Photos by HEATHER AINSWORTH Flanked by fellow Muslim Bosnian men, Imam Ferhad Mujkic recites a prayer from the Koran during a Muslim funeral at New Forest Cemetery on July 25, 2003.

Religious leader carries on traditions far from homeland

By JULIANA FINUCANE
Observer-Dispatch

Imam Ferhad Mujkic comes from a long tradition of Bosnian Muslim religious leaders.

His father was an imam, his grandfather was an imam, he is an imam, and his 34-year-old son in his hometown of Velika Kladusa is an imam. And the brown-and-gray haired Mujkic is not planning on stopping this tradition anytime soon.

“I have one son in Bosnia, who is an imam,” said Mujkic through his translator, Bahrudin Kajtezovic. “Now my dream is to have my other son, born in America, also become an imam.”

He points toward his 5-year-old son Adalet, and laughs.

“He’s a little clumsy,” he said, referring to the cast on Adalet’s arm. ’He likes to jump around, break arms, but besides that, he’s pretty clever.”

Mujkic is the imam at Utica’s Kemble Street mosque, and one of only a few Bosnian imams in the United States. He replaced another imam, who is now retired.

An imam is a teacher and leader in the Muslim tradition. Mujkic leads the five daily prayers, teaches school and give speeches about Islam. He also answers questions about the Prophet Muhammed, helps people with their own practice and performs marriages and funerals. Imams are similar to religious leaders in many other faiths, Mujkic said.

“Being an imam is a very special duty, because I try to teach people the good things and keep them away from evil things,” Mujkic said. “This is my sixth year of being imam in Utica, and my 36th year of being imam. This is what I do.”

Mujkic moved to Utica in 1997 with his wife, Sedzida, and his daughter Adaleta, who is now 10 years old. They were a part of the arrival of more than 5,000 Bosnian refugees who came to the area during and after the Balkan War. Most of these refugees are Muslim.

According to Mujkic, he wanted to come to a place in the United States that needed a Muslim religious leader.

“There were people in need of an imam here in Utica, and so many people from where I am from,”the 56-year-old Mujkic said. “My biggest fear in moving here was that I would not be able to be imam anymore. But I came to the right place at the right time and, of course, I thank almighty God that as soon as I came to this country I became imam right away.”

Mujkic insists that his life as an imam in Utica is not that different than it used to be in Bosnia.

“I haven’t made any changes in the way I was being imam before the war, during the war, after the war, and here,” he said. “I am always being the same imam. I always treated human beings as human beings, and was never looking for differences between religions or nations. People must pray together, share their religion, and learn from each other.”

Mujkic’s views on religious tolerance are widely supported in the United States. However, these views were not so widely accepted in Bosnia in the years before and during the war. During a time when Croats and Serbs were promoting religiously pure states, some Bosnians also began to clamor for a pure Bosnian Muslim state.

Mujkic, however, did not see nationalism as the answer to Bosnia’s problems.

“In West Bosnia in 1993, we declared an independent province that would be at peace with the Croats and the Serbs, who were our enemies back then,” Mujkic said. “We wanted to make a peace, stop the fighting, open up the factories, start trading again. We thought, maybe others will do the same thing, and we could stop this war.”

The Bosnian government in Sarajevo rejected Velika Kladusa’s call for independence. The army attacked the town and forced Mujkic and others to flee during the night to refugee camps in Croatia in August 1994.

“We didn’t fight, we just gave up,” Mujkic said. “They were trying to destroy our idea of peace, but I am against any kind of conflict, doesn’t matter if it’s Serb, Croat, Muslims. We cannot take up weapons against other people.”

Mujkic continued his work as an imam during the year he spent in the refugee camp in a Serbian-controlled area of Croatia. His group arrived at the United Nations refugee camp on foot after abandoning their cars at the border while being pursued by the Bosnian army. He and his wife brought with them only the clothes they were wearing.

They carried Adaleta when she couldn’t walk. Everything else they left at home or in the car.

The first thing he did when he arrived at the camp was look for a tent to start ministering to Muslims.

“There were so many people all over the place, everywhere,” Mujkic said. “There I could provide funerals, prayer, other things. During the time I was in the refugee camps, 70 people got married, and many died. I performed the weddings and funerals.”

Mujkic and his family briefly returned to Velika Kladusa in 1995 before leaving permanently for another refugee camp in Croatia.He speaks of his time in the refugee camps matter-of-factly.

“A good Muslim fears only God,” he said. “When my time comes, then my time comes.”

However, Mujkic does admit the relief and excitement he felt when he heard that he was moving to Utica. He had gotten offers from Austria and Germany to emigrate, but said that he had always wanted to come to the United States. For a man who is big on tradition, this is no surprise.

“My mother was an American,” he said, pausing a moment for the double-take this information usually elicits from listeners. “My grandfather was Bosnian, he came here for a visit and then married an American lady. My mother was born in Jamestown, N.Y. So it’s like I’m a little bit American already.”

His grandparents and mother moved back to Bosnia before World War II. Mujkic remembers his mother still had an American accent.

“It wasn’t too bad,” he said, laughing. “Now my kids, they are beginning to forget their Bosnian a little. Adaleta speaks English with her friends, and Adalet probably will too when he starts school.”

Family, tradition, and religion are the most important things for Mujkic.

Like his grandfather, Mujkic moved to the United States.

He worked at the same two mosques in Bosnia that his father did.

He passed on the tradition of becoming an imam to his Bosnian son.

And though he doesn’t know it yet, Adalet is fast on his way to becoming the next imam in the Mujkic family.

And an American one, to boot.