Religion and education in Bosnia: Integration not segregation? (original) (raw)
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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 underresearched. 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.
ʺEuropean Islamʺ and Islamic Education in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Comparative Southeast European studies, 2007
Islamic basic religious instruction (mektebs) and Islamic secondary schools (medresas) have flourished in socialist Yugoslavia since the 1960s, and a Faculty of Islamic Theology was opened in Sarajevo in 1977. Following the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, religious education classes, placed under the responsibility of the main religious communities, have been introduced in 1994 into Bosnian primary and secondary schools. Since then, their confessional (separate) character has been a target of criticism. The international community and part of Bosnian civil society insist on replacing religious education by an inter-confessional subject called ʺCulture of Religions.ʺ At the same time, the Bosnian Islamic Community (Islamska zajednica-IZ) has opened several medresas and two Islamic Pedagogical Faculties. Medresas underwent an important transformation from vocational schools to general secondary schools with an Islamic moral milieu and lifestyle, while Islamic faculties are institutions training religious personnel and contributing to the (re-)definition of Islam in Bosnia and, possibly, in Europe.
Reframing the Relations between State and Religion in Post–War Bosnia: Learning to be Free!
Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2017
Since the collapse of Communism, and especially following the devastating war of the early 1990s, efforts to reach political consensus in Bosnia and Herzegovina have proved extremely difficult. Statechurch relations have in principle evaded such a destiny. Key to this has been the general, even if not always fully functional, acceptance of freedom of religion and equality as the main framework for resolving dilemmas involving the role of religion and religious practice. The state, religious entities and society at large have undergone a process of accommodating themselves to a liberal model of state-church relations, which was introduced as part of the postwar constitutional settlement. This article analyses the different stages and vicissitudes of such an accommodation by focusing on the evolution of the legal framework for religious freedom and equality as well as its actual implementation in practice.
Rivista di storia dell'educazione, 2018
This paper examines the presence of religious education in the school system in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. During the long domination of the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia and Herzegovina only had confessional schools which were built near the churches or mosques. In these schools children were taught how to read and write and the basics of mathematics. The priests were teachers in these schools. Religious education was a compulsory subject. When Austro-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, this country faced new challenges related to education. The new authority attempted to implement a new model of schooling so called inter-confessional schools. These schools were supposed to include children from three main religions (Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim). However, this attempt was rejected by the local population. The main reason was, that religious education was not a compulsory subject in these schools any more. Therefore, the government understood the sit...
'Religious' and 'Secular' in Socialist Bosnia-Herzegovina 1945-1980s
This thesis analyzes the Communist experiment of the separation of Church & state and secularization policies, alongside an ethnic accommodation of Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims in multi-confessional Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Communist period. How did the ethnic and the confessional categories relate to each other, and to the concept of territoriality? And more importantly, how did the process of secularization complicate the ascriptive categories of Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Muslims, as well as the concomitant process of nation building in Socialist Bosnia-Herzegovina? This research conveys a particularistic narrative of the dilemmas of secularization in Socialist Yugoslavia and its particular implications for Bosnian Muslims, whilst seeking to contextualize the violence of the 1990s. At the same time, it also raises a broader question of the place of religion within society and politics, modernity as well as of confessional categories amidst national politics. The complexity of separating the religious from the ethnic or cultural in this particular context illuminates the importance of determining the role of religion in a society, as an institution, a lifestyle and as a political category, before examining the question of secularization in a heterogeneous society.
The modern societies dramatically transformed themselves throughout the world, there have been tremendous changes at social and political levels that urge to reconsider and re-conceptualize the role and position that religion plays in present day societies. Religious or Secular worldviews in past have usually been understood as the opposite ones, that fostered exclusion of each other; or that one aimed at private while the later was focusing on public spheres of life. Thus there was a tendency to improve and develop secular doctrine as the worldview that would fully replace the religious one. During its history Bosnia and Herzegovina experienced many forms of the relations between sacred and profane or secular and religious relationships, from the alliance between the two to the full separation and even animosity during the communist rule. The postwar period has been characterized by religious revival or resurgence of religion into the public sphere that revoked the issues and questions how the relations between state and religious communities should be managed, what is the role of religion in public life, to what extent religious communities interact and influence over the public life, and what are the relations between religious institutions and institutions of a secular state. The major aim of this article is to give an overview of the development of state-religious communities' relations emphasizing on the relations between Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina and state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. What are the major challenges that both face in postwar period in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Religious communities and the Bosnian state: A legal perspective Bosnia and Herzegovina throughout its history experienced many forms of the relations between sacred and profane or secular and religious, from the alliance between the two to the full
Religious education in Slovenia
2006
The present collection of papers by the Kotor Network aims to provide new comparative knowledge about the the role and repre sentation of religion in the school systems of several Western Balkan countries, to bring out common concerns and shed light on the underlying ideas. The Kotor Network on Religion in Plural Societies is an inter national academic exchange in the field of Balkans-based religious studies (http://kotor-network.info). It was formed in 2004 on an initiative from the Religion and Nationalism in the Western Balkans Project at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Lan guages, University of Oslo. The international research project on religious education was launched at the network's second confer ence in Kotor (Montenegro) on April 22-24, 2005. The papers are written by researchers from the region, who live in the countries studied. They cover the republics of the former Yugoslavia-from northwest to southeast: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, and Macedonia. (A planned paper on Albania unfortunately did not arrive in time for inclusion into the present volume.) As originally planned, one re searcher per country would contribute a paper. In the final event, however, we are fortunate to have had teams of authors collaborat ing within each country. We gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via the above-mentioned University of Oslo project. This allowed us to hold the conference, provide research grants for contributors, and coordinate the effort. The opinions expressed are of course those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions mentioned.