REFLECTIONS ON BOSNIA AND ENCOUNTERING ISLAM
REFLECTIONS ON BOSNIA AND ENCOUNTERING ISLAM

Summary/Abstract: For a religious person, the perennial question remains: How is it that “religion” can so easily be co-opted by unscrupulous politicians to contribute to the shrill, self-righteous denigration of the other? How can a revelatory message be so easily reduced to “identity politics”? And of course, what are “religious leaders” doing about it? In fact, the phrase seems no more apt for them than for “political leaders,” as both fall prey to interests that so easily trivialize their stated mandate, God-given in both cases! So the drama in the “Holy Land” is but an ongoing version of what we have seen in so many other parts of the world: the Balkans, the African Great Lakes region, Central Asia, South Asia,, and other parts of West Asia. Several candidates compete to explain “what is really going on,” but they all come under the name of human venality, which faith communities have proven virtually powerless to temper over the centuries.

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