Posted on 06/29/2008 5:50:12 AM PDT by forkinsocket
On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption that it is not a viable threat.”
Nine in 10 of Kosovo’s citizens are ethnic Albanians, and more than 90 per cent of them are at least nominal Muslims. Most are so thoroughly modern and secularised that moderate doesn’t quite say it. The only word that can fairly describe Islam as practiced by the majority of Albanian Muslims is liberal. No nation can be entirely free of extremists, but Kosovo is one of the least religiously extreme Muslim-majority countries on Earth. Radical Islamists aren’t there in significant numbers now, and they aren’t likely to be in the future. Some places may be fertile ground for radicalism in the future, but Kosovo isn’t one of them for many of the same reasons that Christian theocracy isn’t coming to Western Europe.
I arrived here shortly after the declaration of independence, and the first thing I looked for – as always when I visit a Muslim-majority country – was the treatment and status of women.
Women who dress with their hair, ankles, and sometimes even faces showing in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan are often beaten or worse.
In Kosovo, by contrast, almost all women, even in small villages, dress like women in the rest of Europe. Streets, cafés, restaurants, and bars are not all-male affairs as they are in much of the Islamic world, where women spend almost all their lives behind walls. If it weren’t for the occasional mosque minaret on the skyline, there is little visible evidence that Kosovo is a Muslim-majority country at all. Kosovo looks, feels, and is European.
A small number of well-heeled Islamic extremists from the Gulf states have moved into Kosovo to rebuild damaged mosques and transform liberal Balkan Islam into the more severe version found in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. They’ve had a small amount of success with a similar project in nearby Bosnia, but they’re meeting stiffer resistance from Kosovo’s religious community as well as from secular citizens.
“We are working very hard to stop these kinds of movements,” said Professor Xhabir Hamiti, of the Islamic studies department at the University of Pristina. “These kinds of movements are dangerous for all nations, for all faiths, for all religions. We are Muslims, but we think the European way. I am a Muslim, I am a scholar, I know how to deal with Islam in my country. There is no need for Arabs to come here. I have no need for their suggestions, no need for their explanations. We created our Islam ourselves here, and we can continue our Islam with our own minds.”
It would be wrong to suggest Kosovo has no Islamists at all, but in the last election in late 2007, the country’s single Islamic party gained only 1.7 per cent of the vote. Kosovo is not the Middle East, and Albanians are not Arabs. The majority converted to Islam relatively recently under Turkish Ottoman rule, and Albanian culture was first solidly Christian. “We Albanians,” Dom Lush Gjergji recently wrote, “descendants of the Illyrians, are Christians from the time of the Apostles… Without Christianity there would be no Albanian people, language, culture, or traditions… Albanians consider Christianity their patrimony, their spiritual and cultural inheritance.” Gjergji is a Catholic priest, but I heard similar comments from many who self-identify as Muslims. “Albanian people are not very religious,” said Agron Rezniqi, of the Friendship Association between Kosovo and Israel “We come from Catholicism, and for that, we are not such strong Muslims.”
Perhaps the best evidence available that Albanian Muslims, in both Kosovo and Albania proper, differ radically from their Arab world counterparts is their relationship with Jews and with Israel. Jews in Albania had an almost 100 per cent survival rate during the Nazi occupation. The country was known as a safe haven where Jews could find protection under the noses of the German authorities. According to Dan Michman, chief historian at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, there were three times as many Jews in Albania at the end of the Second World War as there were at the beginning.
Both Albania and Kosovo have excellent relations with Israel, and Israelis are more than welcome to travel and even live among Albanians. An Israeli from Tel Aviv named Shachar Caspi opened a bakery and a bistro bar in Pristina. “Nobody has given me any problems or been against Israel,” he told me. “[Kosovars] had good relations with Jewish people even back in the old days. And nobody here is radical. On the contrary, people are very warm, they are very nice, they have taken Islam to a beautiful place, not to a violent place. When they hear I am Israeli, the way they react, they react very warmly.”
Much of the angst about Kosovo’s alleged radicalism centres on the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an organisation that no longer even exists.
It was a short-lived guerrilla movement that rose up against Slobodan Milosevic’s régime, first to fight for independence from an apartheid-like system, and later as a defence against mass murder and ethnic-cleansing. The KLA was always thoroughly secular and in no way resembled a Balkan Hamas or Hezbollah.
Its leaders also distinguished themselves from their Bosnian counterparts when they flatly refused assistance from Arabic mujahideen who wanted to fight a holy war there against Serbs. Albanians don’t fight religious wars, not against themselves, and not against others.
There has been no fighting or even tension between Muslim and Christian Albanians, only between Serbs and Albanians.
The danger in Kosovo isn’t that international peace keepers are nurturing a jihad state. Rather, a premature withdrawal may lead to a resumption of the fighting between Serbs and Albanians that they moved in to stop in the first place.
You forgot to bring up another point Ljubivoje, those were deaths attributed to ALL sides, not as NYCAlbanoid would have everyone believe. But what else would one expect from a proto-human propagandist?
Fixed that for ya! Truth counts, you know.
“Serbian and Russian obstructionist propaganda, aiming to mislead the world with statements such as Islam poses a threat and Kosovo sets a precedent, remained relentless.”
I wonder if the authors thought this comment would add to their credibility among Americans?
LOL! Oh, that's so pathetic that they'd even attempt that lie, having already driven out all the Jewish residents of Kosovo.
I hope you've notice that I refer to the Nation of Islam not muslins as an enemy. I do not know weather Albania is part of the Nation of Islam or not. From your posts and from other sources I am incline to believe it (Albania) is not. I do support the Serbs claim to (at the very least) North East Kosovo, Pristina area, since that is the heart of old Serbia.
Your lies know no bounds... You have no shame, do you?
http://www.newkosovareport.com/200807061024/Arianit-Dobruna/Kosovo-and-the-Islamic-world.html
Sorry, Jane, if that article weren’t such pathetic propaganda, it would actually be funny.
Here’s the World Bank & the OSCE population statistics for Kosovo:
Ethnic groups in Kosovo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanians_in_Kosovo
Year Albanians Serbs(1.) Others
1948 48.48 % 47.5 % 8 %
1953 45 % 47.4 % 8 %
1961 47.1 % 47.4 % 8 %
1971 63.7 % 30.9 % 8 %
1981 67.42 % 24.9 % 9 %
1991 71.6 % 20.94 % 5 %
2000/2003(2.) 88 % 7 % 5 %
2007(2.) 92 % 5.3% % 2.7% %
Now please explain to me how Serbs could be doing all of this “ethnic cleansing” when the Serb population shows a radical decline over 50 years and the Albanian population continued to radically ramp up. Albanians may have a very high birth rate, but not high enough to account for these spikes unless they were driving Serbs out & letting Albanians from Albania in. The Albanians had to be ethnically cleansing the Serbs for these changes to happen in this way — and it’s obvious from the 1991 —2000 changes, that the NATO bombing helped the Albanians finish “the Albanian ethnic purity project for Kosovo”!
Oh, so you're unaware that the remaining Jews in Kosovo fled? Sorry, you being unaware of a fact does not make stating that fact into a lie.
Why don’t you prove it? And show the cause...
Your lies know no bounds... You have no shame, do you?"
There were only 50 Jews left in Kosovo in February of this years, if they are still there at all as they were all trying to move to Israel.
Yes, you are correct.
And, that was discussed at that time (relevant to the post that I made).
Further, I have doubts about that most recent study I cited in that thread in terms of the percentages of the (approximate) number of 97,000 deaths between the sides involved.
More specifically, there is substantial evidence of incidences of Muslim forces attacking friendly targets, or shooting Muslim civilians, in order to blame Serbs. And, these incidences were not uncommon - e.g. the infamous breadline and marketplace massacres in Sarajevo in 1992, 1994, and 1995.
“Sorry, Jane, if that article weren’t such pathetic propaganda, it would actually be funny.”
Oh I agree with you totally Bokababe! I stuck this piece in “in hope” that one of the pro-Kosovo people here might explain to me why Albanians are calling on Kosovo to join “the Organization of the Islamic Conference”. Kosovo Albanians are so “liberal” according to them!
Btw, I found another couple of articles about both Croatia and Albania set for “all out cooperation with Iran”. Didn’t someone on the Balkans threads whine about Serb and Russian ties to Iran recently? I’ll send you the links if you want them.
Thanks for the BUMP. I read your posting of that article, and I thought it was pathetic AND funny!
Humor is a good thing to have and rather entertaining when it comes to the Balkans threads on FreeRepublic ;)
These were the key deaths that brought "Western" intervention into the picture and with the revisionist Hague and media outlets still try to whitewash the truth, they continue to rewrite historical fact for political expedience.
This especially apparent with recent announcement of Nasir Oric being "acquitted" of his crimes for murdering Serbs even though he bragged to the press himself of all the Serbs that his men killed.
How many Jews are left in Kosovo? Care to answer stupid?
No they aren't. During WW2, some Croatians attempted to form a Nazi Party, but that was outlawed by the Ustashi.
Again, I urge some of you to do your homework....but of course it's easier for some of you to lash out in ignorance.
That isn’t Nazism.
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