Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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Texas A&M University Press, 2003 - History - 380 pages
Mitja Velikonja has written a comprehensive survey that examines how religion has interacted with other aspects of Bosnia-Herzegovina's history. Velikonja sees the former Ottoman borderland as a distinct cultural and religious entity where three major faiths -- Islam, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy -- managed to coexist in relative peace. It is only during the past century that competing nationalisms have led to persecution, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder. Emphasizing the importance of religion to nationalism as a symbol of collective identity that strengthens national identity, Velikonja notes that religious groups have a tendency to become isolated from one another. He believes Bosnia-Herzegovina was unique in its sarlikost, or diversity, because while religion defined ethnic communities there and kept them separate, it did not create a culture of intolerance. Rather than suppressing one another, the region's ethno-religious groups learned to cooperate and mediate their differences -- useful behavior in an area that served as buffer between East and West for most of its history. Velikonja believes that Bosnians went beyond tolerance to embrace synthetic, eclectic religious norms, with each religious group often borrowing customs and rituals from its rivals. Rather than the extreme orthodoxy evident elsewhere in Europe, Bosnia became the home of heterodoxy. Sadly, nationalism changed all that, and the area became the scene of systematic persecution, forced conversion, and mass slaughter. Velikonja considers the misfortunes suffered by the Bosnians during the 1990s as largely the result of actions by their neighbors and local militants and inaction by the international community.But he also sees the tragedy that unfolded as the result of the exploitation of ethno-religious differences and myths by Serbian chauvinists and Croatian nationalists. Despite the tragedy that overwhelmed Bosnia-Herzegovina
 

Contents

Introductions A Land of Dreams and Nightmares
3
1 Bosnias religious and mythological watershed
11
2 One god three religions Bosnia Croatia and Serbiain the Middle Ages
21
3 Pax ottomanica Religions in Ottoman Bosnia
55
4 Honed mindsThe Origins of ContemporarySerbian and CroatianReligioNational Mythologies
91
5 Beneath the twoheaded eagle ReligioNational Issues in BosniaHerzegovina18781918
117
6 Between the serbs and the croats Religious and National Issuesin BosniaHerzegovina during Karadordevics Reign in Yugoslavia
143
7 Bellum Omnium in Omnes Politics National Groups andReligions in BosniaHerzegovinaduring the Second World War
163
8 M or m? Political vs ReligioNational Myths in Postwar BosniaHerzegovina
185
9 A war over differences The Religious Dimensions of Conflict in BosniaHerzegovina 199295
235
10 Dinal deliberations Maximum Diversity in Minimal Space
287
Notes
297
Bibliography
335
Index
351
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