Interreligious Center planned for Panagua

The Free City of Panagua is designed to accommodate approximately 800 inhabitants. With a population of this size, it is only natural that many residents will feel a need for religious devotion and tradition. As a city-state with a highly diverse population, much like Singapore, it is clear that various religious faiths will be represented in Panagua. However, given the extremely limited geographical space of Panagua, urban planning considerations make it sensible not to plan for multiple separate religious buildings within the city. Anyone wishing to visit a church, mosque, or other religious building may, of course, do so in the surrounding area in Croatia or Serbia. Home devotions are also an option. However, there is to be an interreligious center in Panagua: A building that can be utilized by the various religions represented in Panagua, and which is intended to serve interreligious dialogue, encounter, and mutual understanding. Successful examples of similar institutions already exist, such as the House of Religions in Bern and the House of One in Berlin.

In Panagua, this planned interreligious center is to be named the Bahira Institute for Religion and Ethics. It is to be administered as an affiliated institute of the Paweł Brzostowski University of Applied Sciences. The rationale behind naming it after Bahira is that the namesake was intended to be a historical figure whose life embodies the positive and respectful encounter of diverse religious traditions. Bahira (regarding whose first name there are conflicting accounts, why we limit ourselves to his surname) was a Christian monk who lived in a monastery in Bosra between the late 6th and early 7th centuries. Bosra is a historically significant city in the south of the modern-day Syria. In Bosra, one can find impressive architectural remnants left by the Nabataeans, Romans, and Byzantines, as well as from centuries of Arab and Ottoman rule. Unfortunately, much in Bosra was destroyed during the Syrian Civil War. Nevertheless, the ruins of Bahira’s monastery can still be seen today. Nestorius was Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch from 428 to 431. Due to theological differences, Nestorius and his followers were expelled from the Roman Church. The Nestorian Church spread primarily throughout Persia and extended as far as China. In China, this led in some instances to an intensive exchange with Buddhism and Taoism.

There are ancient Nestorian steles and scriptures from China that include Christian, Buddhist and Taoist influences. In 1552, there was a schism in the Nestorian Church. Patriarch Mar Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa and Pope Julius III concluded a union agreement, through which the Nestorian Church became a particular church of the Roman Catholic Church under the name of the Chaldean Catholic Church. However, this decision was controversial among the Nestorians. Mar Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa had, in any case, become Patriarch essentially as an internal ecclesiastical rebel against the incumbent Patriarch, Mar Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb. Patriarch Mar Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb opposed the church union; thus, he and his followers remained independent of Rome as the East Syriac Church. But let us return to Bahira. In both Christian and Islamic tradition, Bahira is credited with being the first person to recognize the prophethood of Muhammad. Bahira nonetheless remained both a Christian and a Monk. This happened when then twelve year old Muhammad was accompanying his uncle, Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib, who was traveling with a trade caravan. When the caravan stopped in Bosra, Bahira hospitably welcomed them as guests at his monastery. The precise history of the events can be read or listened to in numerous sources.

As is always the case with religious history, there are, of course, skeptics who do not believe the story. But that is not the point. The point is that Bahira was a Christian monk who treated the future leader of an emerging world religion with respect, kindness and recognition, but without changing his own religious affiliation. Bahira's example is therefore a positive inspiration for an interreligious center. Especially in the Balkans, where it was not so very long ago that brutal civil wars were waged along religious, confessional, and ethnic fault lines.