Thanks to a comment she just left on my post about Adil Kunalic, I have discovered Amila Jašarević's wonderful blog Amila Bosnae. Amila is a Danish citizen and a Bosniak refugee, and while her blog focuses a great deal on Danish political issues, she also inevitably writes a great deal about her native land. I have added her blog to my links on the side, and I look forward to catching up on the backlog of posts I have yet to read.
Thank you, Amila, for taking the time to discover my blog. I hope I am able to direct a few new people towards yours.
[Personal aside: It's a little ironic that she's a Bosnian living in Denmark--Bosnia is the country I most want to visit right now, but Denmark--where my great-grandfather came from, and where my last name ("Janssen" or something similar before it got Anglicized to "Johnson" at Ellis Island) is on my "short-list" of countries I want to visit in the near future as well.]
8 comments:
Thank you very much for the promo :) I'm just in the process of switching my blog to English, so there are still many things in Danish on there (maybe you can use them to learn some :p). I just started blogging in English about three weeks ago, apart from the odd entry in English I had in the early days of my blog. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out :)
Denmark is a beautiful country -- we sepnt part of our vacation there last year as we have friends outside Copenhagen.
Make sure you go to "Free State Christiania" a wonderful experiment in self government in the heart of the city.
amila, your post on your impressions about belgrade is simply great. I found your blog through dragan grcic blog (also excellent, in french).
great that you are switching to english. I did the same some months ago and it was the wisest thing to do.
Thanks a lot Sarah, maybe I should have switched a long time ago :) It's a much bigger and more encouraging blog community :)
I am very proud of Amila. She has been Bosniak activist for a long time and she is exactly what we need. We need more people like her.
PS: I thought you should know (good news!). Kirk, Bosniaks in New York have purchased a church for $1.4 million dollars. They will convert it to the Bosniak Cultural Centre. See here:
http://www.bosnjaci.net/prilog.php?pid=28204
Amila, I hope you and Sarah and other non-native speakers who write in English don't feel that your efforts aren't appreciated by the people you're making life easier for, and at the same time don't stop acting as a bridge between us and your own native language communities.
PS: I was surprised they would purchase a church. I guess, this Church was in ruins and nobody wanted it. But it still feels a bit strange... I mean, we're talking about the Church...
Dan, it does feel strange to be in a deconsecrated church that has been put to another purpose (although it's worth bearing in mind that in the past places of worship often had many functions and hosted a variety of activities).
A church is essentially a shelter for worship but the respect people bring to their worship becomes associated with the material circumstances of worship.
Respect for the essence is important but it's a general human trait to associate our internal experiences with the external circumstances, and over-attachment to the formalities of their religion is an ever-present temptation that distracts the followers of different religions into profoundly anti-religious practices.
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