Mustafa Ceric
The Grand Mufti of Sarajevo, Mustafa Ceric, projects the image of an open man. He has participated in numerous events involving “dialogue between cultures”, more particularly with Simone Veil in 2010, at UNESCO headquarters. In 2003, he received the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize awarded by UNESCO, and in 2012, he participated along with Manuel Valls in the inauguration of Strasbourg Mosque.
Yet, he is also a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose ideas he shares and disseminates.
After a stint at Al Azhar University, Mustafa Ceric received a doctorate from the University of Chicago in tribute to his work: “Roots of Synthetic Theology in Islam”, a book about Abu Mansur Al-Maturidi, an important theologian buried in Samarkand in the 10th century.
During his studies, he became an imam and established relationships with US politicians who saw him as “politically liberal”. This did not prevent him from sharing a forum in 1993 with Hassan al-Turabi who was then offering hospitality to Osama bin Laden. Mustafa Ceric is also connected to Omar Abdel Rahman who planned several attacks in New York.
When 5000 Islamic radicals settled in Bosnia during the nineties, Mustafa Ceric welcomed them and even worked on their naturalization. He called to halt any proceedings against them for war crimes attributed to them (execution of 40 Serbian soldiers).
The main criticism directed at Mustafa Ceric by Bosnia’s Muslims is that he denigrated the “old” Muslims who failed to resist against the genocide and supported the “new” ones who came from Afghan and Algerian maquis in order to defend them. When asked about their radicalism, Mustafa Ceric immediately stands up for them.
“Those who say that the “new” Muslims are liable for their bad situation associate themselves with Islamophobia against us, Bosnian Muslims, old and new. They remind us of the genocide which we survived “(February 2009).
Mustafa Ceric is a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) which aims, under the leadership of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, to spread Muslim Brotherhood’s political Islam among European Muslims.
In 2008, he publicly voiced his support to Regep Tayyip Erdogan: “Turkey is our mother. It has always been, and will always be.”
On 15 August 2009, Ceric asked that the Sharia law be included in the Bosnian Constitution, while recalling that he was proud that “the Balkans had converted the Slavic Christian population to Islam over six centuries”.
In December 2010, he was invited to Islamabad at a conference on Halal (Global Halal Congress), and then declared that Muslims should “conquer the world through a Halal movement”, without offering more details on the subject.
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