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.
Hello there, Ronly Bonly Jones!
Back again in spite of your repeated bans, I see, and still quoting from the same old sources.
Don’t you ever tire of this game?
Do you support the current pogroms being committed against the Christian Serbs based upon the previous actions of the Communist Serbs then?
Because it certainly sounds as if you’re taking that stand.
Still trying to use that disproved old strawman of yours, eh Chicago?
Calling us supporters of Milosevic makes you sound like just another Ustashe.
Ronly Bonly Jones returns with yet another screen name.
Hey, does anyone remember the one he was using last time? There have been so many, it’s hard to keep track.
The name of the place is and was for nearly the last thousand years called “Kosovo” — a word meaning “Field of Blackbirds” IN THE SERBIAN LANGUAGE. The Serbs named the place and virtually all the cities in it because it was and is theirs. “Kosova” is just an Albanian bastardization of the Serbian name “Kosovo” that has no meaning in the Albanian language. Who owned “Kosovo” in the Stone Age is irrelevant.
Re the references — you, the brand new FR K-Alb apologist, plays “judge” — how cute.
And pretending to be “Sonny Corleone”, well at least the gangster part probably fits...
But you might want to wipe that bit of foam off your mouth... there is nothing that you’ve said so far that veteran Freepers haven’t heard before, so if that’s the best you’ve got and you are already this worked up, you are in over your head.
If you've got nothing better to do with your time, by all means pick your date in the History of the Balkans....and let's roll... I'm ready to Link,Copy and Paste.
and “Albania” has NO meaning in Albanian and many names in Kosovo are from the time Bulgaria occupied it. What does that mean? Nothing. Names come and go and if they could they would change the name in a heartbeat.
>And pretending to be “Sonny Corleone”, well at least the gangster part probably fits...
No, I am not from Serbia.
> Re the references — you, the brand new FR K-Alb apologist, plays “judge” — how cute.
Irrelevant. You got called out on a repeated lie and now you distract. So tell us about your sources or how come those “jihadists” aren’t killing Americans. There are 20,000 NATO troops there. How many have been killed by those “Bin Laden supporters” ?
Go and wave the Obama banners thinking that he might help Serbia in Kosovo. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979378/posts
Funny, given that most of us are on "the side" of those who fought both the Nazis and the Yugo Communists and saved 500 American flyers during WWII, while the US State Department for 40 years was kissing Tito's communist butt!
But don't let "a little thing" like facts get in the way of your racist ramblings... spew on, along side your Nazi apologist friends.
I used to buy into your lies, but not any more. It's easy for you to convince people that Albanians are scum, they have a bad reputation, but when say the exact same things about the Christian Croats, you give away your game. You hate Catholics just as much as you hate Albanians. I am happy that Croatia escaped the communist enslavement of Belgrade, and I am proud to have the great Christian nation of Croatia as a US ally. You on the other hand can count on your communist and Islamist allies like China and Iran in your fight against the USA you hate.
"Irrelevant."
No denial from you. Gee, thanks for clearing that one up for us. For a fleeting moment back there, I actually thought that you might NOT be a K-Alb propagandist wind-up toy. My mistake.
But if you think that I am going to sit here and do research so that you can label it as "Serb apologist", you are delusional.
Conservative like me are used to being called nazis by America-hating communist vermin like you.
Extreme nationalism, yes. No different than when Serbs destroyed Roman Catholic churches in Croatia and Bosnia.
As a Croatian I appreciate your post.
You should know: Sonny boy Corleone (LOL) just turned one day old in order to promote islamic interests here on FR.
You're smarter than both of them put together.
being called nazis by America-hating communist vermin like you.
Wow. Sweet. Sure you’re not Weasely Clark?
It’s tough defending fascist interests alongside Muslim ones isn’t it??? the hidden “you” seems to have emerged.
haha... made ya jump :-D
You say America supports fascism and jihad and I say we don’t. Nobody believes your lies and slanders about the USA except ignorant mentally ill fools who are already predisposed to hate the USA. You might as well try to convince us that Bush let bin Laden get away on purpose because bin Laden works for the CIA.
The Serbs supported us and posed no threat to us and yet Clinton killed many Serbs, mostly women and children. And no, I do not have any links to Serbs.
BTW, Bush come out against Serbs possibly wanting to support Clinton's outrageous actions - Bush's administration also gave a pass to Sandy Berger. The powerful protecting the powerful? McCain's wife has met with the radical Muslim Hashim Thaci in Pristina.
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