ABOUT A PHENOMENON OF FORGIVENESS IN BOSNIAN ISLAMIC AND CHRISTIAN TRADITION

Even when he dies, the man remains a social being, the more so if he is a believer and an active member of a religious community. It seems that the best evidence of it is the fact that the believer cannot pass over to the other side, meet one's Maker, without others. It is not only because somebody should prepare him and bury him into the ground, but far more due to the fact that his last farewell from others implies the act of forgiving.

The first time, many years ago, when I attended a janazah, I experienced a surprise which I still feel. Whenever I think of this act, a kind of sacred trembling sweeps through me, a feeling of a wondrous mystery. It happens every time when I go to a funeral of a Muslim. Indeed, before the body is put in the grave, imam asks aloud all the attendees: Will we forgive (halaliti) him/her? And the reply from the attendees, in unison, is heard three times, like the roar of wind: We forgive (Halalimo)! (Translator's note: In Bosnian Islamic tradition, term 'halaliti' means 'to forgive the deceased at his/her burial) I do not know, actually I have not been able to discern if they reply in singular, everybody for himself, or they say the farewell collectively, like everything is indeed collective, the whole life. (Somewhere, the Arabic-Turkish expression has been introduced: Halalolsun – Let him be forgiven!)

Anyway, it irresistibly reminded me of the time when I was a boy, gaining awareness. Led by parents, in my native church, at the end of the mass, I first heard the priest asking the same question about forgiveness, prašćanje, the term rooted in the Stokavian Ikavism dialect of a part of Bosnian Catholics. Actually, having informed the believers on the death of a parish member in the previous week, and that he had left this world prepared according to religious rules, the priest would say that, before death, the deceased asked the whole congregation for forgiveness. And the church would resound with the roar: God forgive him/her!

I do not know if there is any regulation in any religion which is derived directly from revelation or it is rather a matter of tradition and customs. I also do not know whether it is specificity only of Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Muslims and whether, and if they have, ones influenced the others, since proximity of monotheistic religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims is so great that it is not at all easy, and is regularly disastrous, to draw coarse dividing lines of purity or, professedly, consider itself a direct revelation untouched by others.

We, people, are so connected to each other, we are social beings, as defined by wise men, that we influence each other even when we would not like it and when we separate. As if even in death and the burial, even at this decisive moment, God himself took care to caution us of the importance of the social act of forgiving. I say the decisive moment and a social act, since it is the last farewell, the last earthly act of the community when the individual, although dead, is a subject and a participant in a social act. As if he could not meet his Maker freely, without fear, constraints and obstacles, unless he is forgiven, unconditionally, of course, without encroaching upon God's books of justice and mercy. For this reason, it is noticeable, if one dares to think further, why our deceased, particularly victims, are subjects of history.

In the quiet moment of burial and parting, when we stop before the secret of life and cannot step over to the space of death, we thus utter, like a heavenly burble of comfort, a prayer and forgiveness which are not a product of contemplation but rather an act of faith, the most elementary faith, when all our doings, including the sinful ones, disappear before the immense ignorance of eternity. Besides, by confessing forgiveness, we admit the very core of faith in God – God who is merciful, compassionate, who forgives.

Naturally, when everything settles and “cools down” again, and when accounts are laid on the table or added up, we become overwhelmed – if we knew some of these deceased and if they “owed” us or if they hurt or harmed us in some way – with resentment and bitterness, wounds open and we become faced with ever-new old dilemma: to forgive or not to forgive. And it will last until the end of the world, in the anguish of forgiving and rancor. The same old questions before ever-new deaths: Who can forgive and what should actually be forgiven? Whoever may and in whose name can or forgive, particularly something which is a great evil and unatonable? And then, if we are open and allow questions, the quietest, though the most provocative one arises: Does not forgiveness, same as God does it, mean forgiving the unforgiveable?

Thus, even when the man leaves this world, when he leaves the society, he remains an earthly and a social being. It seems that forgiving is the most social spiritual act. And it also seems to be the hardest!