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.
Of course, you continue to pretend that the Albanian illegal aliens didn’t launch a terror campaign against the Serb, Roma, and Jew citizens of Kosovo to drive them out of their homeland but attempt to maintain the fiction of the evil Serbs just decided to oppress the poor Jihadists for no reason whatsoever.
In case you didn’t notice, it was the socialist thugs who ran Yugoslavia and oppressed the Serbian church who committed those crimes but it is the very same Christians who are now being targeted by the Albanian Jihadists in Kosovo-Metohija.
Hey, someone has to post in opposition to the anti-Christian, Clintonista Dhimmis around here.
The truly sickening thing is the pro-Jihad contingent on Free Republic that soil this place with their mere presence.
I see that those who hate the Orthodox Christian Church are projecting again. Does the asylum know these people have gotten web access?
Why are you bringing the Bosnians into this now, huh Bonly boy?
Oh, man. They must have smuggled dope in on your prayer rug & you've been snorting it every bow, for you to make statements like those!
You are just making this crap up as you go, with Balkan Muslim apologetics along the way, aren't you?
Your petty attempts to link Albanians with jihadists are seen as just that -BS! Look at the source... You're Serbs, you have an obvious bias...
This is Free Republic... nearly every person here can distinguish the Albanians, who LOVE Americans and always have, from the true jihadist scum in the Arab countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.
This article must really be killing you guys... Over time, the truth will be known, that they’re NOT the jihadists you’re trying to make them out to be, but they’re Europeans who just want to enjoy life and be part of the EU... That must be eating you up... hahahaha
Save Kosovo? For who? You know the Serbs have no desire, heart, or courage to go back in there. Outside of the mines, there’s nothing there for them... It’s gone... 47 countries have recognized it... It’ll NEVER be undone, deal with it
The Serbian Obama girl showed up.
When the Austro Hungarians fought in 1680’s alongside Albanian tribesman from Kelmendi, you run like cowards, even before the Turks came. You call it the “Great Migration” when instead it is the “Great Chickening Out.”
I don’t pray at Kosovo’s “Bin Laden Mosque.” Got any other lies you want to share with us?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Afreerepublic.com+%22Bin+Laden+Mosque%22
tell us how Serbs saved the west from the “islamic hordes.” Go ahead.
” Many peoples around the world have origin stories regarding their common ancestors. It is now possible to determine whether these stories have a basis in reality, or whether they are simply common myths”
“At present, mtDNA is the only game in town, and inferences from mtDNA are always up for grabs, due to the potential for contamination, uncertainties about selection, and of course the simple fact that ancient civilizations were largely patriarchal.
An even more exciting development would be the discovery -in modern human populations- of the genetics underlying common human variation in metric and morphological traits. Then, by examing ancient skeletal remains, we will be able to estimate the genetic identity of populations even if DNA cannot be directly observed.”
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/01/on-genetic-palimpsests.html
And maybe you`d like to read interview with Dr Spencer Wells http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/nov/27inter.htm
“You are very critical of racism.
Yes. We are all much closely related than we ever expected. Racism is not only socially divisive, but also scientifically incorrect. We are all descendants of people who lived in Africa recently. We are all Africans under the skin.”
About Skenderbeg again...em you see, it`s on italian site about genealogy of noblemen (http://www.sardimpex.com/index.htm) and with excerpt with comments here (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/7681/perpjekja_2.html)
And you know Serbs are even more old than Albanians in Balkans..ye ancient Serbs came from Vincha culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin%C4%8Da_culture), speaking vinchian and writing in vinchian letters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin%C4%8Da_signs)...and you know that Leonardo da Vinci is descendant from old serbian Vincha kingdom... and what`s even more fantastic is that Serbs are much older then that…yes they are...old about 10.000 years – this was the great serbian empire of Lepenski vir (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepenski_Vir) from mesolithic period you know…and you know Serbs in Serbia and Montenegro often play on gusle old epic ballads about 10000 – 20000 old kingdoms and their noblemen... well Illyrians came during hallstatt period which was much later...
I`m glad that one of serbian (? ;-)) nobleman became albanian hero, but you also should know about real albanian "heroes" like Sinan pasha (well known to Serbs for his charity and merciful atempt to eraze serbian cultural identity by burning relics of St. Sava in Vrachar plateau in Belgrade) and also even more merciful Giorgio Basta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Basta), well known and worshiped especially among Hungarians and Romanians who know him very good and teach about him in their history books.
And about king Lazar, Brankovic etc…well…pffff…I never saw any Turk anywhere to say such a BS like this, so who are you...maybe you should apply yourself to some historian seminar to say that theses loud so that world can finaly shut your mouth and spare us waste of time. On the other hand if you want to save you from public humiliation start respecting other nations history by watching this video for example.
Go and wash yourself Corleone.
Are you mad?
Bigoted? You sound like a liberal. I support the Serbs and you can support the Muslims
The KLA are jihadist scum. No matter what you say.
Is that why the bombs used in the Madrid train attack came from Kosovo?
According to this and many other links -
1.The KLA trained in terrorist camps run by OBL.
2.Albania has a location where OBL and the KLA met.
3.Many Islamic terrorists who are not Albanian were enlisted to help kill Serbs.
4.Saudis were smuggled into Kosovo to help fight the Jihad against the Serbs.
5. France and Germany both reported that the KLA were involved in billions of dollars in drug trade all over Europe.
What part of global jihad = Kosovo don't you get?
And you know Serbs are even more old than Albanians in Balkans..ye ancient Serbs came from Vincha culture Vincha culture, speaking vinchian and writing in vinchian letters vinchian letters and you know that Leonardo da Vinci is descendant from old serbian Vincha kingdom... and what`s even more fantastic is that Serbs are much older then that…yes they are...old about 10.000 years – this was the great serbian empire of Lepenski vir Lepenski vir from mesolithic period you know…and you know Serbs in Serbia and Montenegro often play on gusle old epic ballads about 10000 – 20000 old kingdoms and their noblemen... well Illyrians came during hallstatt period which was much later...
Just to show the example of the historical revisionism which at the end always harm those without capability for critical thinking.
Serbs gave it their best shot, but the West decided to commit suicide instead.
If they hadn't, you wouldn't be here, barfing up mosques on every other corner.
Liar
I agree about the KLA, and any other terrorist organization. That doesn’t mean the Kosovo people are terrorists... The KLA no longer exists, so that’s a moot point.
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