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social issues & initiatives | Crossborder | by Vedran Dzihic | 2008-05
War and PeaceFormer Yugoslavia is an example of a multinational and multi-cultural society, not least of all due to its religious diversity. Political scientist Vedran Dzihic describes for “Report” the effect of this on the newly founded states and their political and religious representatives. On the symbiosis between politics and religions. A long history of separation and reunion, war and tolerance.Kosovo-SerbiaFollowing Kosovo’s declaration of independence the political leaders of Serbia organised major demonstrations in Belgrade. As so often in the years since the collapse of Yugoslav socialism in 1990, the protest reached its height in a religious liturgical ceremony with leaders of the Serbian Orthodox church. With the Serbian head of government Vojislav Koštunica and the head of the Serbian Radical Party Tomislav Nikolić attending to the words of the religious dignitaries, the bishops explained to the gathered masses why the recognition of Kosovo by the USA and the most important countries was a ultimately hostile act against the Serbs, the Serb Orthodox Church and against “god-given” justice. At the same time the head of the Serb Orthodox Church in Kosovo, Bishop Artemije, called for the use of armed Serb troops to defend the “Serb land” in Kosovo. Bosnia Herzegovina In Bosnia Herzegovina, the scene of the bloodiest war on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, religion has long since conquered public space and everyday life. In the first months of 2008 a intense debate flared up in Bosnia about whether religious instruction should begin at kindergarten level in the part of the country dominated by Bosnians. Croatia In Croatia public and political life is now impossible to imagine without religion. Since the era of the Tudjman regime the Catholic Church has “earned” a fixed place in politics. In the euphoria of forming a nation state Croat policy used the Church as its apparently natural ally and partner to strengthen Croat national feelings. The parliamentary elections of last autumn showed once more clearly how deeply rooted the symbiosis between politics and religion in Croat community is. Without the effective help of the Catholic Church and the many priests who directly or indirectly supported the HDZ of the Croat Prime Minister, Ivo Sanader, the victory of the HDZ might have been in doubt. Religion and Nationalism These three topical sketches illustrate most clearly that the situation of religions in the Balkans since the collapse of the Yugoslav state is determined by a closeness to or alliances with politics. The origins of this situation are historical. Socialist Yugoslavia was a country in which the socialist state ideology was decisively atheistic and therefore from the start of its existence it implemented the complete separation of church and state. The churches had greater possibilities of development than in the East Bloc countries but every attempt by the churches to enter the political sphere was vehemently stopped. For the socialist regime the fear of the instrumentalisation of religion for political national movements as had happened in the Second World War in Yugoslavia was too great. The regime was aware of the fact that for Muslims, Croats and Serbs reference to their own religion or confession was a decisive factor in forming and strengthening their national identity. In show trials (for example against Cardinal Stepinac) but also in everyday life a determination was demonstrated to take action against every act of the churches that would strengthen national identity and that could be interpreted as nationalistic. Precisely on account of this specific situation taken by socialism at the time of the growing crisis of the Yugoslav state in the late 1980s and early 1990s, religion required a general social medium that could bring about its revival. And the socialists suppressed this as vehemently as they denied nationalism. In the 1990s in the territory of the former Yugoslavia nationalism became the “general state of the intellect” which as “an absolute evil infiltrated everyone and everything”. This process would have been unimaginable without the strengthened role of religion and the churches. With the rise of nationalism was accompanied by a strengthening of religion and consequently by a process of de-secularisation and of clericalisation of the former republics of Yugoslavia. To strengthen the national homogeneity and to draw a distinguishing line to the “others” religion was cleverly instrumentalised by religious and political leaders. Fear of the “other” was fuelled, fed by selective interpretations of history and reference to the events of the Second World War, impending threats were outlined that had to be “prevented”. The fact that the national and religious borders of a number of the peoples of former Yugoslavia coincide facilitated this process. And so all confrontations of a political nature were soon made into battles in which it was not Serbs who fought against Croats but Orthodox Christians against Catholics and not Croats or Serbs against Muslims but Christianity against Islam. From this point the path to war was a short one. The wars that started on the territory of the former Yugoslavia from 1991 represent the next level from which one must examine the development of the churches and religions. The war increased the significance of the churches as the bearers of national identity and opened the way for the anchoring of religion in public and political life. In war the churches established themselves as the ubiquitous and dominant bearers of national identity. Religion, the churches and religious dignitaries and symbols became fixed elements in the activities of war. Church dignitaries appeared jointly with nationalist politicians, religious symbols flooded public space. Orthodox bishops took part in the sittings of the self-proclaimed parliaments in Pale (Bosnia) and Knin (Croatia) and gave God’s blessing to the weapons of the irregulars. Croat soldiers in Herzegovina had rosary beads hanging from the shoulder flaps of their uniforms and were accompanied into battle by Catholic priests. On the Bosnian side Islamic religious rules became increasingly important in politics and society, on the front Mudjahedin brigades were among those who led a holy war. Churches and mosques were among the main targets of military attacks. In Bosnia more than 1000 mosques and numerous Orthodox and Catholic churches were destroyed. An attack on the religious symbols of the “other” was symbolically an attack on the entire population and supported the aggressively proclaimed aim to create ethnically (and therefore also religiously) “clean” territories. And so in the course of the war each side developed its own interpretation of the struggles and of their causes. The gap between Bosnians, Croats and Serbs and between the three faiths grew even wider. More and more Muslims interpreted the war as a campaign of destruction on the part of the Christian world against Islam or at least against Islam in Europe. The failure to act on the part of the international community and the EU during the course of the war and the half-hearted attempts at negotiating peace lent support to this attitude. This process certainly contributed to the radicalisation of further sectors of the Muslim population in Bosnia Herzegovina and to the strengthening of radical tendencies previously unknown in European Bosnian Islam. Catholic Croats saw themselves as the victims of Serb and later Muslim aggression, adopted the authoritarian and strongly clerical approach of Tudjman Croatia and defined themselves as defenders of Christian Europe against an alleged Islam threat. Orthodox Serbs saw themselves as eternal victims and spoke repeatedly about the fact that they had to defend themselves from a repetition of the Second World War and the crimes committed during it by the Croats. The war against the Muslims was absurdly justified with a reference to the need to protect the Serbs against oppression by Muslims as had happened during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Through all these processes religion became a part of the war and the war became the most important reference point for the construction of the individual nations and, beyond that, for political formation during the period after the war. With the war the churches ended a path that brought them from a peripheral situation under Yugoslav state socialism and made them into an integral part of society and politics. In the course of the 1990s through this melding of politics and religion a religious nationalism developed in Bosnia Herzegovina and also in the entire region that – like every other collectivist ideology is self-referential and makes itself its own goal. Religious nationalism is consequently the form of nationalism in which religion develops into a specific ontology of power and the custodian of collective identity. Religious affiliation in Bosnia is used as the exclusive characteristic that defines the difference to the “other”, is employed to construct a personal individual and collective identity and is outwardly demonstrated. People celebrate their own religious affiliation at every step, decorate streets and themselves for the Islam Bajram or Christian Christmas, demonstratively visit churches and mosques, expel Djeda Mraz (Santa Claus) as a symbol of socialism, celebrate Easter by shooting off guns, etc. In this way religion is reduced to a dramaturgy, a presentation, a public demonstration of the collective and therefore something intensely political. Consequently every individual is deprived of the possibility of any deeper transcendence from “this life” and “the next”, which constitutes the core of religion. And in relation to this we can formulate a basic paradox of post-Yugoslav societies: the interpretation of religion used by political and national conservative elites transforms to a point where it is precisely religious affiliation that becomes a barrier to the integration of society, despite the fact that all religions have anchored the principle of tolerance at the centre of their basic spiritual understanding. One could say that in former Yugoslavia we find ourselves in a region in which a structurally laid out symbiosis between politics and religion shapes public and political space. The politicians of all three religions seek, wherever possible, the backing of religious leaders who in turn directly involve themselves in the political process. One can no longer regard the churches as being outside of the political mainstream as they have involved themselves and made their deals with this mainstream. And as long as the political mainstream unhesitatingly continues to cultivate the extreme nationalism of the 1990s and as long as the churches willingly play along, the symbiosis between politics and religion will deepen and thus further restrict the room for more tolerance and openness in the Balkans. Vedran Dzihic, born in 1976 in Prijedor (Bosnia), in Austria since 1993, studied political science and communication studies at Vienna University; academic assistant and lecturer at the Institute for Political Science Vienna; lecturer in Balkan Studies; editor of the journal Balkan-Anders, director of the Vienna office of the Center for European Integration Strategies (CEIS); numerous publications and lectures, most recently: “Kosovo Bilanz, Scheitert die internationale Gemeinschaft?” Lit-Verlag, Münster 2006, (together with Helmut Kramer) and “Europa – verflucht begehrt. Europavorstellungen in Bosnien-Herzegowina, Kroatien und Serbien” (together with Silvia Nadjivan, Hrvoje Paic und Saskia Stachowitsch, Braumüller Verlag, Vienna 2006). related articlesrelated galleries» Back to report |
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