Posted on 09/30/2008 9:35:40 PM PDT by Diocletian
Hundreds of Kosovar Albanians gather on Sundays to attend religious services in a still unfinished red-brick church in the Kosovo town of Klina. Turning away from the majority Muslim faith imposed by the Ottoman Turks centuries ago, these worshippers are part of a revival of Catholicism in the newly independent Balkan state.
"We have been living a dual life. In our homes we were Catholics but in public we were good Muslims," said Ismet Sopi. "We don't call this converting. It is the continuity of the family's belief."
Sopi has commuted 40 km (25 miles) every Sunday from central Kosovo to Klina to attend a morning mass since he formally became a Roman Catholic five months ago. This September was the first holy month of Ramadan during which no one in his 32-member family fasted.
The majority of ethnic Albanians were forcibly converted to Islam, mostly through the imposition of high taxes on Catholics, when the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans.
For centuries, many remembered their Christian roots and lived as what they call "Catholics in hiding". Some, nearly a century after the Ottomans left the Balkans, now see the chance to reveal their true beliefs.
"Fifty or sixty percent of the population are linked emotionally with the Roman Catholic religion. This is because of feelings about what our ancestors believed," said Muhamet Mala, a professor who teaches History of Religion at Pristina Public University.
EASTER EGGS AND CHRISTMAS
Originally Christians, the Sopis' ancestors converted to Islam centuries ago during the Ottoman Empire but the family cherished Christian customs for centuries. They coloured eggs at Easter and celebrated Christmas along with Ramadan.
"Islam started spreading in big numbers across Albanian territories when the Ottomans came in the 15th century. The majority of the people embraced Islam for economic reasons," said Jahja Drancolli, a religion professor who also teaches at Pristina Public University.
"At the time, if you were a Catholic you had to pay a lot of taxes to the Ottomans."
Around 90 percent of Kosovo's Albanian population is Muslim, with just four percent Roman Catholics. The country is also home to dozens of medieval Serbian Orthodox monasteries and churches.
The area that is now Kosovo was conquered by Rome before the Christian era and later ruled for centuries by Christian Bulgarians and Serbs. It became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1455.
Under the Ottomans, many Catholics converted to escape the new taxes or qualify for jobs and advancement in the Muslim-ruled society.
In staunchly Catholic families, often in villages with a strong social network, men converted publicly but continued to practice Christianity at home. Women and daughters often kept the faith, meaning it was transmitted to children.
Catholic priests administered the sacraments to these "crypto-Catholics" during house visits to the women.
The Catholic Church officially opposed this ministry to the converts, but local clergy often ignored that and maintained ties to the families.
The fact that there were "Catholics in hiding" was known during the Ottoman Empire: Albanians even had a word for them, "laraman", meaning piebald, or two-coloured.
Some crypto-Catholic families began to re-emerge in public in the mid to late 19th century, when Ottoman power was waning.
MOTHER THERESA
Many mosques in Kosovo were destroyed during the 1998-99 war between Serb forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. Since 1999, when the U.N. took control of Serbia's breakaway province, ethnic Albanian mobs destroyed many Serb Orthodox churches.
Roman Catholic churches were not destroyed, however, and most of Kosovo's towns have a square named after Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Theresa, an ethnic Albanian nun born in neighbouring Macedonia. She spent her life helping the poor in the Indian city of Calcutta and died in 1997.
Beatified in 2003, Mother Theresa became a heroine to many Albanian worshippers. A new cathedral, still under construction at Pristina's Mother Theresa Square, will be the tallest building in the capital and big enough to hold 2,000 churchgoers.
"We don't make appeals to anyone to convert. People call us," said Don Shan Zefi, chancellor of the Church's Kosovo diocese. "We are not talking about individuals any more. There are inhabitants from dozens of villages who have contacted us."
Zefi said the process started decades ago, but added that today there are thousands of people who "want to become Roman Catholics again".
The Islamic community disapproves of such converts.
The head of the Kosovo Islamic community, Mufti Naim Ternava, has opposed building a cathedral at the heart of Pristina and scoffs at new churches built across Kosovo.
"No human brain can understand how a church should be build in the middle of 13 Muslim villages," he said.
SINS OF THE FATHER
Inhabitants of Kravoserija in the south of the country have had their own church since 2005, with the help of the Kosovo Catholic Church. Beke Bytyci is one of five villagers who has the keys to it, since chancellor Zefi only comes to celebrate mass every few weeks.
Opening the wooden door, he crossed himself: "I will be baptised next week," he said.
More than half the 120 village families attend the ceremonies, and the small church is always full.
"My dad made a mistake in not raising me as a Christian," said Ferat Bytyci, a 35-year-old merchant in the village and a relative of Beke. "Now things have changed and I don't make the same mistake."
This is very good news. Bosnia had a similar group of crypto-catholics during Ottoman times known as “poturi” or “half-turks”.
These Christians better be prepared for assault and persecution, the Muslim majority (I doubt) will allow them to freely reject-the profit without repercussions. Pray for them!!
Albanian Muslims are barely Muslim. There won’t be much trouble, unless the Saudis send in the Wahhabis as agent provocateurs.
I love article like this. Can we trade some stanky Libs for these wonderful people? Let’s bring folks like this here and send the Libs away. I’d vote for that.
“Good point. The Albanian Orthodox Church should also have missions sent in to Kosovo.”
The Albanian Orthodox Church is barely able to keep its head above water. It is considered a mission field itself by most other Orthodox Churches. The Orthodox Churches here in the States have a number of missionaries there. I know one of them. So far as I can see, a rather cultish mentality has sprung up there in part centered on the person of the Archbishop. The Albanians don’t seem particularly religious to me, no matter what they might nominally be in a sectarian sense. Mostly they seem to be nationalists. BTW, there are claims of similar crypto-Orthodox among the Mohammedan population there. The same goes for Turkey. I suspect its all very true.
Koloktronis, you should know me by know —> whether they’re crypto-Orthodox or crypto-Catholic or even crypto-Oriental (and stretching it, crypto-Protestant), I don’t particularly care, as long as they keep the Christian faith. Going another stretch, I’d even rather them becoming Zoroastrian, hindu or buddhist as being better than the Religion of Peace
They knew it would have been suicide for their missionaries. As soon as one of them objected to the destruction or yet another ancient Serbian Church, the Muslims would have strung them up!
I am surprised that they would be Catholic instead of Orthodox. I suspect that the Orthodox would be handicapped by the nationalist Albanian-Serbian conflict. Although I am glad to see them as Catholic, still it is sad for religious identity to be colored by nationalist conflicts. We could go on about the theological disputes between Catholics and Orthodox, but I do believe that unfortunately there is not a little nationalism at the heart of if.
Even Satanism is better than Islam because Satanists have no unity thus are disgusting but not a threat to mankind
Atheism is much better than Islam
Albanians wear the mantle of whoever pays them. They are a completely mercenary people with no loyalty to anyone or any religion. If Albanians think that they can get money and goodies out of Catholics by "becoming Catholic", they are in. If tomorrow Wahhabis are willing to pay a better price, then they will drop Catholicism like a hot potato and start baying at the moon again.
They didn't keep it before, what makes you think that it will "take" this time?
I’d say that Islam IS Satanism — if you read in revelations about the Dragon and his false prophet and the number 666 and then you read about the prophet Mohammed and the holy Muslim number 786, you start to wonder
Muhammad is false prophet who left a trail of blood and human sacrifice via war.
Very similar to Aztec's with their priests in charge of massive human sacrifice
So I will agree that Islam is Satanism
Most Muslims are demon possessed to a greater or lesser degree
Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah (of Hezbollah) are fine examples of demon possession as bad as what Hitler had
They've fooled quite a bit of people here on FR, but that's only because the Balkans is quite complex and because most have more pressing issues to learn about and discuss.
And your "knee-jerk pro-Albanian stance" is ill-informed.
For one thing, you seem to think that this is some sort of "racial issue". It is not. If it was, Serbs wouldn't be marrying them, nor would I have even considered marrying one of them.
"you want to hear the scary truth? You Albanians, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians etc. are all related and probably a lot more than you know or like."
Uh, that's not some "scary truth", with the probable exception of the Albanians, that's "Balkans 101". Yet, you state it like it should be some sort of "revelation" you are sharing it with us "bigoted, ill-informed little folk". How incredibly arrogant.
Mother Teresa was Albanian
Again, a "no sh&t, Sherlock". She was an Albanian Macedonian. Why don't you ask the Macedonians about their "Albanian headaches" these days? Or the Greeks? Or the Montenegrins, where 17 ethnic Albanians -- including several with American citizenship -- were convicted of terrorism?
It's not "the existence of Albanians" that is a thorn in anyone's side. It the fact that they have become hyper-politicized into claiming "the right" to steal the territory of other sovereign countries -- and we in the US are helping them!
I am an American of Montenegrin descent. Frankly, I could have cared less what went on in the Balkans if there had not been outside interference. But when the US got involved and started lying to us about what was going on, that's when I got involved. And when I saw an Albanian who stole his way into the US from Mexico and then started using our system of government to bribe US government officials to hijack US foreign policy in favor of Albanians and use our gun laws against us to start a war, you bet I was pissed.
What do you think of Gypsies, then?"
Why don't you ask where most of Kosovo's Roma (Gypsies) are now? They are in Serbia! Because the Kosovo Albanians drove them out!
As for my assessment of Gypsies, I think that they got screwed. Cali Ruchala, an American of Roma descent, who used to run the websites Sobaka and the Pavelic Papers, is a web buddy of mine
"And, finally, to your point about the Albanians not "taking" to Islam -- do you forget about Serbs who converted to Islam during Ottoman times? And other souther slavs who did -- like Pomaks or Bosnians?"
"The Serbs who converted to Islam" ARE, with some exceptions, Bosnian Muslims. The Serbs did not, as a majority, convert or they wouldn't be considered "Serbs" anymore. The Albanians, however, did. They were primarily Christian and became Muslim, because it offered them more favored treatment (as it had for all the Balkan Christians who converted). And when Albanians became Muslim, they also became the Turk's best henchmen of Christians, especially against Serbs..
You think that my assessment of Albanians as merecenary is based on "prejudice"? Then ask, Skenderbej who lived there for five years and speaks Albanian:
""Their (Albanians) conversions have little to do with faith, and can mostly be attributed to the monetary and food assistance their families receive. In fact it is so bad that most Albanians equate religion with temporal welfare, not spiritual" salvation!
Cronos, you sound like Rodney King with this "Why can't we just all get along?" mantra. It isn't that simple.
Seems to me, you might want to get a hold of your own "Albanian problems" in Britain where the Albanian Mafia controls most of the sex and drug trade, before your start championing the Albanian cause!
Facts are facts and that's a fact.
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