Dialogue between Catholics and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This book contains author’s essays and presentations held at different interreligious encounters in Bosnia, Turkey, USA, UK, Germany and Austria from 1998 to 2018. Twenty three items were published or presented in English and five in German. Following the guidelines of Vatican II and of the recent Catholic teaching magisterium, he presents Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina to a Christian audience depicting them as Europeans who accepted Islam during the Ottoman period in Bosnia (1463-1878) and are ready to share their country, common values and needs with citizens of other ethnic and faith affiliations. The author asserts that Bosniak Muslim theologians, imams and religion teachers, headed by their Rais al-Ulama Dr. Husein Kavazović, strive to educate their believers in their own faith and assist them in building up a tolerant civil society. In the first chapter, the author's presentation of Childhood and the ministry of Jesus in the Qur'an and the Synoptic Gospels, that was held at the Catholic Biblical Symposium in Budapest in 2008. The second includes a lecture How can Christians and Muslims reasonably defend their own faith without mocking each other? held in Ljubljana on November 25th, 2017, within a scientific conference on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the first mosque in Slovenia, which was built by the Austrian authorities in the First world war for Bosnian Muslim soldiers. This book contains author’s essays and presentations held at different interreligious encounters in Bosnia, Turkey, USA, UK, Germany and Austria from 1998 to 2018. Twenty three items were published or presented in English and five in German. Following the guidelines of Vatican II and of the recent Catholic teaching magisterium, he presents Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina to a Christian audience depicting them as Europeans who accepted Islam during the Ottoman period in Bosnia (1463-1878) and are ready to share their country, common values and needs with citizens of other ethnic and faith affiliations. The author asserts that Bosniak Muslim theologians, imams and religion teachers, headed by their Rais al-Ulama Dr. Husein Kavazović, strive to educate their believers in their own faith and assist them in building up a tolerant civil society. In the first chapter, the author's presentation of Childhood and the ministry of Jesus in the Qur'an and the Synoptic Gospels, that was held at the Catholic Biblical Symposium in Budapest in 2008. The second includes a lecture How can Christians and Muslims reasonably defend their own faith without mocking each other? held in Ljubljana on November 25th, 2017, within a scientific conference on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the first mosque in Slovenia, which was built by the Austrian authorities in the First world war for Bosnian Muslim soldiers. One of the topics is Meeting between Christianity and Islam in BiH in a missionary perspective prepared for the Book of Baptist Theologians Mission in Central and Eastern Europe – Reality, Perspectives, Tendencies (English original published in London in 2016.). Msgr. Zovkić, in June 2011., was a delegate of BK BiH at a working meeting of Catholic theologians on Christian Islamophobia in Europe and his brief presentation titled: Islamophobia in the political context of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is included in this book (p. 217-222). His presentation on the study day of the European Society for Catholic Theology in February 2008. was also included, State of Church and theology in BiH (p.223-232) because a response was touched of the Muslim theologians in Bosnia to the Catholic dialogue initiative. Among the five works in German, one was made at the request of Petrus B'steh, editor of the Viennese Religionen Unterwegs, in 2015, that Msgr. Zovkić presents the situation among Bosnian Muslims after the election of Rais Kavazović on September 23rd 2012. and the establishment of new muftis on April 26th, 2014. This review work is entitled: Muslims in BiH between internal dialogue and peace-making relations towards those who believe different.