nobody is on top very long - those who rise quickly will also fall quickly."

Many Europeans and Americans believe Muslims are fundamentalists, intolerant of other religions. But seen from Haj Hamdija's 15th century mosque in Jevremova Street, it is Islam that is threatened. In Ottoman times, there were 273 mosques in Belgrade. The Austro-Hungarian Prince Eugen of Savoy destroyed or converted into churches all but 20 of them.

"The Batal [hero] mosque stood where the Yugoslav national assembly is," the mufti says. "There were mosques where the Tanjug [government news agency] building stands, where the National Theatre is and under the present faculty of natural science . . ."

Aware how inflammatory are such historical claims in the Balkans, his son Mustafa, who is also an imam, interrupts laughing. "Don't worry - we don't have deeds to any of them!" Today, the mufti's graceful, yellow stone Bajrakli [flag] mosque is the only one left.

"It is the oldest building in Belgrade," he boasts. "Two hundred years older than the United States of America." Before the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Belgrade was the focal point of relations between Arab and Yugoslav Muslims, Haj Hamdija says with nostalgia.

"Nowadays, these relations are mostly directed towards Bosnia. Here in Serbia, we are very neglected. Nobody helps us - neither Serbia nor the Islamic world. We are trying to find our way. We hope that God will help us preserve Islam in this part of the world."