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Restoring the house rules: governing religious pluralism in Bosnia-Herzegovina after 1990

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

The opening of the Muslim world in the 1990s brought a diversity of Muslim practice, belief, and authority. Bosnia and Herzegovina's experience with religious pluralism has been fraught with intense challenges that are due to Bosnia's recent history.

But Bosnian Islamic Community has dealt with diversity in an effective way thanks to the legacy of a centralised Islamic community that could claim monopoly but also steer institutions and discourses towards integration into a single community. Rather than focusing on ideological or theological differences and attempting control, the Bosnian response was concerned with institutional dimension and aimed achieving a certain degree of unity.

The chapter analyses challenges posed by religious pluralism and the governance strategies of Bosnia's Islamic Community.