Two professors’ experiences during recent Fulbright studies will enrich their teaching and scholarship.

In October, Associate Professor of Foreign Languages Mohamed Esa will present some of what he learned about Islam in Europe at conferences in Maryland, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Esa participated in a two-week Fulbright session “Muslim Minorities: Opportunities and Challenges in West European Societies – German and French Experiences.”

He met more than 60 people on panels and in discussions as he traveled through Germany and France. Most were politicians, professors, community activists and professionals such as doctors, lawyers and businessmen.

But it was a self-guided tour through Berlin that provided the greatest insight. On the Metro, Esa met two Muslim women who explained the plight of tens of thousands of Palestinians who fled to Germany in the 1970s, mainly from Lebanon, and to whom the German government will not grant asylum. Known as “tolerated” people, they cannot hold a job, and they must survive on welfare.

“We met a woman and her daughter on the Metro, and after talking to them about what we have been doing in Berlin, they immediately invited us to their house,” Esa says. “When I asked her about her situation, she said, ‘We have faith, but we are struggling.’” 

In Germany, the Muslim community is not officially recognized as a religious community with all rights and obligations, as is the case with the Catholics, Protestants and Jews. The religious groups that have signed a contract with Germany detailing their rights and obligations receive tax money from the state, which is distributed to various congregations according to their numbers and needs.

In France, Esa was surprised to learn the immense separation between state and religion, which is part of the reason behind the recent ban of headscarves that led to the firing and non-hiring of many qualified Muslim women.

He is hoping to return to Germany to study more about the situation of the Muslims, especially those of Arab and Palestinian descent in Berlin.

Associate Professor of History Paul Miller Miller went to Sarajevo to work on a book about the Sarajevo assassination, and found himself embroiled in issues of reconciliation and identity since the Balkan wars of the early 1990s.

“People are traumatized, still,” he says.

Physically, Sarajevo is rebuilt and serves as a popular tourist destination, more than a decade after a three-year conflict that resulted in genocide and the ethnic cleansing of half the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, or some two million people.  But the human trauma is still taking its toll.

During his first year, Miller taught a course about genocide at the University of Sarajevo and learned that no matter the ethno-religious group or culpability, everyone felt like a victim. Their realities are different, he says, because the information they receive in the media is slanted.

“I didn’t address the Bosnian genocide directly in my course. Instead, I focused on the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia and Rwanda. But it filtered into our conversations as we made comparisons.”

Miller extended his sabbatical to ’05-’06 in order to teach “History of World Civilization” at the International University of Sarajevo. He is at work on a book, “The Footprints of Gavrilo Princip,” about the Sarajevo assassination that sparked World War I.