Sarajevo ~ a reflection

According to our tour guide, Senan, Sarajevo is "the Jerusalem of the Balkans." Aside from the fact that there do not seem to be too many Balkan cities contending for this title, in many ways it seems like an appropriate comparison. As I have mentioned before, Stanford's European campuses are meeting in Cordoba, Spain in November to discuss/debate/examine the role of Islam in Europe. Therefore, the exploration of religion in Sarajevo became a priority of our trip. Our first afternoon in Sarajevo aptly illustrates the intertwined and complex relationships between religions and between religion and state. As we were lead through the Old City, Senan and Bellina (a Bosnian student who was accompanying us) pointed out that the most important buildings for the four most recognized religions of BiH were located within a 5 minute walk of each other.

Unlike any place I've ever been to before, in BiH there are three major religions all of which are very closely associated with an ethnic identity. So, if you practice Islam, for example, you are automatically defined as a member of the ethnic group "Bosniaks." Ethnic Serbs are (Christian) Orthodox, and ethnic Croats are Catholics. The fourth religion that most people talk about in Sarajevo is Judaism, not because there are many Jews (now, the Jewish pop is ~ 700), but because Judaism has been part of the fabric of Bosnian society particularly in Sarajevo since the 1500s. All of the four religious sites that we visited that afternoon were incredibly beautiful and their proximity did, in fact, remind me of Jerusalem :)

Photos from top downwards: 1) inside the main Mosque; 2) the Catholic Church; 3) the Orthodox Church; 4) inside the old Synagogue which is now the Jewish museum.

Perhaps because I am an American and grew up being indoctrinated with the idea of separation of Church and State (at least in theory) the notion of being idenitified not only by one's religion, but also by default one's ethnicity is completely fascinating and also perplexing. While meeting with some delegates from the European Union and discussing BiH's potential candidacy as a "member state," we asked what were some of the main issues preventing Bosnia's proposals. The official mentioned the economy (of course) and also the necessity for a functioning government which can produce a sense of national identity. Now, I may have misunderstood the system of government in BiH, but to my knowledge each of the three ethnic/religious groups (Islam, Orthodox, Catholic) have their own leaders and have attempted to govern together. Herein lies my question, how can a people feel or experience a sense of national identity when the criteria of one's identity is, by nature, so devisive? This, of course, raises many more questions than answers. For example, how does a country with such a horrific recent past memorialize the events to create a collective identity and memory when the perpetrators and victims were of the same nationality? It is not often that one builds memorials and writes entries in textbooks about how this great nation committed atrocities against its own people...These questions are unfortunately all too familiar for me, as I am considering many of these same points when thinking about memorialization of the Holocaust.

With these issues in the forefront of my mind, it became much more difficult to formulate an opinion about "whether I like Bosnia," as many of my classmates have asked. One the one hand, it is a poor country with little to no infrastructure, a corrupt (non-existant) government, and seemingly, a lack of public interest to progress the country. One the other hand, this is a beautiful country devestated by an unbelievable tragedy that gets far less attention that it should. Its people perservere and are incredibly welcoming (at least the ones we met) and the country's history is astonishing. Sarajevo is a place where, for centuries, religions lived together and created their own society without much conflict and that should be remembered and commemorated. And, they have some kick-ass baklava.

I highly encourage you to explore Sarajevo on your own, should you ever find yourself in the Balkans. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to visit a country at once so different from any place I've been and also seems like a mixture of many places I've been before. If anything, Sarajevo has given me the opportunity to reflect on my culture, my country, and my identity in addition to refocusing my interests in human rights, exploration, and adventure.