Violent and Unethical Non-Violent Abuse of Faith and Ethnoreligious Sentiments in Southeast Europe: Religious Peace-Building?

Abstract

The article presents a theoretical and conceptual examination of religious violent and unethical non-violent behaviors, ethnopolitical and clerical synergism, and religious peace-building capacity. I argue that the phenomenon of religious/ethnic violent and non-violent interchangeability adopted by national political unethical behavior has adverse consequences on the post-Yugoslav social behavior and reconciliation process; religions should be a moral peace-building agency. The multiethnic/multireligious socialist Yugoslav society has been violently transformed into influential ethical and clerical cultures, producing antagonistic ethnonational societies sustaining pastoralism as potent identity manifestations of the social capital. War-period visual violence and emotions influenced violent behavior and policy within the discourse "our vs. their sacred ethnic land," creating an unbearable ease of creating fear and motivating violent antagonism and war crimes. The post-war antagonistic media rhetoric, visual antagonism, and abuse of faith adversely impact peaceful coexistence. Ethnic, religious, ideological, and political contextual factors are challenging to generate in post-conflict, divided Balkan societies. Fear of others, religiously distinct, is a category that's difficult to determine and prevent. Western-Balkan societies possess victimological and political mythical conventions, honoring ethnoreligious war victories, defeats, and agonies, maintaining hostility and revenge discourse. Historically, religions were misused to justify violence and maintain non-violence, unethical sociopolitical order, and negative peace. The ideologies of religious superiority intertwine with intensely dominant national perceptions, so belonging to the Serb, Croat, or Bosniak people is equated with Orthodoxy, Catholicism, or Islam. This entanglement is the groundwork for despondency and a hostile peace climate. Current clerical and ethnopolitical policies lead further away from conflict transformation, directing toward the renewal of monotheistic spirituality, cognition, and violence. Political involvement affects "authentic" religion. We should engage in all-inclusive theological and consensus approaches to demonstrate that religions are peace-building agencies, retrieving and revitalizing authentic morality criteria. Religious sentiments mobilize people more rapidly than other identities.

Keywords

• clerical & ethnic
• Western Balkans & former Yugoslavia
• violence & non-violence
• social capital
• ethnonational leaders
• peace and conflict
• ethics

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