ZAGREB, October 11, 2019 – The Islamic Encyclopaedic Almanac was launched in Zagreb on Thursday evening, with speakers at the event describing it as a very successful publication about the Muslim community in Croatia that has made an exceptional contribution to the development of the Croatian society.
The Islamic Encyclopaedic Almanac was published by the Islamic Community in Croatia, with assistance from the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography. The 431-page publication consists of about 1,200 entries, of which 500 refer to persons and the rest to terms from the history of Islam, notably in Croatia.
The book was published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the recognition of Islam as a religion in Croatia, marked three years ago.
The head of the Islamic Community and the publication’s editor, Aziz Hasanović, said that he was proud of the Muslim community because there was not a single area of activity where its members did not leave a visible mark, from science and culture and the struggle in the 1991-95 Homeland War, in which 1,170 Muslims were killed.
He recalled that at the time when Islam was made equal to other religions in Croatia 103 years ago, the Muslim community had 204 members whereas today it has more than 63,000 members.
Culture Minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek said that the purpose of the Almanac was to set in time and space the most important events in the Islamic community in the past 100 years as well as events in its rich history before that, and make them part of the collective memory, not just of the Islamic community but of the entire Croatian culture.
She warned that the date when Islam was recognised as an official religion must not be forgotten or its importance disregarded as there were, also today, few European states that had made such a step.
The head of the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography, Antun Vujić, spoke about the most important sections of the Almanac, including the one on the recognition of Islam in Croatia.
The Almanac was made by 57 members of the Islamic Community and the Institute of Lexicography, and its publication was supported by Ankara’s Yunus Emre and Sarajevo’s Ibn Sina institutes.
More news about Islam in Croatia can be found in the Lifestyle section.
