June 7, 2016 edition

The past two months have been eventful for Vincent Guerend, 47, the European Union Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam.
In April, he oversaw the visit of EU High Commissioner Federica Mogherini to Jakarta, who came to intensify cooperation between the European bloc and Indonesia. A month later, President Joko Widodo reciprocated by flying to four countries in Europe, including Belgium where he visited the EU headquarters.

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May 24, 2016 edition

LAST March, Mustafa Ali Haji was once again chosen as Bulgaria's grand mufti, reinstating him as the highest Muslim leader in the country. This Balkan country's muftiate is today made up of 21 areas, each led by a regional mufti. According to the National Statistics Institute in Bulgaria, almost 10 percent of its 7.3 million population are Muslims. As such, this former communist country has set a new record for a Balkan country and in Europe, as a nation with the fastest-growing Islamic community after the 1989 fall of the its communist regime.
Mustafa acknowledges that Islam in Bulgaria, and in the Balkans in general, is very different from that in Indonesia. "Here the state does not require religious education and Islamic school graduates have no interest in becoming imams (clerics) and taking care of the congregation," he told Tempo in a recent interview. This is one of our major problems," said Mustafa, who holds a doctorate in Islamic theology from Turkey. This is why he is keen to collaborate with Indonesia, as "the quality of its Islamic education is very high," he said.

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