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When government officials in Macedonia recently proposed rebuilding a church that once stood on the city’s central square, they received an abrupt warning: for the Islamic Community (IVZ), the recreation of Sveti Konstanin & Elena, destroyed in the 1963 earthquake, should guarantee them their own right to build a mosque in the prominent downtown area.According to a report from A1 Television, among its other ambitions the IVZ is most keen on rebuilding the Burmali Mosque, destroyed in 1925, a year after the official dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but 12 years after the Ottomans were finally expelled, following a long period of bloody crackdowns on the Christian populations of Macedonia. A Royalist Yugoslav army house was built over it. Today the area is near a pedestrianized street where modern cafés cater to locals and international guests, considered to be one of the nicest modernization efforts in the city in recent years. Resurrecting a mosque in the area would certainly change the ambience.Interestingly, it appears that the whole building frenzy is part of the larger issue of creating an “urban plan” for Skopje. The government has announced it will put forward an international tender for coming up with a “solution” to this issue, which it says will involve architects, planners and officials from the Ministry of Culture. However, the religious dimensions of the urban upgrade means that the authorities are playing with fire. While building an Orthodox Church is largely an exercise in decoration in a country where few attend church regularly, building a mosque, frequented five times a day by groups of Muslims likely to be “commuting” across the bridge from the “other” side of the river, is not. Considering current demographic and social trends, such religious one-upsmanship cannot lead to a long-term victory, to put it mildly, for Christendom in Macedonia.This is not the first time that Muslim officials have raised their voices on this issue; it has been a hot topic for several years now. And in interviews and public statements, the ambitions of the Islamic leadership to restore the Ottoman-era landscape have been clearly seen. The A1 article quotes an IVZ official who states that the Islamic Community had put forward the request to rebuild the Burmali Mosque “one year ago.” Communist Yugoslavia did away with other some surviving mosques, converting them into spaces for public use, as had its Royalist predecessor.The post-Communist denationalization process has seen considerable assets and property returned to their former owners. Nevertheless, in the competition to win back as much largesse as possible from the state, Muslims are particularly resentful. Later this year, the Macedonian Jewish Community will finish work on a new Holocaust Memorial Center, to be built over the location of Skopje’s former Jewish quarter, which adjoins the city’s main Muslim stronghold and overlooks the northeastern bank of the Vardar. “The government did everything it could for the Jews, and for the Christians,” one high IVZ official complained in early 2006. “But they don’t want to give anything back to the Muslims- they fear our power.”It is not exactly true that the Muslims have been frozen out, though they probably have gotten relatively less back than the Orthodox Church, which after all speaks for almost 70 percent of the country’s inhabitants....To read more go to:
PS:Sometimes it seem to me that muslims haven't abandonded their conquest and dominion of the world desires and of course they seem to have a hard time living along other people-peacefully-that is non muslim.....They dont know how to live and let live....They can't simply take it.....As in the days of Noah....
