DEAN’S ADDRESS

The Faculty of Islamic Studies is one of the four faculties that operate within the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. The Faculty of Islamic Studies and the Faculty of Catholic Theology are the only higher education institutions of theology in the academic community of the University of Sarajevo, which has a total of twenty-two faculties, three academies and five institutes.
Although, based on the number of our employees, teaching staff and students, this faculty is among the smaller ones at the University of Sarajevo, its overall impact and its impact on various fields of teaching, research, and overall social activity, has been recognized in recent years not only in the Balkans but throughout Europe as well.

Under the name of Islamic Theological Faculty, its work began in 1977, but the history of the higher Islamic education in Bosnia and Herzegovina has lasted for centuries, dating back to Gazi Husrev-bey’s Madrasah, through the School of Shari’ah Law, Gazi Husrev-bey’s Madrasah of a higher degree and Higher School of Sharia and Islamic Theology, to the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, which continues the tradition of preserving the intellectual and cultural heritage, as well as the national and religious identity of Bosnian Muslims, by educating future generations with a strong faith in Allah, and respect for universal values, displayed especially in our openness to and understanding of the Other.

The Islamic community leadership and distinguished Muslim intellectuals have, as true visionaries, through the study plan and program, sought to provide impartial and scientifically objective study of Islam in the perspective of contemporary thought and science and provide students with credible knowledge faithful to the fundamental sources of Islamic belief contained in the Qur’an and Sunnah. In that way, they were contributing to the history of modern Islamic education and history will certainly remember them!

Fulfilling its mission even during the 1425 days of the siege of Sarajevo, surviving thus genocide, urbicide and all the criminal efforts to suppress everything that is Islamic, today, the Faculty of Islamic studies with its three-cycle system, forty-eight employees, over a thousand alumni and the current 600 students, the Student’s Centre and the Qur’an and Sunnah Centre, over 25,000 library units, and many works to which reference may be made for confirmed facts, and the respectable social impact of its teaching staff, contributes strongly to the contemporary interpretation of Islamic thought.

According to its vision and mission, the Faculty represents a symbol of the encounter and mutual intertwining of cultures of the European and the Islamic World. Hence, at our Faculty we aspire to study knowledge lying at the heart of Islamic, but also Western culture and civilization, humanities and social sciences, which helps mutual understanding, promoting cultural and cross-cultural understanding in the sense of showing respect for the Other, involving a mutual dialogue in order to truly understand their religions and different world views.

By joining the University of Sarajevo on the 29th of September in 2004 (as an associate member, and in 2013 as a full member), the Faculty gained the possibility of institutionally stronger and more direct exerting influence on social, cultural, scientific and educational processes. In other words, the Faculty has gained the opportunity to take part in articulating a new vision of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s social development more directly.

Fifteen years later, the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, has become one of the most important institutions of higher Islamic education, not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in Europe. With its mission, the Faculty clearly shows that Islamic studies indeed have their place in the contemporary academic society/world.

The witnesses of the Faculty’s current prestige/reputation are: the established scientific and research cooperation with numerous universities around the world, especially with the centers for Islamic theology in Germany, the engagement of academic staff at home and abroad, and in particular the professional competences and the spiritual and moral virtues of our alumni, who in their capacity as khatibs, religious education teachers in both primary and secondary education, as university professors of the basic Islamic disciplines and staff members in other educational, cultural, social and humanitarian institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad, are achieving remarkable results.

Since we are, in the academic sense, striving to be the bridge between the East and the West, we sincerely welcome all seekers of knowledge, wisdom and spirituality, especially young researchers who are interested in Islamic thought in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With this goal, every year, we organize summer schools, various scientific gatherings and other educational programs that bring together interested people from all over the world.
On this occasion, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who made their contribution and those still contributing to the development of the Faculty of Islamic Studies, including: the former deans, academic, professional, administrative and technical staff, as well as to all the alumni of the Faculty who in the best way represent the quality of our educational programs, curricula and the overall work of the Faculty.
I am especially grateful to the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina led by His Eminence Hussein-ef. Kavazović, without forgetting the former reis-ul-ulema/head of the ‘ulama (Naim-ef Hadžiabdić, Husein-ef. Mujić, Jakub-ef Selimoski and Mustafa-ef. Cerić) who assisted the Faculty in various ways.

We are also grateful to prof. Dr. Rifat Škrijelj, the Rector of the University of Sarajevo, his associates and his predecessors (Prof. Dr. Boris Tihi, Prof. Dr. Hasan Muratović, Prof. Dr. Faruk Čaklovica and Prof. Muharem Avdispahić) and the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of Sarajevo Canton, the Cantonal Government, as well as all others who support the work of the Faculty.

We sincerely hope that the Faculty of Islamic Studies of the University of Sarajevo will, with the help of God and the human and material support of numerous noble individuals as well as institutions, safely continue on its way to a new and better tomorrow.

Prof. dr. Mustafa Hasani,
Dean of the Faculty of Islamic Studies, University of Sarajevo

© FACULTY OF ISLAMIC STUDIES UNIVERSITY SARAJEVO, Ćemerlina 54, 71000 Sarajevo, Bosna i Hercegovina | Telefon: + 387 33 232 982 | Fax: + 387 33 251 044