Books Religion more than race leads to Bosnia tragedy
THE BRIDGE
BETRAYED: RELIGION AND GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA By Michael A.
Sells University of California Press, 212 pages,
$19.95 |
By PAUL
HOCKENOS
Technically, the term "ethnic cleansing" is a misnomer. Serbs,
Croats and Bosnian Muslims all belong to the same ethnic group. They're Slavs,
descendants of Slavic tribes that migrated to the region in the sixth and
seventh centuries. All three speak a common Slavic language and are physically
indistinguishable.
The defining difference between the three groups is religion.
Serbs and Croats took on Christianity in the ninth century, while the Muslims
of Bosnia converted to Islam during Ottoman rule.
It seems logical, then, to describe the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia as
a religious war: The Christian regimes in Croatia and Serbia singled out
Bosnian Muslims for elimination because of their faith.
Yet this is not strictly the case, nor does Michael Sells argue
that religion was the primary cause of slaughter in the Balkans. The war,
rather, was one of territorial aggression, orchestrated and actively supported
by expansionist regimes in Serbia and Croatia.
But central questions remain unanswered. Why was the conflict so
violent? How could radical nationalist leaders so effectively rally their
supporters? And why, in a strictly territorial war, was genocide necessary?
Sells explores the war's religious dimension and above all the
role of Christian mythology. The author, chair of Haverford (Pa.) College's
Religion Department, shows that a particularly lethal religious-based ideology
was used to motivate and justify the war and the extermination of the Bosnian
Muslims and their culture.
The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox proponents of this ideology,
which he terms Christoslavism, concludes the only true Slavs are Christian
Slavs. This makes Muslim Slavs (the Bosnian Muslims) traitors to their race and
enemies of Christianity.
Sells traces the impetus of genocide against Slavic Muslims to
Serbian Christoslavic myth, which by the 1980s had filtered into public
discourse and the media. The central event in Serbian folklore is the Serbs'
tragic 1389 defeat at the hands of the invading Turkish Ottoman army on Kosovo
Field. During the five centuries of Ottoman rule that followed, Serbs handed
down legends and songs about the Battle of Kosovo and the martyrdom of the Serb
leader, Prince Lazar.
The Muslim, then, is portrayed as "the other," the Christ killer,
the heretic, the pervert, the sadist. Slavic Muslims who converted to Islam and
the Ottoman Turks are considered synonymous, an alien, non-European race bent
on destroying the Christian Slavs.
Sells also shows, though less convincingly, how Christoslavic
ideology in Croatia and among Bosnian Croats led to much the same results.
Nationalist Croats harbor the same religious stereotypes of Muslims, and also
the larger goal of an "ethnoreligiously" pure state.
But here this thesis runs into the complications inherent in
laying too much emphasis on the religious character of the war in Bosnia. While
the leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church openly backed the Bosnian Serbs
and either denied or justified their crimes, the Catholic church hierarchy in
Bosnia and Croatia, as well as Pope John Paul, vocally condemned the hard-line
Croatian nationalists.
Sarajevo's Cardinal Vinko Puljic became one of Bosnia's most
prominent spokespersons for tolerance and multicultural coexistence. Even
though individual Catholic orders and priests, especially from Herzegovina, did
back the radical nationalists, one cannot hold "Christoslavic ideology"
responsible for the actions of Croatian extremists.
Religion-based explanations of the war tend to lose sight of its
ultimate source: the quest for territory and bounty, the greed of local
warlords and the longing to join a greater Croatian state.
Nevertheless, Sells' provocative thesis sheds new light on the
genocide in Bosnia. An American of Serbian descent, the author spares Serb
nationalists nothing in his analysis of their ultimate responsibility for the
destruction of Bosnia.
Paul Hockenos, a freelance reporter, has covered Bosnia and
other parts of Eastern Europe.
National Catholic Reporter, December 6,
1996
|