A complicated answer to a simple question: Are believers and members of minority religions, churches and religious communities in postdayton BiH discriminated?

• Main Author: Nagradić Slobodan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Hercegovina and Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade, Serbia 2015-01-01
• Series: Politeia
• Subjects: minority religions; denominations; religious communities and churches; alternative religiousness; discrimination; constitutions of BiH and of the entities of BiH; Law on Freedom of Religion and Legal Position of Churches and Religious Communities in Bosnia
• Online Access: http://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/2232-9641/2015/2232-96411509081N.pdf
• ISSN: 2232-9641; 2566-2805

The work treats the real social position of minority religions, denominations, religious communities and churches in postdayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. In other words, the author researches real social, political, legislative, mass-media-communicational, economic status and a status of so called small religious communities and churches in other spheres of existence like education, culture, public health etc., and seeks to answer to, from rhetorical point of view, simple question: are minority religions, denominations, religious communities and churches, as defined and treated by the Law on Freedom of Religion and Legal Position of Churches and Religious Communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, discriminated or not. In the focus of the author's analyses are equally institutional sphere or so called minority religious communities as such, but also and individuals, believers and followers of those institutionalized and formalized religious-denominational- ecclesial subjects having been named religious communities and churches. The results of the author's empirical-theoretical researches can be condensed into nuanced and complex answer whose content leads to conclusion that minority religions, churches and their members in several spheres of life are, after all, in inferior position, in spite of declarative equality of all religions, denominations, religious communities and churches. The author supports such conclusion with numerous and plausible arguments.