Crosses of blood: sacred space, religion, and violence in Bosnia-Hercegovina - The 2002 Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 2003 by Michael Sells

The disintegration of the former Yugoslavia has been commonly attributed to ethnic, economic, political and social factors. Religion is commonly seen as not relevant to the conflict or as a disguise for deeper causes. Yet religion, in two senses, was a factor. First, victims were selected largely on the basis of their formal religious affiliation as Croat, Serb, or Muslim--that is, on the basis of their affiliation with Catholicism, Serb Orthodoxy, or Islam. In most cases there was no other distinguishing factor, such as appearance, language, or clothing. When the target identity was not apparent from personal names, then informants or records (such as voter registration lists) were needed to select victims for persecution. Some survivors have remarked, for example, that they had not viewed themselves as religious or even thought about their religious identity until they were singled out for persecution because of it: they discovered they had a religious identity only in the act of its being imposed upon them. This identity is commonly named ethnic rather than religious because it was handed down through the family, rather than being a matter of personal belief or religious practice. Because "religious" can refer to belief and practice, I am using the term "religion identity" rather than "religious identity" to refer to that identity, handed down through the family but connected to a religious tradition, that was the marker of difference in the Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH) conflict. The second role of religion in the tragedy centers on the institutions, symbols, rituals, and ideologies through which the violence was motivated and justified. This double aspect of religion is erased in discussions of ethnic hatreds or crimes of "ethnic cleansing" that are attributed Serb or Croat nationalists. The crimes were committed by Serb and Croat nationalists who were at the same time Orthodox Christian and Catholic nationalists and the cleansing that took place was based upon religiously informed ideologies and constructions of difference. (1)

The language of ethnicity to refer to the conflict in BH is grounded partially in the constitution of the post-WWII Yugoslavia, which on the one hand embraced several formal republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH), Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) but also divided population by "narlon" (narod) Slovenians, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Macedonians. Non-Slavic populations were given the appelation of "nationality" (narodnost). The category of "Muslim" was created in the 1980's to offer Bosniacs and other Slavic Muslims a nationhood and thus a group enfranchisement that would be parallel to that of Bosnian Croats, and Serbs, but the term led to contradictions. Thus a Bosniac with a Muslim name but who was atheist and non-observant was of the "Muslim" nation while an Albanian Muslim who happened to be a believer and observant was designated "Albanian" with no reflection of Islam in the name of the nationality. Croats, Serbs, and "Muslims" (i.e. Bosniaks) the major elements that commonly viewed as constituting identity: they spoke the same language (that is, they understood each other when speaking, though for historical and political reasons they called the language by different names), shared a great many cultural features, and traced their descent to the same medieval South Slavic tribes. Because the term "nation" is used in a completely different manner in most English speaking cultures, the English word "ethnicity" tends to be attached to the Yugoslav narod. The association of ethnicity with narod is reasonable, but can be misleading. We might, for example, refer to relations in South Asia violence between Punjabis and Gujaratis as ethnic, but not relations between Hindu Punjabis and Muslim Punjabis. Yet the distinction between Bosnian Serbs, Muslims, and Croats more closely parallels that between Hindu and Muslim Punjabis than it does between Gujaratis and Punjabis.

At issue here is not simply a matter of terminology. The language of ethnicity, when used to the exclusion of religion, shields a key factor in what has been called by the euphemism "ethnic cleansing," which was based solely and exclusively on distinctions of religion identity and was motivated and justified through a robust use of religion-based symbols and power. These symbols and this power were not cosmetic. Sacral architecture and sacred space are at the center of the struggle, both for those working for religious exclusion and those working for religious pluralism. The struggle over shrines illustrates in a particularly articulate way the exploitation and the deployment of the power of religion to advance particular visions of society and state in BH.

SERB ORTHODOX NATIONALISM

Religious nationalism emerged in Serbia around the issue of Kosovo. In the Serbian province of Kosovo, the majority population of ethnic-Albanians began to demand more autonomy. Tensions with the Serb population grew. Serb bishops chimed that Kosovar Albanians were plotting to "ethnically cleanse" Serbs from Kosovo and--despite the radically secular basis of the Albanian autonomy movement--plotting an Islamic state in Kosovo as well. By 1986 Serb Orthodox bishops, church-affiliated journals, and intellectuals were charging Kosovar Albanians with a mass rape, annihilation of Serb shrines, and genocide (Cigar 1995:35). In response to the tensions in Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic presented himself as the champion of Serbs and in 1987 used that role to seize control over crucial party and government institutions (Silber and Little 1995).