Religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2013 census)[1]

  
Catholicism (15%)
/ Others (3%)
Religious pluralism: A Catholic church (left), a Serbian Orthodox church (right), and a mosque (center background) in Bosanska Krupa.

The most widely professed religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina is

Roman Catholic Church, and Bosnian Serbs with the Serbian Orthodox Church. The State Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the entity Constitutions of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska provide for freedom of religion
, and the Government generally respects this right in ethnically integrated areas or in areas where government officials are of the majority religion; the state-level Law on Religious Freedom also provides comprehensive rights to religious communities. However, local authorities sometimes restricted the right to worship of adherents of religious groups in areas where such persons are in the minority.

Government protection of religious freedom declined, especially during the campaign period prior to the

October 2006 national elections
, due to selective legal enforcement and the indifference of some government officials. At the end of the period covered by this report, the Government was implementing the State Law on Religious Freedom to protect the rights of religious communities and create a government registry allowing them to establish legal status.

Societal abuses and discrimination based on religious belief and practice persisted. Religious intolerance directly reflected ethnic intolerance because of the virtually indistinguishable identification of ethnicity with religious background. Discrimination against religious minorities occurred in nearly all parts of the country. In some communities, local religious leaders and politicians contributed to intolerance and an increase in nationalism through public statements and sermons. A number of illegally constructed religious objects continued to cause ethnic/religious tension and conflict in various communities. Religious symbols were often misused for political purposes.

In a 2009 Gallup poll, 77% of respondents in Bosnia and Herzegovina answered 'yes' to the question "Is religion an important part of your daily life?", while 21% responded negatively.[3] According to a 2017 Pew Research poll, 26% of Bosnian Muslims, 85% of Orthodox Christians and 43% of Catholic Christians reported attending religious services once a week or more than once a week.[4]

Religious demography

Roman Catholic Church, and Bosnian Serbs with the Serbian Orthodox Church. According to the most recent census, conducted in 2013 and whose results were published in 2016, Muslims today constitute 50.70% of the population; Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, constitute 45.94%; and other groups, including Protestants, Jews and nonreligious persons, constitute 3.36%,[5] although these figures are often disputed by Bosnia's Serb community.[6] In 2022, the Jewish community had almost 1,000 believers.[7]

Religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Pew Research)[8]

  
Catholicism
(8%)
  Unaffiliated (3%)
  Other religion, Don't know, Refused to answer, Other Christian (1%)

The rate of religious observance is relatively low among the traditional religious groups; however, some areas of significantly greater observance exist, such as among Catholic Croats in the Herzegovina region and among Bosnian Muslims in central Bosnia. For many Bosnian Muslims, religion often serves as a community or ethnic identifier, and religious practice is confined to occasional visits to the mosque or significant rites of passage such as birth, marriage, and death. Nevertheless, religious leaders from the Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox communities claimed that all forms of observance were increasing among young persons as an expression of increased identification with their ethnic heritage, in large part due to the national religious revival that occurred as a result of the 1992–95 Bosnian war. Younger believers who grew up in the post-communist period also have more freedom to practice their religion and more access to religious education. Leaders from the three largest religious communities observed that they enjoyed greater support from their believers in rural areas of Bosnia than from those in urban centers such as Sarajevo or Banja Luka.

Ethnic cleansing during the 1992–95 war caused internal migration and refugee flows, which segregated the population into separate ethnoreligious areas. Increased levels of returns, which peaked in 2002, continued to slow significantly, leaving the majority of Serbian Orthodox adherents living in the RS and the majority of Muslims and Catholics in the Federation. Within the Federation, distinct Muslim and Catholic majority areas remain. However, returns of Serbian Orthodox adherents and Muslims in recent years to their prewar homes in western Bosnia and Muslims to their prewar homes in eastern Bosnia have shifted the ethnoreligious composition in both areas. For example, the prewar population of the eastern RS town of Bratunac was 64% Bosniak. In 1995 the population was almost completely Serb; in 2007, after the return of 6,500 Bosniaks, the population was 38% Bosniak. Similarly, in Prijedor Municipality in the RS, approximately half of the prewar Bosniak population of 49,500 returned, partially reversing the effects of ethnic cleansing. Christians, on the other hand, seem to rarely move back to their old towns; the number of Catholics returning to central Bosnia and the RS, as well as of Serbs returning to the Federation, was negligible.