Survey on the responses of BH religious communities to restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has raised unique issues at the crossroads of religion, law, and the state, but also at the level of intrareligious standardization and religious rights. Some of these issues are covered in the new issue of the Journal of Law, Religion and State, whose articles are already available online at:
brill.com/abstract/journals/jlrs/aop/issue.xml.
 
Among the published articles is the article “Restrictions on Religions due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses of Religious Communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina” by Dr. Nedim Begović, associate professor at the Faculty of Islamic Sciences, University of Sarajevo. The paper explores the recent restrictions on religions in Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of religious gatherings and religious observance due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the perceptions and responses of four traditional religious communities - the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian Orthodox Church and Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina - to the given restrictions. The paper analyzes state and entity regulations, guidelines and activities of religious communities during the pandemic, and media articles dealing with the relationship between religion and COVID-19 at the domestic and regional levels to determine the extent to which BiH religious leaders and institutions have succeeded in translating state health recommendations into a theological discourse capable of mobilizing the religious consciousness of members of religious communities and shaping their attitude toward a pandemic.
 The Journal of Law, Religion and State is an international forum for studying the interactions between law and religion, and religion and the state. These interactions are explored from a legal and constitutional, but also an internal religious perspective. The journal, published by Brill, is indexed in the international bibliographic database SCOPUS, and according to the bibliometric indicators SCImago Journal & Country Rank, in the period from 2014 to 2018, it was ranked in the Q2 and Q1 quarters.

Source: Faculty of Islamic Studies