UNVEILING A POMEGRANATE, FROM AL-ANDALUS TO BOSNIA: EUROPEAN ISLAM AND OTHERNESS

Abstract

This article explores the symbolic, historical and spiritual connections between Granada and Sarajevo, two European cities profoundly shaped by Islamic civilization. Taking the pomegranate as its central image, the article examines how the fruit may symbolize unity in diversity, cultural abundance and the coexistence of Muslims, Christians and Jews in al-Andalus and Ottoman Bosnia. It contrasts these traditions of coexistence with the destruction of religious and cultural plurality following the conquest of Granada and during the war and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The experiences of the Moriscos and Bosnian Muslims are further considered in relation to the formation of indigenous European Muslim cultures and the preservation of Islamic identity within changing political and social circumstances. The article argues that a meaningful European Islamic culture should neither imitate imported cultural forms nor assimilate into dominant secular models, but should develop through creative integration grounded in the Quran, the Sunna and the Islamic intellectual tradition. Drawing on Sufi metaphysics, particularly the concepts of fitra, human dignity, tawhîd and wahdat al-wujûd, the article ultimately presents the pomegranate as an image of the purified human heart: a meeting place between unity and multiplicity, the visible and the invisible, and the human being and the Divine.