Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States (ISBN 0-19-517429-1) is a book by Vjekoslav Perica. It was first published in 2002 by Oxford University Press.
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The book explores the political roles of different religious organisations in the republics of the former Yugoslavia. Balkan Idols was described as a significant work in several reviews in academic journals.[1][2][3][4][5]
Balkan Idols was praised by Josip Mocnik in Contemporary Church History Quarterly as "masterfully written and extensively researched".[6] Writing for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Franke Wilmer described the book as a "remarkably balanced" work that shows "how socially and politically destructive the volatile interplay between fundamentalism and the magnification of unresolved or unreconciled narratives of victimization ... can be."[3]
Peter Korchnak of the Global Review of Ethnopolitics wrote that "[the] merging of national and religious identity defines the objective of Perica’s monograph: rather than attempting to explain the dissolution of Yugoslavia by factors related to religion, the aim is to trace the influence of religious institutions on nation-formation and political legitimacy in Yugoslavia."[5]
A review by Nicholas J. Miller. Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States by Vjekoslav Perica. Slavic Review, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 169-170; Quote: "Although most treatments of Yugoslavia's collapse take for granted that religion was an important factor in that event, relatively little has been written in English on the subject. This book helps remedy that situation. Balkan Idols describes the politics of organized religion in Yugoslavia, focusing primarily on the Serbian Orthodox, Croatian Catholic, and Bosnian Muslim churches. [...] Perica conducted primary and secondary research using a variety of sources, most important the reports of state and local commissions on religious affairs since the late 1960s. He writes assertively, and the book includes not only well-founded analysis but also telling anecdotes and vital historical and demographic details. Balkan Idols will be read with satisfaction by academics, their students, and possibly a wider public." Dejan Jović. Review of: Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States by Vjekoslav Perica. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Aug 2003, Vol. 5 Issue 2, pp. 262-263; Quote:"This is a very useful, well-written and challenging book, highly recommended for everyone studying collapse of Yugoslavia and relations between religion, nationalism and states in former Yugoslavia and its successors. [...] It is an exciting, well-researched and enormously useful contribution to—by now already very large—body of literature on the roots of the problems which resulted in disintegration of Yugoslavia." Franke Wilmer. Review of: Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States by Vjekoslav Perica. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2004, Vol. 72, Issue 4, pp. 1059-1061
Shay Wood. Review of: Vjekoslav Perica. Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States. Archived 2008-07-25 at the Wayback Machine Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe, Volume 2, 2006. Quote: "Perica has composed a well-written and well-documented book which fills an important gap in the historiography not only of Yugoslavia but of religion as well. [...] With the objective to stamp out the “popular misconception” of religion’s role in conflict, Perica’s book should appeal to a broad public audience and not solely to scholars and students of the Yugoslav states. Religious scholars should also benefit from this nuanced discussion about the place of religious institutions in politics and society. Readers will encounter many editorial and typing errors, transpositions, and misspelled Serbo-Croatian words, but this should detract no one from poring over this valuable study. Perica’s study will hopefully stimulate new research into religious institutions among Slovenes, Albanians and the region’s religious minorities, as well as the role of religious institutions in conflicts worldwide." "Book Reviews". Association of Contemporary Church Historians Newsletter. IX (8). August 2003. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
