In early June, the ICJS brought Dr. Michael Sells to Baltimore to meet with community leaders and the editorial staff of The Baltimore Sun. Dr. Sells is the Chairman of the Religious Stud-ies Department at Haverford College, a recognized authority in the field of Islamic Studies, and the award-winning author of the The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (University of California Press, 1996). The following is a condensed transcript of an interview with Mark Steiner that was broadcast on June 4, 1999.

(Steiner) The war in Serbia may be close to resolution, but the enmities unleashed by some nationalistic elements still seethe below the surface, and they have deep, deep historical roots. This hour we talk with Michael Sells, a scholar in the field of Religious Studies and the author of The Bridge Be-trayed, which recently won the American Academy of Religion Award. What drove you to undertake this major study, specifically of the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo?

(Sells) In 1992 nobody was taking the religious symbolism and its manipulation seriously as one of the key elements in the war. People would refer to it, but they would often dismiss it saying, "Aren't these Serbs kind of strange, the way they revere someone who lost a battle?" And if you study religions you know that is not strange at all. That is what Christians do, that is what Shiite Muslims do.

(Steiner) We all do, don't we?

(Sells) That is right. So I believed that the Serbian retrieval of ancient struggles was not weird or strange or unique to Serbs, but something fundamental to human consciousness. And when I saw religious symbols being used with such devastating manipulation and power from 1989 to the present, I felt someone had to get involved and study it. And the more I got involved, the more I found that the religious mythology was indeed a central cause, a motivating factor, in the genocide.

(Steiner) I would like you to bring to us the story of Prince Lazar in 1389. Tell us the mythology that was created around it.

(Sells) At the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Prince Lazar was killed fighting the Ottoman Sultan. His death became a pivotal part of the Slavic epic tradition for centuries, for both Christians and Muslims. But in the nineteenth century, the story was refocused, and Lazar was more explicitly portrayed as a Christ figure, surrounded by twelve disciples, one of whom was a traitor, Vuk Brankovic. There was a maiden of Kosovo who was a Mary Magdalene figure, a Last Supper, and, of course, a betrayal. Serbian religious and political leaders refer to the events as "the Serbian Golgotha." According to the nationalist myth, the defeat is the crucifixion of Serbia, the end of Serb independence, and the beginning of five centuries of rule by the Ottoman Empire. This popular religious/national mythology was brought back very powerfully in 1989 at the six hundredth anniversary of Lazar's day (Vivovdan).

(Steiner) Can I stop you just one second? Go back to the nineteenth century. What was happening then that created this religious mythology?

(Sells) The mythology had roots earlier, but it was trans-formed in the nineteenth century by two things. The revolution of nineteenth-century Serbia against the Ottomans.

(Steiner) Successful or not?

(Sells) Ultimately successful, after a long and bloody history. And secondly, the rise of romantic nationalism in Europe. Both came together in nineteenth-century writers. They used this mythology to polarize Christians and Muslims, indeed, to trans-form them into eternal enemies. Much of the language that you hear about age-old antagonism doesn't reflect the history, but it reflects this particular brand of Serbian militant mythol-ogy very strongly.

(Steiner) So how did this mythology take hold of the con-sciousness of so many people?

(Sells) I think it touched what I would call "the power of the ritual" and "the power of the time collapse" in a passion play. Whether it is the death of Jesus or the death of Imam Hussein in Shiite passion plays, one senses the power of those events whenever they are re-enacted. In these dramatic productions, actors who play the role of the guy that kills Jesus or puts a sword in his side or kills Imam Hussein must do the deed quickly. Sometimes the audience gets so enthralled that they no longer think that they are in the audience anymore. They think that they are part of the original event, and they rush the stage to stop the action. Or they will beat up the actor after the climatic deed is performed. Our adrenaline, our emotions, our symbolic subconscious is living the drama as if it were the present moment. The imaginative connections that the story makes between the past and the present unleash an extraordinary power, individual and collective, a group psy-chology, that can be used for wonderfully good things. But if you have someone saying: "Those are the people over there   -- the Jews or the Bosnian Muslims or whoever -- they are responsible for the death of this figure!" The ritual re-enactment can be used with terrible destructiveness. That is the power of the mythology that was used in the nineteenth-century literature.

(Steiner) This mythology also identifies these Albanians, these Kosovars, and these Bosnians as Turks.

(Sells) Correct. Actually the Bosnians and many Albanians fought with Prince Lazar against the Ottomans, and the Otto-mans also had in their army Serb contingents. These were very complicated things; different warlords made their own arrangements. The notion that when you convert to Islam you become a Turk is called Turkification. This view was also developed in the nineteenth century and became foundational. If in the process of conversion, you transform yourself ethni-cally and racially into another people, then you are not a part of the same people. And so when someone who is a Slavic Muslim and whose ancestors have been there for centuries is called a Turk, a dangerous equation is developed. Slavic Muslims are told that they don't belong in Europe. They are not part of the people and have no place in the nation. That notion of Turkification was fundamental to the development of this extremely militant version of the Kosovo mythology.

(Steiner) You often hear that this war going on now, this battle between Serbs and Kosovars, Serbs and Muslim Bos-nians, is hundreds if not a thousand years old, that it has these deep roots in history between tribes of different reli-gions, and that no one can resolve the root causes of the problem. But the story you are telling us indicates that the news media often has it wrong.

(Sells) Well, the battle is ancient. The notion that because of the ancient battle these people are destined to fight, that conflict is inevitable and is part of their culture -- that is a mistake. That would be like saying, because we in the United States have old antagonisms with the Native Americans and with African-Americans, because we have problems that continue to exist today, we are inevitably doomed to civil war and self-destruction. That's the belief of those who want ethnic and religious separation. And that's their ideology. But if one looks at Bosnia especially, one sees that there were five hundred years of shared civilization. The Catholic church, the Orthodox church, the synagogue, and the mosque in Sarajevo were built right next to one another. These people had wars in the past, like we've had wars in the past, but they built a tremendously sophisticated and beautiful civilization. Some people who went to the Sarajevo Olympics were those who were most resistant to the simplified notions that these people have always been fighting each other. They saw these people living together very well, and many of the students that I have come to know said that they never thought of them-selves as Muslims or as Orthodox or as Catholics until these militias came in and went into the villages, separated people out, and said, "You are a Muslim. You are an Orthodox. One of you lives and one of you dies."