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ABSTRACT
While academic research on human rights today focuses primarily on the promotion of freedom of religion as something positive, the misuse of religious freedom of religion remains under-researched. The deployment of religion to fan ethnic conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina as of the 1990s, and to this day, offers lessons that can be applied to the current situation in Ukraine or the ongoing crisis in Syria. The Balkanisation of Europe threatens to become a global crisis. Benjamin Gregg’s proposal of a human rights state aspires to justice, and justice in this context requires the neutralising of the cynical misuse of religious freedom. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, education appears to be the most promising channel for facilitating a non-abusive approach to religious freedom, a goal challenged by the sheer complexity of everyday life in a multi-ethnic community riven by conflict, but also by deeply problematic political solutions such as the Dayton Agreement.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Gorana Ognjenović is a Research Fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway. Previously she was a Fulbright Scholar at The New School for Social Research in New York. She is contributing editor of the anthology Responsibility in Context (Springer, 2009) and contributing co-editor, with Jasna Jozelić, of Education in Post-Conflict Transition: The Politicization of Religion in School Textbooks (Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics and Policy, forthcoming 2017); Revolutionary Totalitarianism, Pragmatic Socialism, Transition (Palgrave, 2016); Titoism, Self-determination, Nationalism, Cultural Memory (Palgrave, 2016); Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism (Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics and Policy, 2014); and Politicization of Religion, the Power of State, Nation, and Faith (Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics and Policy, 2014).
Jasna Jozelić is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is contributing co-editor, with Gorana Ognjenović, of Education in Post-Conflict Transition: The Politicization of Religion in School Textbooks (Palgrave, forthcoming 2017); Revolutionary Totalitarianism, Pragmatic Socialism, Transition (Palgrave, 2016); Titoism, Self-determination, Nationalism, Cultural Memory (Palgrave, 2016); Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism (Palgrave, 2014); and Politicization of Religion, the Power of State, Nation, and Faith (Palgrave, 2014).
Notes
1. Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), 242.
2. Keith Tester, ‘Foreword’, in Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism: The Case of Former Yugoslavia and its Successor States, ed. Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Jozelić (New York: Palgrave, 2014), xiv.
3. Judith Nagata, ‘Beyond Theology: Toward an Anthropology of “Fundamentalism”’, American Anthropologist 103, no. 2 (2001): 481–98.
4. Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Jozelić, eds, Politicization of Religion, the Power of State, Nation, and Faith: The Case of Former Yugoslavia and its Successor States (New York: Palgrave, 2014).
5. We understand religious nationalism as the relationship between nationalism and a particular religious belief, dogma or affiliation, where religion influences politics ideologically. And we mean interpretations of religious ideas to motivate political action, such as when laws are passed to foster stricter religious adherence. See Mark Juergensmeyer ‘The Worldwide Rise of Religious Nationalism’, Journal of International Affairs 50, no. 1 (1996).
6. Fundamentalism here is understood as: unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs. See Nagata, ‘Beyond Theology’.
7. Ivan Iveković, ‘Nationalism and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion: The Politicization of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Islam in Yugoslav Successor States’, Social Compass 49, no. 4 (2002): 523.
8. Nena Mocnik, ‘Religious Symbolism and Mythology in Sexual Violence and Rape during the Balkan Conflict, 1992–1995’, in Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism, 45–66.
9. Marjan Smrke, ‘Ethno-Religious Mimicry in the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina’, in Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism, 27–44.
10. Latinka Perović, ‘Dobrica Ćosić and Josip Broz Tito – A Political and Intellectual Relationship’, in Titoism, Self-Determination, Nationalism, Cultural Memory, Volume Two, Tito’s Yugoslavia, Stories Untold, ed. Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Jozelić (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 105–64.
11. Frano Prcela, ‘The Catholic Pledge in the Croatian Identity’, Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism, 67–92.
12. Respecting the right to freedom of religion is an expression of acceptance of building constitutions based on the premises set by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
13. Srdjan Vrcan, ‘The War in ex-Yugoslavia and Religion’, Social Compass 41, no. 3 (1994): 413–22.
14. Iveković, ‘Nationalism and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion’, 534.
15. Jasna Jozelić, ‘Politicization of Religion: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina’, in Politicization of Religion, the Power of State, Nation, and Faith, 7–32.
16. The Republika Srpska is currently pursuing a referendum to establish a nationalistic holiday, something not allowed by the constitution of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The High Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina declines to recognise any such referendum.
17. This division follows main ethnic lines while ignoring the presence of other groups, above all Jews and Roma, whose representatives took the Bosnian state to the European Court of Human Rights. See also, Christopher McCrudden and Brendan O’Leary, ‘Courts and Consociations, or How Human Rights Courts May De-stabilize Power-sharing Settlements’, European Journal of International Law 24, no. 2 (2013): 477–501.
18. Ognjenović and Jozelić, Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism.
19. Benjamin Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 230.
20. Ibid., 231.
21. James Nickel, ‘Human Rights’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/rights-human/ (accessed 14 August 2016).
22. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 213.
23. Translated from Ustav Federativne Narodne Republike Jugoslavije (1946), Glava V, Prava i dužnosti gradjana, član 25.
24. Slobodan Nesović and Branko Petranović, AVNOJ i revolucija (Beograd: Nolit, 1983), 696.
25. Sabrina Petra Ramet, ed., Religious Policy in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 4; John Anderson, Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3.
26. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 215.
27. By 1971, one million people voluntarily declared themselves to be Yugoslavs.
28. Gorana Ognjenović, Nataša Mataušić, and Jasna Jozelić, ‘Yugoslavia’s Authentic Socialism as a Pursuit of “Absolute Modernity”’, in Titoism, Self-Determination, Nationalism, Cultural Memory, 9–36.
29. Tvrtko Jakovina, ‘It’s Either Tito or the Soviet Aparatchik’, in Revolutionary Totalitarianism, Pragmatic Socialism, Transition, Volume One, Tito’s Yugoslavia, Stories Untold, ed. Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Jozelić (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 99–138.
30. Today, in the successor states, the situation is reversed: many citizens perceive an individual’s choice to self-identify as non-religious as a choice to be disloyal to his or her own group within society.
31. There are many different traditions within a single religious belief on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and its successor states. During the 1990s, two symbols were intertwined with the goal of assimilating different traditions under one, dominated either by the Croats Catholic Church (Crkva u Hrvata) or by the Serbian Orthodox Church. The goal was to occupy parts of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from the 1990s until today. In the early 1990s, Serbia occupied Croatian territories by defining the Serbian Orthodox Church as ‘all Serbs in one state’.
32. Regarding the constitution determined by the Dayton Peace Agreement and its flaws, see Gro Nystuen, Achieving Peace or Protecting Human Rights? Conflicts between Norms Regarding Ethnic Discrimination in the Dayton Peace Agreement (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
33. Ustav Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, Službene Novine Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine, 1/94, 13/97, 16/02.
34. Zakon o slobodi vjere i pravnom položaju crkava i vjerskih zajednica u Bosni i Hercegovini, Službeni glasnik Bosne i Hercegovine, 5/04.
35. Human Rights Papers, Paper 23; BiH Alternative Report 2016, Political Criteria, Sarajevo, (July 2016), ISSN 2303-6079.
36. Ognjenović and Jozelić, Politicization of Religion, the Power of State, Nation, and Faith.
37. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2014 Report on International Religious Freedom, Bosnia and Herzegovina (14 October 2015), http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/238574.pdf.
38. Ognjenović and Jozelić, Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism; Ognjenović and Jozelić, Politicization of Religion, the Power of State, Nation, and Faith; Sabrina Petra Ramet, Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe, Challenges since 1989 (New York: Palgrave, 2014); Branislav Radeljić and Martina Topić, eds, Religion in the Post-Yugoslav Context (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015).
39. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 229.
40. Srdjan Vrcan, ‘The War in ex-Yugoslavia and Religion’, Social Compass 41, no. 3 (1994): 418.
41. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 228.
42. Ibid., 229.
43. By the ‘human rights idea’ we mean, in line with Gregg’s position, the protection of the individual’s physical well-being (the right not to be killed, not to be subjected to gratuitous pain, or the right to the satisfaction of basic needs with respect to food, shelter or basic medical care). It would also secure the protection of the individual’s psychological well-being (personal liberties of speech, association and conscience). Ibid., 229–30.
44. Ibid., 213.
45. Ibid., 214.
46. Ibid., 215–16.
47. The term ‘Bosnian cosmopolitanism’ refers to centuries of co-existence of various religious communities and ethnic groups that share a common Bosnian national identity.
48. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 230.
49. Ibid., 217–18.
50. Jozelić, ‘Politicization of Religion’.
51. Smrke, ‘Ethno-Religious Mimicry in the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina’.
52. Drago Bojić, ‘Zlato i tamjan: kritički osvrti na politiku i religiju’, CKM (Centar za kritičko mišljenje), (Mostar, 2016).
53. Prcela, ‘The Catholic Pledge in the Croatian Identity’.
54. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 230.
55. This particular aspect is of great importance and sensitivity in this context as the war resulted in genocidal practices against the Bosnian Muslim population.
56. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 65.
57. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 231.
58. There is an ongoing political battle between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. The latter two refuse to acknowledge Bosnia’s state borders by referring to Bosnian Catholics as Croats and to Bosnian Orthodox as Serbians. There are of course a number of Croats and Serbians who are citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but they remain a tiny minority quite unable to claim their own state within a state (as the majority of the population in certain parts of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina might eventually unite with their imaginary reserve homelands of Croatia and Serbia).
59. What makes Bosnia and Herzegovina special regarding multiculturalism today is that, for centuries, multiculturalism has been an expression of tolerance between the Christian and Islamic traditions. Bosnian Muslims are Christians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman invasion of Europe.
60. Jozelić, ‘Politicization of Religion’.
61. Jill Marshall, ‘The Legal Recognition of Personality: Full-face Veils and Permissible Choice’, International Journal of Law in Context 10, no. 1 (2014): 72.
62. Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Jozelić, Education in Post-Conflict Transition: The Politicization of Religion in School Textbooks (New York: Palgrave, forthcoming 2017).
63. Benjamin Gregg, The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 84.
64. Ibid., 86.
65. Ibid., 113.
66. Ibid., 112.
67. Ibid., 109.
68. Ibid., 115.
69. Bosnia and Herzegovina might also consider Gregg’s notion of a ‘human rights patriotism’, as a form of national identity and solidarity that rejects the exclusionary logic of ‘blood and soil’ and other exclusionary identities. That consideration lies beyond the scope of this article.
70. Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 226.