Sharia Alert from the Jerusalem Post: “Bosnian Jews up in arms about new restitution law”
Jewish groups are troubled by a new property restitution law in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina that officially discriminates in favor of the country’s Muslims.
A law passed earlier this month allows people living in state-owned apartments that were nationalized under the former Yugoslavia’s socialist regime to purchase the dwellings. But the law – backed by lawmakers from the country’s Muslim majority – provides that any apartment previously owned by the Muslim community
cannot be purchased if the community objects to the sale.
“Holders of tenant’s tenure for apartments whose formal owners are wakfs can not buy up those apartments without previous written approval of the apartment’s owner,” the law states, using the Arabic word for a Muslim community endowment.
The Jewish community, as well as the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, was not given the same veto power.
More on awqaf (plural of “waqf”) from the Encyclopaedia of the Orient:
It is central to a waqf that it has a permanent nature … Once a waqf is established, there are no possibilities for alterations of the contract. The only exceptions for this, is when some of the involved violates the contract or if the founder or manager secedes from Islam.
In other words, once it’s claimed for the umma, that claim is eternal. Just like Spain, Israel, and East Timor, which jihadists intend to retake whenever they can.
The Jerusalem Post article continues:
A protest letter to the government and various international authorities from The Inter-Religious Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina states, “One of the fundamental principles of justice, equity and of the democracy in which we would like to
believe is equality before the law. Unfortunately, this law definitely violates this principle.”
A group of ethnic Croatian lawmakers has challenged the law in the Constitutional Court, which should rule on it shortly, according to Bosnia-based diplomats.
[…]
The law would mean that Holocaust survivors or their heirs wouldn’t obtain fair compensation for their former property, according to Jakub Finci, chairman of the country’s small Jewish community.
“I think it’s another injustice done not only to Jews but all other former owners who waited 50 years to get back their property,” Finci said.
The Inter-Religious Council, which includes Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox representatives, says the legislation would leave people whose apartments were nationalized with little possibility of regaining their property.
Council members object to any legislation that prevents the return of private property to its pre-World War II owners, and point out that the law contravenes the rules of the Council of Europe, the European Convention on Universal Human Rights and other European norms that Bosnia and Herzegovina has agreed to
uphold.
A human rights experts at a Western embassy who would speak only on background said he expected the constitutional court to strike down the legislation, “as it is so blatantly discriminatory.”