How Kosovo Created its Own Liberal Islam

Standpoint ^ | July 2008 | MICHAEL J. TOTTEN

[Cronos]

Wrong, the most recent problem started when the Kosovo Albanians began their ethnic cleansing of Serb, Jew, and Roma residents by a sustained terror campaign, including rape and murder, in the 1980’s.

This was documented by David Binder of the New York Times.

You condemn the NYT when you disagree with it and you quote it when you agree with it? No, the ethnic cleansing didn't start in the 1980s under the communists who tried to obliterate all differences. It started in the 1990s. And there are links that quote the other way around, so the truth really is that some crazies on both side were the instigators. I refuse to believe that the majority of Serbs want to commit genocide and I do not believe that the majority of Albanian-Kosovans want that either.

[Cronos]

I said Stop making this an attack on Orthodoxy. I do not see this as being that, I see the entire Kosovo issue as being more ethnic than anything

you said Your superficial naivete regarding ethnicity and religion or ideology in the Balkans leads you to wrong conclusions.

How do the two sentences co-relate? FACT: the Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, Montenegrins, Macedonians are southern Slavs. FACT: there were Thracians-Dacian-Illyrians living in the lands that are now occupied by the former Yugoslav and Albania and parts of northern Greece and European Turkey. FACT: both the Thracians-D-I's and the Slavs were Indo-European. FACT: in other influxes of populations around the world, the natives are subsumed in the newcomers, and the cultures could go either way.

examples for this -- Dorians, Alexandrine-era Macedonians took Greek culture and became Greeks. Another: the Ainu were assimilated into the Japanese. Another: the Akkadians took over Sumerian cities but the base strata of people remained the same and the culture was Sumerian-Akkadian. Another: the Bulgars conquered what is now Bulgaria but the majority "blood" in Bulgaria is Slavic. Another Turkic tribe conquered Azerbaijan, but the people there are Irani, the Die Viet conquered the Champa but the Champa still remain.


Now, let's look at specifics. Before the Bulgarians came in, you had Slavs and T-D-I's living in the Balkans. Serbs, Croats and Bosnians are essentially the same people separated by religion -- granted that the separated is 400 to 1000 years old. Serbs, Croats, Bosnians live near where the Albanians have lived, correct? There WOULD be dissemination of bloodlines and genetics holds that as true.

Now, keeping all of that in mind, what are the wrong conclusions you say I have made?

[Cronos]

Your real agenda smacks of hatred of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Name one statement I made that says that or even infers that. I challenge you to point out any of my posts here that are in any way even talking badly about Eastern Orthodoxy. I have a lot of respect for the Eastern lung of The Church and believe that it has preserved a lot of Christendom

However, pointing out bad sides of SOME Albanians and SOME Serbs does not make a statement anti-EO. Sheesh, so if tomorrow someone says that a street in Belgrade wasn't cleaned on Monday, you would take that to be an attack on Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole? Sheesh

At no point have I even condemned the Serbian people as a whole. On the other hand, you have used incredibly vile terms to refer to Albanians (and I'm not Albanian, not even from the Balkans) which really means that you are blinded with hatred.


Finally, for the Parthenon Marbles, yes, they should be returned to Greece now as modern-day free Greece can take care of it's own heritage pretty well. The only reason it's still in the British Museum is money and pride -- a lot of people want to see the glories of ancient Greece and the British Museum gets a halo by having the marbles. They should return it, just like the Italians returned a stele to Ethiopia (taken by Mussolini)

[FormerLib]

You condemn the NYT when you disagree with it and you quote it when you agree with it?

I condemn the NYT when they posture as journalists to promote the Left agenda. I quote it when they get the facts right.

Unless you can disprove what Binder documented?

[Cronos]

I said that there were articles posing “proof” either way. Your statment of “I condemn the NYT when they posture as journalists to promote the Left agenda. I quote it when they get the facts right.” — translates as “I condemn them when I say they’re wrong and I quote them when I say they get the facts right” — not quite kosher.

[Diocletian]

Cronos, don’t bother with FormerLib. He/she is incapable of intelligent discussion. All Albanians are Jihadist fanatics, all Croatians are Nazi bloodkillers, all Serbs are heroic victims.

[FormerLib]

So, you didn’t even bother to read the Binder articles, did you?

[FormerLib]

Did I hear a Seig Heil in there?

Oh yeah, it’s Dio.

[Diocletian]

See what I mean? Incapable of intelligent discussion. Instead, like a liberal, he/she resorts to smears and name calling.

[FormerLib]

I don’t cast my pearls before swine, is all.

Deal with it, chumley.

[Diocletian]

Hey, continue to refuse to engage in intelligent discussion and continue to engage in petty name calling. It’s all you ever do.

[eleni121]

Advice: Nitpicking stats to support your absurd claims impresses no one except those who share your absurd claims.

One of the most absurd claims you make is that Macedonians “became” Greek-— Not posible since they were already Greek!

Based on your idiotic statement about “Alexandrine Macedonians” alone most of what you post is suspect.

[Cronos]

You seem quite right about that person — completely unreasonable and also ruinging her cause by acting like the angry muslim rage-boy

[Cronos]

One of the most absurd claims you make is that Macedonians “became” Greek-— Not posible since they were already Greek!

Do READ a bit. Macedonians during the time of Alexander and his father (hence the term "Alexandrine" Macedonians for short), were looked down upon by Greeks from the Pelopponese as being barbarians with Greek kings -- read up a bit.

Read up also about how the Macedonians and Thracians supported Shahenshah Xerxes when he attempted to subdue the Hellenes.

The Macedonians of that era were NOT "Greek" in the classic sense. In fact, if you go back in history you see that Hellenic civilisation dates from Cretan-Mycenean-Dorian-.... in that progression. When the Mycenea were conquered by the Dorians, the Dorians adopted the higher culture, ditto for when the Macedonians came to control the Greek city-states.

Do you actually read?

[Cronos]

not completely true -- there were deep ethnic hatred going on there. Look at the comments over here by some people who call themselves Serb-supporters who just spout ethnic (not religious) hatred against Albanians, a non-Slavic group. They throw the term jihadists against the Albanians and then ignore the news that 20-30% of people in albania proper and 4% (and growing) in Kosovo Albanians are Christian: Albanian Orthodox or Catholic because that would ruin the plank of calling them jihadists.

I was also initially drawn to believe this, but the latest news, and more importantly, the frenzied comments posted here that spout ethnic violence and genocide make me doubt that religion is the root cause as opposed to ethnicity