How Kosovo Created its Own Liberal Islam

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.

"In contrast, Serbian sources allege that he was assassinated by Obilic"

You quote Wiki, a hanging place for Serb propagandists. This paragraph, ironically does not even have a source. Who do I trust, a professor who checks his sources or you, who have made his "bravey and sacrifice" the cornerstone of your nationhood? I didn't mention that Obilic might not have been a Serb because it is speculation.

"Lazar and a good number of his knights surrendered in a vain attempt to save their lives"

He is a Greek too: "Andre Gerolymatos, was educated in classics and modern history at McGill University in Montreal.

He specializes in Military and Diplomatic history, and has published several articles and books on these fields such as Espionage in Classical Greece and Guerilla Warfare and Espionage in Greece 1940-1944. From 1987-1996 he was the Director of the Hellenic Studies Center at Dawson College in Montreal and in 1996 he received the Hellenic Canadian Congress of BC Chair in Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. In 1997 Dr. Gerolymatos was appointed Director of the Research Institute on Southeastern Europe at Simon Fraser University."

A few questions for you "defenders of Christendom" /history rewriters:
How did Prince Marko, your hero, die?
How many Serbian knights were at the siege of Constantinople
Which side did Serbs side with on the second Kosovo battle and why?
How many battles did the Albanians, the Vlachs and the Hungarians /Romanians won against Turks during that time despite Serb vassalage? Only Greeks collaborated more than you, yet now you are at the forefront claiming credit.
I'll leave it with that for now.

Don't ever compare the birth of the US, to the birth of your little bastard narco-mafia state! Your little rat's butt "country's declaration" was based on theft, not on freedom or independence. The only "independence" you've shown is in finding your people a richer welfare teat to attach yourself to -- namely the US!

As for my blog posts, so you are the little creep who had been camped out on my blog that my site meter tells me is coming from "Tirana, Albania". It figures!

If you think that you are scaring or intimidating me with all this "Serbian women in the harem" and "quoting me on my blog" crap, you are sorely mistaken. My blog is administered and written by several people so that if I were unable to continue, they would. And I'll say the same to you that I said to the idiot who posted a comment to my blog saying that he was an Albanian Jew and yet he was posting from from Saudi Arabia where NO Jews are allowed, (In short he was a lying propagandist, just like you):

"A little advice from this Montenegrin American whose people were never conquered by your scimitar-wielding weirdos -- go plant one of your Wahhabist mosques on Antarctica and teach the penguins to wear short pants & bow toward Mecca, and get the hell off of Christian land! You don't belong in the Europe or the Americas, anymore than I belong in Saudi Arabia. We will never be dar al islam (the house of Islam) and if you consider us dar al harab (the house of war), then expect guilt-free resistance from those of us who know who you really are -- and who never asked for this fight, but won't run from it either."

In other words Sonny, to you and yours, KMAA!

Wendy said:

“No, I emphatically do not mean the Serbs. From everything I’ve ever managed to get hold of which appeared believable, the Serbs are the closest thing there is to normal, decent, middle-class people in the Balkans. I’m convinced everything we’ve been fed by NATO and Clinton propaganda organs about the Balkans over the last 15 years or thereabouts is total unadulterated BS. Christians simply and basically do not do the kinds of things Serbs have been accused of. Slammites on the other hand not only do those kinds of things, but excel at falsely accusing others of doing them.”

Well, Wendy, I’m going to have to assume that you are not of Serbian heritage. For someone who is not of Serbian heritage, you have described the scenario in the Balkans perfectly. Thank you for seeing through all the lies and demonization and for having the guts to speak the truth when you know it’s going to evoke passionate reaction here from the Serb bashers.

Other non-Serbs share your insight, but they stay quiet for the obvious reasons, so you are most definately not alone. Thanks for having some guts and for saying so much in so few words.

"Don't ever compare the birth of the US, to the birth of your little bastard narco-mafia state! Your little rat's butt "country's declaration" was based on theft, not on freedom or independence. The only "independence" you've shown is in finding your people a richer welfare teat to attach yourself to -- namely the US!"

USA 'stole' the land from it's 'rightful owner,' King George. Keep calling it a "Narco State" or whatever, it is free. I quoted your blog, but not because of what you said, it was typical Serbian propaganda you repeat ever Vidvodan.

As far as being a welfare state, yes Kosovo is poor, but we're almost done building the houses Serbs burned (I mean allegedly, becuase they're angels). It was poor when the "smart" Serbs run it and it still is. They're working on it, like US helped Europe get back in their feet post WWII. People are young and once jobs are created through investments, they will be fine. You attach your self to Russia (that gave you your independence and everything you have) we'll stick with the US. In early 1900's Kosovo was full of Russian spies and Consuls trying to make sure Kosovo went to their satellite, Serbia and nice chunks to their other satellite, Montengro.

Serbia is not that well either so do not brag and US is giving you aid too:

"Of the $53 million in foreign aid Congress approved for Serbia in 2008, $16 million is earmarked for "governing justly and democratically." Among the goals of this aid as put forth by Congress is "consolidation of the rule of law." Just under $1 million is specifically budgeted for "law enforcement restructuring, reform and operations." http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/06/28/2008-06-28_cut_serbia_aid_if_thug_walks_free.html

Take this guy Gerolynatos with a grain of salt... although our resident mafioso has become fixated on him.

All you need to know is that in his book on the Balkan wars he relies on pro-Turkish Genocide-denialist authors such as Stanford Shaw and Justin McCarthy.

This guy was funded by the Greek community to teach Greek to their kids..but who has made a living writing books entirely based on second hand sources.

He has the distinction of sitting in a university chair , made possible by the generous donations of the local Greek diaspora community Vancouver B.C. in Canada, a community which hilariously simply wanted a teacher who could teach their clod kids the modern Greek language, a language which Gerolymatos is entirely ignorant of, a major deficiency for a “scholar” who is hired to focus on Greek historiography.

But this is most important—so we can dispense with the reference—as we know there are always traitors to higher ideals in order to advance themselves.

Basically his slant comes with a strong liberal and liberal bias, as in editorials urging a separation of church and state in Greece, for example and calling for Turkey's admission to the EU! That say it all for this cacademic that the mafioso sucks up.

"it appears sacrifice is part of there national character"
it sure is, in their mind, and they're trying to rally the nation based on that. They forget what they do to others 'http://www.seep.ceu.hu/archives/issue61/herbert.pdf and dramatize every time they sneeze. They saved the US pilots who were liberating their country and have the nerve to brag about it. Chris Rock would say: "What do you want a cookie?"

They have a few pictures of Albanian peasants with a Nazi flag and call Albanians 'Nazis' totally forgetting their glorious contribution to the cause. They say Albanians did this and that for the Turks totally forgetting how good they served under them, with their Church's blessing, while the Albanian castles were last fall, and not before beating 2 Sultans in 13 victories, despite Serbian treachery. Even after falling, Turks were forced to leave Albanians alone, and every Albanian was armed to the teeth, and ready to rebel, Muslim and Christian alike. Neither paid taxes, nor submitted to Turkish law or culture.

Just as the Greeks who forget (or make believe they do) that their main heroes of Independence were Albanian, and the symbol of resistance was the village of Suli, 100% Albanian. The women who fought among men and then decided to die rather than surrender, were not Greek, they were Albanian (ironically the person after them was an Albanian as well, but it was a power play, not religious, and both sides were stubborn. In the end they fought alongside each other against the Sultan--as Greek history will not tell you). Their best fighters on the ground were from Suli and other Albanian Klephts (actually bandits, but it was a Robin Hood thing), and their best sailors were the Hydra and Spetses Albanians.

"The heroism and tenacity which both displayed as their normal opposition to the Turks deepened under Greek influence into a struggle for political liberty, have cast a lustre and a glory upon the whole war which ought by every law of historical justice to modify the judgment which civilisation has passed upon the Albanians"

http://books.google.com/books?id=n1QMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA222&dq=orthodox+albanian+suli&lr= (written in 1900 after Serb and Greek propaganda that sought to divide Albania)

Their national costume is fustanella, 100% Albanian as well, yet now they adopted it without any credit. Lord Byron's most famous picture is on the Albanian costume which he bought as he was fighting for the Greek Independence.

"The Albanian wear a dress with many folds called the fustanella. Their dress was adopted by the Greeks as their national costume at the end of the War of Independence" http://books.google.com/books?id=u_7Kva0-4BkC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=fustanella+byron&source=web&ots=rhWJtjhFIK&sig=elnLqk2qw5dDwtoZVfrq1iFZZjM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA242,M1

Google this: "It was an Albanian who led the Greeks in the War of Independence, and again an Albanian who commanded the Turkish troops sent to quell the rebellion" The powers decided what side won ;) and this was long before people had a clue about nations, just as many Greeks helped the Turks against other Greeks.

"sacrifice today leads to personal salvation now and eventually Serbian victory later"
The problems lies when they believe your own lies and when they deny what they have done. See Einstein's definition of stupidity, and NEVER underestimate the other side. We can go back and forth, propaganda, doesn't do much to those who are willing to go past wikipedia or Serbian history books. From Bush Sr to W Bush and most of Europe know what the Serbs did. Of course it may be a conspiracy against Serbia. Unless they keep them down by conspiracy they might take over the world. Or maybe not.

"Just as the Greeks who forget (or make believe they do) that their main heroes of Independence were Albanian, and the symbol of resistance was the village of Suli, 100% Albanian. The women who fought among men and then decided to die rather than surrender, were not Greek, they were Albanian (ironically the person after them was an Albanian as well, but it was a power play, not religious, and both sides were stubborn. In the end they fought alongside each other against the Sultan--as Greek history will not tell you)."

So if we were to believe your account of things, the Christian Greeks and Serbs sat on their butt and waived the white flag to the Turks at every opportunity and never "resisted the Ottomans". Instead in your version, it was the "Albanians who were the real fighters against the Muslim Turks (who also brought Islam to the Balkans)".

If that were the case, then please tell me why the Serbs and Greeks who began as Christians, stayed Christians even when it would have been so much easier on them through their 500 years of Ottoman slavery to take on the religion of their oppressors, as Albanians did? I mean, according to you, Serbs & Greeks "caved in" on virtually everything else the Turks wanted, why not religion when it would have made life so much easier for Serbs & Greeks?

And yet the Albanians, most of whom began as Christians when they actually did resist the Turk (although not alone, as you say), then wound up as Muslims just like the Turks?

The answer is that because the Christian Albanians of old have nothing to do with the modern majority Muslim Albanians, who were the ones who not only caved in and converted to the Turks religion, but instead became the henchmen of the Ottoman Turks! Yet, you seem to want a medal for your betrayal of Christ and of your Christian brothers, and not only willing submission to the Islamic invaders but even becoming their enforcers!

If that's your idea of "bravery", then you and yours are a lost cause -- and are certainly no "friend of America" worth having!

“”It was an Albanian who led the Greeks in the War of Independence,...”

It was, eh? And who might that have been? Sonny, Greeks don’t now and didn’t then take orders from sub humans, particularly dirty sub humans at that. For now we keep Albanians around for cleaning out toilets and such like. They seem to like it which, seeing as they come from a toilet of a country, is understandable. By the way, where did you get the idea that the Souliote women were Albanians? Epirus has been Greek since ancient times and the Souliotes are, as they always have been, members of the omogenia.

I’m told we won’t have them around much longer as Kosovo was apparently the next to last move before the big “Greater Albania” push which will result in the end of Albanians and Albania once and for all (the last move will be in FYROM where the Albanians haven’t the sense to know when they’ve got it good). Apparently a number of State Department types (and McCain staffers) are wetting their pants with worry that the U.S. won’t respond if Greece, Bulgaria and at least the Slavs in FYROM decide enough is enough. And nobody in Athens or Sofia will give Foggy Bottom Fairies the time of day when they want to whine about Albanians. They are right to worry, Sonny.

Good observation. I have no apriori stake in anything involving the balkans. I am not of slavic origin, a member of the orthodox church etc. and in fact I do not really even know any Serbs. I speak Russian reasonably well and I have a reasonably good idea of how Russians think, and there was a big question mark in 95, i.e. assuming everything you read in the media is correct and the Serbs really are the assholes of the world, is it worth damaging relations with Russia over? To me the answer was not really, but I could not have framed an argument or a case very easily.

When the whole process started up again in 99, I decided to make it my business to go out on the internet and learn as much as possible on the subject. Here's what all I learned:

As nearly as I can tell, the Serbs are the closest thing there are to normal decent people in the Balkans. There were 25 or 26 ethnic groups in the yugoslav federation, only three or four of which had any sort of a problem dealing with Serbs, and those are the three or four which sided with Adolf Hitler in WW-II.

In fact the Serbs declared war on Hitler and held him for many months and sent him into Russia in the dead of winter instead of on schedule, but for which we might all be working in a Nazi coal mine in West Virginia. In fact, the Serbs rescued something like 500 allied airmen who were downed coming back from the raids over Ploesti and other balkan targets. Any allied airman who ever parachuted into Croatia, Albania, or any of the other parts of the Balkans was tortured and killed. The Serbs paid a huge price for this, two or three million being killed in death camps in the surrounding states, which sided with Hitler.

Kosovo in fact had been majority Serb prior to the war and was the ancient heartland of Serbia, with 1500 or so orthodox shrines and monasteries. Many Serbs living in Kosovo were killed by the nazis, and Tito, a Croat, moved many more out of Kosovo, and then you started getting large numbers of Albanians moving into Kosovo to escape one of the worst regimes in the commie world in Albania. Most Albanian Kosovars are in fact illegal immigrants.

Bad went to worse after the war until Milosevic ended up having to rescind the autonomy of the province in 89, and that was the genesis of the modern problems of Kosovo. Milosevic had no options; every other ethnic group in Kosovo was being brutalized by the Albanians. According to every account I was able to read, in the winter of 99, there was in actual fact nothing resembling ethnic cleansing or genocide going on in Kosovo; only a bunch of innocent people trying to protect themselves from a low-grade guerilla war being waged by narco-terrorists with money and arms being supplied by other nations.

In fact the whole problem in Kosovo was the Albanians, who appear to be universally hated in the region. These people average ten or twelve children per family, and attempt to ensconce themselves into little corners of other peoples' countries and breed for fifteen or twenty years until they constitute a majority population in those corners, and then break those corners off into their "greater Albania". Greeks, Macedonians, Serbs and othere refer to this as "rabbit breeding your way to power". That's aside from rape, murder, poisoning wells etc. etc., which they also excel at.

From everything I was able to read, Albanians are responsible for as much as 90% of European heroin trafficking, most of the prostitution south of Germany, most of the traffic in stolen vehicles moving from Europe to Russia and the Levant, and on and on and on. Therefore it came as no surprise to to learn that the real reasons such as they were for our involvement had basically nothing to do with Albanian Kosovars, who no rational person could give a rat's ass over. There were six or eight real reasons for wanting to get into Kosovo and together they did not add up to a believable case and the pentagon advised Slick not to do it.

Nonetheless the thing which was on the front page of virtually all American journals at the time was the Juanita Broaddrick story, i.e. a credible allegation of a brutal rape by a sitting president of the United States, and Slick clearly needed something to get that story off the papers. A week after Kosovo started, there were pictures of Slick and his toadies doing high-fives and talking about hitting a home run. A home run, in fact, which cost the lives of several thousand little slavic orthodox children.

As near as I could tell, NATO commanders realized that this thing was another episode of dog-wagging for which they could not ask pilots to risk their lives over and ordered bombing attacks practically from orbit, and then when they realized they could not harm the Serbian military from 25,000', embarked upon a wholesale campaign of what most people would call war crimes, targetting the Serbian people and their infrastructure hundreds of kilometers from any legitimate military target.

Aside from every other problem with Kosovo, the precedent which it represents cannot possibly be allowed to stand. If ethnicity is everything and ownership and sovereignty don't mean anything anymore, then what are we going to say when the UN comes here demanding that we hand Texas, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and California over to Mexico on the same perverted basis?

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