Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic Societies

Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2005 by Keith Doubt

Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic Societies. MAYA SHATZMILLER (Ed.). Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002, 240 p.; $75.00 (cloth), $22.95 U.S./$27.95 CDN (paper).

While scholars seek knowledge for its own sake because they value knowledge as an end-in-itself, scholars are also important allies to foreign policy makers seeking solutions to social conflict in complex situations. Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic States is an anthology that brings together the leading academics on Bosnia and experienced foreign policy experts. One finds the finest scholars on the heritage of Bosnia-Herzegovina--John V.A. Fine, Tone Bringa, Michael Sells, and Andras Riedlmayer, and it is heartening to see foreign policy experts like Peter W. Galbraith and John M. Reid in the same anthology engaged in critical dialogue with them. Although scholarly inquiry is distinct from foreign policy research on social conflict, foreign policy research draws upon scholarly inquiry for perspective and objectivity.

One over-looked casualty of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is its collective commitment to a pluralistic, tolerant, integrated society. Unconscionable violence and vicious propaganda were brought to bear against its heritage, cultural convictions, social practices, and civic order--making it next to impossible for Bosnia to sustain its multi-confessional and syncretistic-informed traditions. In the chapter titled, "Islam and the Quest for Identity in Post-Communist Bosnia-Herzegovina," Tone Bringa writes, "Neither Bosniak, nor Croat, nor Serb identities can be fully understood with reference only to Islam or Christianity respectively but have to be considered in a specific Bosnian context that has resulted in a shared history and locality among Bosnians of Islamic as well as Christian backgrounds" (p. 31) After carefully considering Bringa's statement, one realizes that Islam and Bosnia may be a misleading title. In Bosnia, there are not multiple cultures co-residing in the same vicinity. There instead is a singular culture making different faiths, including Christianity and Islam, synergistically interdependent.

The Bosnian heritage, however, is either overlooked because of misleading education or denied because of competing political agendas, whether local or international. As the chapters by Fine, Riedlmayer and Sells incontrovertibly demonstrate, the evil of ethnic cleansing was to eradicate as completely as possible the evidence of Bosnia's heritage. The evil was to destroy not only Bosnian communities (villages, towns, and cities) with mixed populations, but also cultural material (libraries, mosques, churches, bridges, schools) that bore witness to the legacy of Bosnia's multi-confessional community. What happened in Bosnia was not genocide, or the willful destruction of one group of people within a society, alone, but better described as sociocide, the murdering of a progressive, complex, and enlightened society in order that a regressive, simple, and bigoted society could replace it. Vamik D. Volkan's chapter, "Bosnia-Herzegovina: Chosen Trauma and its Transgenerational Transmission," regrettably formulates the recent tragedy in Bosnia with a "qualified" psychoanalysis that dilutes the empirical and moral weight of the other chapters.

One likely result of the Dayton Peace Accord is the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, when the memory of the recent war becomes more distant. Republic Srpska, a distinct entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina, is now more connected to Serbia than Bosnia. If Kosovo, whose population is almost entirely Kosovo Albanian, becomes an independent state, the part of Bosnia known as Republic Srpksa, could, with international intervention, become a part of Serbia. Some pundits argue that such an exchange might fairly compensate Serbia for giving up Kosovo. While such an exchange may appear logical from a utilitarian perspective, the exchange would be ethically horrendous and morally grotesque. However realistic the utilitarianism for such an exchange, it rewards genocide to such a high degree that it encourages nationalistic leaders in other areas to follow the same model exemplified in the aggression against Bosnia. Even worse, such an exchange (through means other than war) would result in the destruction of Bosnia. The sociocide of Bosnia (a county in which over four and a half million people resided and in which, during the war, over two million were forced to flee their homes) would be completed with the collusion of the international community. Former US Ambassador to Croatia, Peter W. Galbraith, and former Canadian ambassador to Croatia, Donald Smith, through reflections and analysis poignantly indicate why such an exchange would be unconscionable and disastrous.

Before the war in 1991, in the area recently named Republic Srpksa, there were more than six hundred mosques--humble but majestic structures constructed through the centuries with a Bosnian rather than Arabic architecture. Traveling from Dubrovnik into Trebinje in 1937, Rebecca West (1969:271) in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia [New York: Penguin Books] writes, "These [minarets] are among the most pleasing architectural gestures ever made by urbanity. They do not publicly declare the relationship of man to God like a Christian tower or spire. They raise a white finger and say only, 'This is a community of human beings and, look you, we are not beasts of the field.'" Trebinje is now a part of Republic Srpksa, where the mosques that Rebecca West saw no longer exist. While West miscalls Trebinje a Turkish rather than Bosnian town, she insightfully formulates the significance of the minarets that she saw, a significance shared by all Bosnians, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Despite international pressure, not one of the mosques destroyed during the recent war in Republic Srpska has been rebuilt. The nationalistic leaders who planned and carried out ethnic cleansing in Bosnia remain in control of this region, and these nationalistic leaders dread the revival of the Bosnian society that they so ruthlessly murdered.