For centuries, Christians (Catholic and Orthodox, but also other denominations), Muslims, and Jews lived side-by-side in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), based on the idea of komšija/komšiluk as the foundation of a good life in local communities. What is a komšija? It is not only a neighbour but also a symbol of goodness, help, understanding, and living together –a contribution to a good society. The basis of komšiluk is trust, and trust was lost in the 1990s war in BiH when different groups of komšija turned against each other in violent confrontations. While the Balkans may seem like a region of violent history to the rest of Europe, the multiple religions helped sustain neighbourliness as an essential component of identities. Although the role of religious communities was ambiguous during and after the Bosnian War, they managed in 1997 to form the Interreligious Council for Peace. Yet, the local boards of this Council started to function only in the mid-2010s. They help organize highly religious local society in a community that heals war wounds, accepts the loss, refuses to use the Good vs. Evil narrative, and forms steps towards reconciliation. Rehabilitating the idea of komšija between clerics themselves and between specific segments of local society (youth, women, and even war veterans) is a path to preserving the interreligious dialogue in BiH as one possible support pillar for positive peace. In this commentary, and based on my active involvement in interfaith dialogue on the macro-regional scale, I will highlight the specificities of the Bosnian case, have a look at the state-socialist past, and reflect on the shortcomings of interreligious dialogue to show how such interfaith attempts connect and divide societies and politics in the region.

It became almost a cliché to say that religion is often a missing tool of development and peace in societies worldwide. Indeed, it is both a challenge and an opportunity to include religious actors, particularly in highly religious communities such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a challenge for the Western Balkans (WB) to be confronted with immense challenges in terms of democratization, often amid rising post-secular tendencies (Mavelli and Petito, 2014: 7). However, religion might play a constructive role in development. Therefore, the various approaches promoting positive peace should not overlook the opportunity to gain support from religious authorities in every village and neighbourhood.

Religion was (or still is) an instrument of identification within nation-states. In the specific case of the WB, especially BiH, ‘religion’ does not automatically involve faith: we are talking about an identity marker, a sense of belonging without necessarily believing, where religion is reduced to a sign of national and ethnic identity. Faith and such identity markers are not inevitably close ‘neighbours.’

In socialist Yugoslavia, sacred beliefs were hidden behind the masks of the Yugoslav communist ideology of brotherhood and unity. Since the violent breakup of the federation, many political battles have been fought with religious masks (Mardešić, 1997). Such a tool has shown to be useful to the political system, as it better integrates the people and makes them nationally homogeneous. It formed a very classic idea of the Croat as a ­Catholic, the Serb or Macedonian as an Orthodox, and the Bosniak or Albanian as a Muslim. Well enrooted in public representations, it is almost inconceivable that an ethnically close komšija could be of some other faith, per definition proper to another ethnic komšija).

In such a fractured national environment, religious institutions could contribute to conflict resolution and reconciliation as third-side bridge-builders, as part of Track II diplomacy, focusing on transitional justice, dealing with the past, and humanitarian issues. Within this track, interreligious peacebuilding is not alone in achieving peace in any conflict area or subject. The accent is on connections and coordination between various segments of post-conflict society and its historical experiences. The idea is to encourage and support dialogue, i.e., constructive neighbourhood relations between groups living close to each other. However, in BiH, clerics seem to co-opt with political parties to strengthen partisanship, either willingly or under duress (due to the undefined nature of finances, unsolved property rights, or other ways in which politics keeps religious actors loyal). Again, those clerics who cooperate with NGOs or have individual initiatives are marginalized or punished by the clerical authorities. The proximity between clerics and political parties must be more transparent and uphold constructive cooperation between the state and religious actors.

In the proximity of the recent and violent past, dialogue can be painful. But if it contains trust, a certain degree of consensus might follow. What is worrisome is the core distrust among religious communities: even when there is a willingness to dialogue, one might still wonder if the approach is heartfelt. The ground rules for dialogue need to be revised: confidentiality, safety, respect for differences, and allowing people to speak freely and without interruptions need improvement. In most of our communication, we advise people on what they need to be doing and what we are trying to do. This is not the case with dialogue, where we try to keep people from telling people what they need to do and how to fix things. The clerics are asked to listen to people's stories rather than advise them. There is much need to practice this segment of dialogue. For instance, clerics were obliged to listen rather than to inform women who were victims of rape in the Bosnian War. As a consequence, Bosnia and Herzegovina is among very few countries having a manual for clerics who approach victims of rape and war crimes.

Consequently, clerics tend to avoid hard-core issues, refrain from surface-hidden topics, and stick to the expectations of party politics. In the current situation, that of a post-conflict society entrenched in negative peace, frozen in the aftermath of civil war, there are more suitable models to follow than the so-called harmony model. Avoiding contentious topics for a long time is counterproductive: it maintains toxic proximity with the recent past. Instead, we should shift to a conflict or liberation model with political action and critical/confronting ideas, where the purpose is to engage and appreciate differences. The harmony model can be helpful as a starting point for interreligious dialogue for peace, and it should lead to the capacity to confront and appreciate differences.

Unfortunately, the religious communities in BiH are barely ready to do so. Discovering, understanding, and tackling negative stereotypes in such circumstances is more than challenging. When a project tackles this issue, it stops there and does not venture into the conflictual political system. Although many directly accuse the conflictual political system and media of sensationalist and populist apparatus, they remain passive in the next step. Most clerics stay within the walls of their religious comfort and self-bound themselves from stepping outside and manifesting the social reality. Most would like to be active and do something good for the common good without necessarily dealing with differences or conflictual issues. In a komšija system, one always respects the living space of one’s komšija and should never step inside another’s courtyard.

There are many obstacles to conducting a genuine dialogue. One obstacle is the dialogue through a religious-centric and defensive approach. This is one of the main challenges that face dialogue in general and inter-religious dialogue in particular. It is a significant reason behind spoilers too. In essence, they view their faith as the only correct faith to view the world, and they will be very defensive whenever they talk about their faith. Others must dialogue through this heavy, dense sense of defensiveness, a severe obstacle. Komšijas say: this area is mine, that one is yours, and we do not need to enter deeper and private conversations – and that is proximity without neighbourhood, an erroneous conception of space, its challenges, and potential.

Talking about space, another obstacle is the perception that interfaith dialogue is meant to be the space to deal with policies – not politics. This is compartmentalizing, meaning the clerics put religion in one department, one sector, that says they should not touch any policy issue. They do so out of fear of being proclaimed overly political or violating secular political order. This fragmentation of political and religious ‘boxes’ results from the toxic proximity of clerics and political parties – at the expense of the constructive interreligious neighbourhood.

Secularism is crucial to democratization, yet it does not mean a religious group should not have any political standpoints. This has further consequences on the local level. Small minority groups in an area will push for more interreligious dialogue but cannot tackle the serious issues locally. On the other hand, the majority group will try to avoid any substantial interreligious dialogue – even the harmony model – as it may collude with political interests. Interfaith dialogue should avoid turning into a recruiting place for political parties. A member of the dominant majority can afford the time and cost of dialogue, and they understand this. At the same time, the minority religious group feels such a climate, and they come to the dialogue to see the tangible outcome. They do not have time, as the time is pressing them to produce an agreement and answer their community about what the interreligious dialogue brought them. For instance, in a local interfaith board in the town of Bihać, in north-western Bosnia, the majority religious community (Islamic) member was absent for several years, as testified to the author by interlocutors for Ph.D. research. At the same time, Catholics and Orthodox pressed for more cooperation, finding time slipping out of their hands. Their population and believers shrink yearly, and their interreligious dialogue effort may prove futile if there are no people to talk with.

Interreligious peacebuilding is a potent tool for transforming post-conflict societies like Bosnia and Herzegovina into communities based on positive peace. Going beyond the harmony model is still challenging, and a significant issue of spoilers should be addressed before the religious communities are ready to tackle serious societal problems. There are advantages to reinvesting in the concept of komšija. Dealing with the recent past and facing the challenges of diversity, it might be crucial for WB countries to rely on political concepts and categories with longer-term sedimentation in their history. Diversity is given; it is the proximity of the other perceived as an equation between nationality and religion. Neighbourhood is yet to be established, and interfaith dialogue is hardly avoidable in the process of democratization in Southeast Europe – a challenging case among many others in the global world. 

Vedran Obućina is a Croatian political scientist, theologian, and priest in the Old Catholic Church. He finished his studies and Ph.D. research in interreligious peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Northern Macedonia at the University of Regensburg. He is president of the Centre for Interreligious Dialogue (Rijeka, Croatia), a permanent fellow at the Kaiciid intergovernmental centre for Interreligious and intercultural dialogue (Lisbon, Portugal), ambassador of the Institute for Economics and Peace (Sydney, Australia), and Alumni Peace Fellow at the Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand). He authored the book “Political System of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” several book chapters, and many academic articles about the role of religion in politics, identity, peacebuilding, and dialogue.

Read more about our commentary series on the Balkans and the challenges of democratic transformation HERE.