Muslim Kosovars Rediscover Their Long-Forgotten Roman Catholic Roots

Religion News Service ^ | 5/6/15 | Valerie Plesch

[marshmallow]

BROD, Kosovo (RNS) The Catholic priest followed the village elders up a narrow road that curved between the green hills in the tiny hamlet of Gjonaj in southern Kosovo.

As the priest, Don Albert Jakaj, 36, emerged from the wooded path, he saw the light gray stone church, believed by locals to be a thousand years old, surrounded by tall pine trees.

Jakaj had traveled to Gjonaj at the request of Avni Ademi, 35, a local who contacted the priest to get his opinion on the origin of the church and to validate his belief that the church belongs to former local Roman Catholics before the village converted to Islam.

The Serbian Orthodox Church claims ownership of the property and holds the keys to the building, which it renovated in 1993. But area residents believe it’s an ancient Albanian church, and they want it back.

Old churches in Kosovo such as the one in Gjonaj are reminders of the country’s deep-rooted Christian history, one some locals would like to resurrect.

“All the Balkans were Christian,” Jakaj said, referring to the legacy of the Roman Empire’s dominion of the region 2,000 years ago.

Under the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Kosovo from the early 15th century until 1912, most Albanian Kosovars converted to Islam.

But today, Jakaj and others are on a mission that they say reflects a renaissance of Catholicism in the country. Muslim Kosovars are supporting the effort, too, even though most of Brod is now Muslim.

“This is our history of our nation,” said Ademi, whose forefathers were Catholic. “These are our first steps toward reclaiming our cultural heritage.”

Officially, 90 percent of the population in Kosovo is Muslim; only 3 percent is Catholic.

But Catholic Bishop Dode Gjergji thinks those numbers hide the true spiritual affinities of Kosovars.

[Verginius Rufus]

I believe the Catholic presence in Kosovo dates to the period of the Ottoman Empire, when it was on the trade route between Dubrovnik and Istanbul.

Between the schism of 1054 and the Turkish conquest in the late 1300s, I would guess it would have been an Orthodox Christian rather than Catholic area, but I'm not an expert on the area.

[Verginius Rufus]

I believe the Catholic presence in Kosovo dates to the period of the Ottoman Empire, when it was on the trade route between Dubrovnik and Istanbul.

Between the schism of 1054 and the Turkish conquest in the late 1300s, I would guess it would have been an Orthodox Christian rather than Catholic area, but I'm not an expert on the area.

[Vigilanteman]

I remember reading that, in the generations preceding the defeat of the Muslim armies at the gates of Vienna in 1683, the Ottomans would hold a roundup every few years of Christian families throughout out the region where they would steal children between three and eight years of age and raise them to be Muslims.

The males would be trained to serve in armies and the females in harems. They would return later to fight their own parents and kinfolk. This was the source of most of the so-called Muslim conversions over the years.

[elhombrelibre]

Mother Teresa was from Kosovo.

Birth name: Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu Birth date: 26 August 1910 Birth location: Üsküp, Kosovo Vilayet,

[Mrs. Don-o]

"the Ottomans would hold a roundup every few years of Christian families throughout out the region where they would steal children between three and eight years of age and raise them to be Muslims."

Yes. These kidnapped-Christian-boys-turned-soldiers were the Janissaries (LINK), an elite corps of combat infantry who were abducted, indoctrinated, forced to become Muslims, subject to hard training and severe discipline, and sent out on the most brutal or militarily essential missions.

For hundreds of years, non-Christian dhimmis (like the Jews and Druzes) had to pay their jizya to the Ottoman Empire in money, but the Christians had to pay it by handing over their own little children.

[Verginius Rufus]

Mother Teresa was an ethnic Albanian but her birthplace was Skopje, the capital of what is now the Republic of Macedonia. There is a sizable Albanian minority in the formerly Yugoslav portion of Macedonia.

[Verginius Rufus]

The "blood tribute" or devshirme involved young males who were either destined to be Janissaries or to become part of the civil service. The grand viziers were the head of the bureaucracy and were legally slaves of the sultan, but started as boys taken in the blood tribute. One grand vizier built the bridge over the River Drina in Bosnia that is the centerpiece of a novel by Ivo Andric (Nobel Prize winning author)--he had his brother made the Orthodox patriarch.

There were also slave raids that were not part of the "blood tribute" that could result in hundreds of people being captured and enslaved, of all ages and both sexes, carried out against territories not under the "protection" of the Ottoman Empire.

[Vigilanteman]

Interesting stuff. What I find fascinating is that the Ottomans preferred training slaves to become part of the civil service, rather than their own native born.

We have almost a parallel situation in our own government in certain parts of the civil service where our own government demonstrates a strong preference of foreigners to natives. You can see this particularly in the State Department and the IRS. And don't get me started on the outsized number of Muslims in the TSA.