A SANCTUARY DOES NOT BELONG TO ONE PEOPLE ALONE

Belgrade, today. A city with 46 Orthodox churches and three monasteries for over a million believers. And, in that same city — one synagogue, Sukat Šalom, for 286 people. One mosque, Bajrakli, the sole survivor of eleven that once stood in the city, today serving a community of around 23,000 Muslims.

Subotica, in the north — a city with four official languages: Serbian, Hungarian, Croatian, Bunjevac. There stands the second-largest synagogue in Europe, protected as a cultural monument of exceptional importance. In that same city, in 2020, the first new mosque built in this part of Europe in two hundred years was opened — funds came from Novi Pazar, Sarajevo, Saudi Arabia, and the artists who painted its interior were brought in from Turkey.

In Serbia, 54 monasteries have been declared cultural monuments. Studenica, Sopoćani, Sveti Stefan — on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. On that same list: the Patriarchate of Peć, Gračanica, Visoki Dečani, the Bogorodica Ljeviška — monasteries in Kosovo and Metohija, whose protection Serbia signs its name to even today, even while unable to physically defend them.

The Niš mosque, stoned by hooligans in 2003, was restored by the state in 2013 and entered into the registry of cultural assets of exceptional significance.

None of these stories erases the other — not the losses, not the wars, not the pages of history that hurt to read. But there is a difference between a people who, even wounded themselves, know that a sanctuary has no owner — and those who say “to each their own God,” as if God could be divided, fenced in, and made into someone else’s.

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