Viewed with scholarly caution through a dense thicket of competing interpretations, the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina can readily be defined as a religious conflict as well. Perhaps the pivotal question remains: Was it a clash of religious policies, or of political faiths? Through a broader lens of reflection and analysis, this text examines the core of the religious idea within the contemporary discourse of political resurrection - a concept heavily utilised by Serbian nationalism.
No matter how easily daily life lulls us into believing that armed conflicts belong to the past, they retain a powerful capacity to resurface, triggering deep-seated anxieties and forcing us to constantly ask: Is a new war possible? The danger lies in how this very uncertainty—the sheer terror of a potential new conflict—beguiles us into quietly enduring a persistent undercurrent of genocidal intent. Events surrounding the death of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić, which provoked graffiti (in Bratunac of all places) reading, "Even the unwilling will be baptised," spark a painful realisation: Where are we heading as a society? While we have every opportunity to enrich our world by embracing our differences and breaking the shackles of prejudice, it seems to be upon those very prejudices that the architecture of discord is built.
What we are directly and loudly trying to dissect here is the concept of religious politics. This concept is triumphantly paraded even at a funeral—a space traditionally meant for a somber farewell to the natural end of human life: death. Instead, an irrational space is carved out to manipulate Christian teachings on eternal life in a resurrected, sinless body—subverting the very idea of resurrection itself.
The deceased Ratko Mladić—a fugitive from justice convicted of the gravest crime of genocide—was buried on September 7, 2026, with full state, military, and church honors in Belgrade. Meanwhile, at the Memorial Cemetery in Potočari, three decades after the genocide, the remains of all identified victims have still not been recovered, as the locations of numerous mass graves remain hidden.
We must pay closer attention to the ecclesiastical aspect, which the media has significantly overlooked. Historically, one of the central roles of the church has been to remind society of its internal transgressions and the sins of the individuals representing it, including its political leaders and military commanders. The history of Christianity is replete with such examples. Yet, the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), headquartered in Belgrade as the sole representative of Orthodoxy across the former Yugoslav republics, conspicuously avoids addressing its own internal flaws—or, to use theological terms, its sins.
A vow of silence surrounds the atrocities committed by members of the Army of Republika Srpska, who are routinely cast as Orthodox defenders. There is also an open denial of complicity in the July 1995 Srebrenica shooting massacres, an act that directly violated the Sixth Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." Although these acts were carried out under military orders, church canon dictates clear personal accountability. In stark opposition to foundational Christian truths, the SPC continuously projects the source of all conflict onto the "Other," thereby stoking fear within the existing trauma of war-weary citizens. The SPC cements the power of prejudice by relentlessly focusing on historical tragedies like the 1941–1945 crime in Jasenovac, while remaining silent on the crimes committed by those it deems faithful and reputable believers. This feeds the myth of a global anti-Serb conspiracy, effectively resurrecting and justifying the rhetoric of isolation that characterised the Slobodan Milošević regime in the 1990s.
To the field of history, such maneuvers may seem trivial. History, after all, is the very discipline tasked with proving that the weight of verified facts and rational thought cannot be defeated by the irrational radicalism of tailored religious myths.
Yet, these ahistorical attitudes can lull us into a false sense of security, prompting the thought: Things aren't so dark; where is this genocidal intent? We are not that kind of people! And then, a heavily propagandised funeral of a war criminal takes place. Crowds weep hysterically, applaud, and exhibit an aggressive machismo while wearing black T-shirts adorned with paramilitary insignia. It is as if this display is a collective prayer intended to provoke intervention from a higher, transcendental realm—a raw show of pride and defiance against all those "Others" perceived as roadblocks to Serbian national progress.
The military defeat of the 1990s—no matter how much revisionist history attempts to spin it—remains a defeat. But in the struggle for influence and the preservation of prejudice, the Serbian Orthodox Church actively carves out its space. It is the SPC that buries the war criminal Ratko Mladić. Its supreme leader heads the funeral procession, while top figures of the executive and legislative branches stay away, hiding behind the pragmatic need for financial infusions from the European Union. Patriarch Porfirije Perić is not merely a religious figure; he is a full-time professor of New Testament Theology at the University of Belgrade, where generations of students have been ideologically molded for years. He belongs to a generation of theologians educated in Greece during the late 1980s, amidst the collapse of Yugoslavia. There, they anchored their ideology not to academic theology, but to the radical rhetoric of elder monks who were descendants of refugees from Asia Minor during the conflicts of the 1920s. Wrapped in "spiritual" prophecies about a Third World War, the restoration of Byzantium, the Greek reclamation of Istanbul, and an earthquake in Turkey interpreted as divine punishment, Orthodoxy was packaged for a dogmatised generation as a weapon of resistance against Yugoslav progress during the wars of the early 1990s. To them, the apocalyptic musings of Greek elders became absolute truth. Consequently, the New Testament doctrine of resurrection is no longer a promise deferred until the Second Coming; they promote the dangerous idea that they can manifest it in the contemporary arena.
During the student uprisings of 2025, which evolved into a broader civic push for state and societal reform in the Republic of Serbia, Porfirije did not just seek a foothold in potential government shifts; he actively offered a policy of "healing" in May and June 2026. For weeks, an ephemeral spectacle was staged around the relic of the Virgin Mary's Belt at the Temple of Saint Sava.When you piece these fragments together, the funeral of Ratko Mladić emerges as a calculated attempt to implement this dogmatic doctrine of resurrection: What didn’t happen in the end, didn't happen in the beginning either. The underlying logic is simple: If the Church declares at the very end, at his graveside, that Mladić is a hero—how could he possibly be a criminal who orchestrated the 1995 Srebrenica genocide? By literally interpreting the New Testament verse, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven" (Matthew 16:19), the Church purges his earthly sins because he "defended his people, Serbs from the Mujahideen." In this act of sacralisation, the patriarch drops the name Ratko Mladić during the liturgy, addressing him instead as "Ratko the General." Through this title, he signals to the faithful that "Ratko the General" is the newly resurrected, a figure whose name conquers the wicked. He is cast as Prince Lazar from a modern Battle of Kosovo, the one who "defeated the Turks"—going so far as to draw direct comparisons between Mladić and Christ.
After this analysis, which pulls back the curtain on a newly engineered myth—one that thrusts us back into the familiar, cyclic pattern of genocidal intent that originally traces its roots back to the 1986 SANU Memorandum, a terrifying question is forced upon us: Are we doomed to live in perpetual fear of a new genocide? "And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid" (Mark 16:8). Biblical scholars have long established that these very words constitute the original, haunting conclusion to the Gospel of Mark. Right-wing war narratives use Mladić’s grave to instill fear and intimidate victims, as if the fight for the truth is always back at square one—even though that truth has already been legally proven by court verdicts.
Speaking openly and fearlessly about the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and the 8,372 victims killed under Ratko Mladić’s command, will crush any attempt to sacralise war criminals.