Post-war Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Lesson (Un)learned*
Posted by editor on Thursday, 22 March 2018
The brutality of the Bosnian war (1992-1995) has been referred to as an outcome of inescapable tensions in multicultural and religiously diversified societies. This has been a particular trend among authors focusing on the Balkans in general and more specifically on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Many seem to argue that the differences between different religious and ethnic communities are too deep and wide to reconcile and too difficult to give way to cooperation and a shared future. While one can see hints of 'clash of civilisations' theory and its assumptions in such arguments, now that some twenty-three years have passed since the war, and we have seen myriad of interfaith and inter-cultural peace initiatives, we can look back to see whether in fact such views had merit, and explore what lessons we learned, or did not learn from inter-religious initiatives in the post-Dayton Bosnia experience. These lessons have a wider implication beyond BiH itself, and can provide helpful insights for societies recovering from ethno-religious violence.
