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In the eight-part series Allah in Europe, Jan Leyers is looking for the face of Islam in Europe. Is there such a thing as a European, enlightened version of Islam growing and is that what Muslims themselves want?
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2017
Jan Leyers experiences how liberal Bosnian Islam is. In Sarajevo he is shaved and massaged by a veiled barbershop owner. In the same city he meets two sisters, both successful fashion designers. They are the epitome of the diversity of Bosnian Islam. One wears a veil, the other does not. They make a passionate plea to be embraced by the rest of Europe as European Muslims. When Bosnia declared its independence in 1992, a bloody civil war broke out. In a genocide in Srebrenica more than 8,000 Muslim men lost their lives. Leyers is introduced to Ahmed, a young imam, whose father is one of the victims. He and his family recently returned there. How does he deal with the past and how does he see the future? Mr Hrustanović lost his father, and some family in the genocide. The civil war sparked a religious revival among Bosnian Muslims. Leyers meets Damir, who works at IT company and a member of the mystical Sufi brotherhood.. He goes with him to the weekly ziqr, an impressive trance ritual.
Deep in the Bosnian mountains lies the village of Prusac, an Islamic pilgrimage site. Thousands of pilgrims gather every year to commemorate a medieval miracle. Jan Leyers learns how Islam is governed and organized in Bosnia. The hierarchical way in which this happens appears to be one of the secrets of moderate Bosnian Islam. Back in Sarajevo, Leyers meets Bosnia's former Grand Mufti, Mustafa Cerić, who has valuable advice for European policymakers and Muslim immigrants.
President Zoltán Bolek has to row with what he has, also during the preparations for the annual Feast of Sacrifice. Bolek takes his guest to a Hungarian slaughterhouse, where the ritual slaughter of ten cows takes place. The meat is then distributed among the people of the community.
In the Parisian banlieues, Jan Leyers listens to the laments of the inhabitants, who feel that they are being abandoned and played against each other. Moreover, everything that refers to Islam is increasingly banned from the streets.
There are minarets in every British city and a cop in a headscarf doesn't look up to anyone. Sharia courts are not taboo either. In the East London Mosque, Leyers meets the controversial Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad, who explains to him why Sharia courts are also desperately needed in the rest of Europe.
Jan Leyers also spends a day with Naser Khader, an Islamic MP who had no objection to the cartoons and was therefore threatened by Muslim fundamentalists and has been under permanent police protection ever since.
Jan Leyers also goes to the popular Al-Nour mosque, housed in a former parking garage that is gradually bursting at the seams. That will soon change. Daniel Abdin is a Lebanese businessman who has bought an empty evangelical church and has it converted into a mosque. But Daniel is also concerned about the possible negative reactions from local residents and therefore regularly organizes tours of the upcoming mosque.
To the questions with which he started his journey, he has received various answers along the way, depending on the personal convictions of his interlocutor, the social context and the historical past of the place.
