ABSTRACT
War changes people’s self-perception and their perception of others. For over 20 years, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been recovering from the devastating war that ravaged the country in the 1990s. The process of reconciliation has been slow and fragile, with a heavily divided political system, harsh economic conditions, and previously mixed towns largely homogenized. The three mutually exclusive ethno-nationalist narratives of the root causes and dynamics of the conflict have been perpetuated ever since the war ended by politicians and public figures of each ethnic community. Reconciliation is a complex, multilayered process of rebuilding relationships and restoring trust, and the poor political and economic conditions, combined with a post-war situation of severe segregation, have created serious obstacles.
This chapter argues that religious initiatives have considerable potential for reconciliation between the different communities in Bosnia, through informal, local interreligious dialogue between the different existing narratives. In a society that is divided, unstable and traumatized, some are still prepared to look beyond ethnic divisions and work on a shared future.
