The Bosnia genocide was religious in four distinct, compounding senses
Evidence
The violence in Bosnia was a religious genocide in several senses: the people destroyed were chosen on the basis of their religious identity; those carrying out the killings acted with the blessing and support of Christian church leaders; the violence was grounded in a religious mythology that characterized the targeted people as race traitors and the extermination of them as a sacred act; and the perpetrators of the violence were protected by a policy designed by the policy makers of a Western world that is culturally dominated by Christianity. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 368
Categorization
- DEFINE: Offers a formal four-part definition of ‘religious genocide’ as distinct from genocide generally — a taxonomy worth keeping.
Related
- Serb Orthodox clergy actively supported the genocide and ethnic cleansing (similarity 0.86)
- Bosnian Muslims were selected for genocide on religious grounds with Western acquiescence (similarity 0.85)
- The anti-Muslim genocide reused the Christ-killer myth once aimed at Jews (similarity 0.85)
- Religious violence in the post-cold war era is a global, not Balkan, force (similarity 0.83)
- Resisting genocide requires first confronting one’s own traditions’ crimes (similarity 0.82)
- The Christ-killer charge is a theological problem for all Christian traditions (similarity 0.81)
- The Bosnian conflict divided people on religious identity despite shared language and Slavic descent (similarity 0.81)
- Genocide in Bosnia shared structural features with dismissed U.S. militia threats (similarity 0.80)
- Croat and Serb militias jointly dynamited mosques across eastern Bosnia (similarity 0.80)
- Serb nationalist ideology fuses religious identity with race-traitor charges against Muslims (similarity 0.80)
- Balkanism falsely frames Balkan violence as fated by history or blood (similarity 0.79)
- Bosnian culture is multilayered across multiple religions and ethnicities (similarity 0.79)
- Serb extremists drew direct inspiration from religious epics glorifying Muslim extermination (similarity 0.79)
- Serb clergy escalated from specific complaints to rhetorical genocide charges (similarity 0.78)
- Genocide denial functions to preserve belief in a just world. (similarity 0.78)