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.
You are right.
It’s neo nazism.
Not that facts matter to you.
Neo Nazism...Neo-Ustashism...it’s all the same—despicable.
For you to deny speaks volumes.
Actually, Ustashism much more closely resembled Italian Fascism (not a surprise, since most of the Ustashi in exile spent their time abroad as Mussolini's guests on Lipari) than German Nazism. But that's besides the point since there is no Ustasha party in Croatia today and Ustashism has been rejected by the overwhelming majority of Croatians as a failed political idea.
“Radical Islamists aren’t there in significant numbers now, and they aren’t likely to be in the future.”
I have a hard time believing that all the Saudi funded madrasases won’t change all that. They are changing things in Britain pretty rapidly. I’m sure the Saudis view Kosovo as their new frontier. Their front lines. Heck, I’m pretty sure they view the west as their new frontier.
Croatians served in all branches of the German Wehrmacht the Waffen SS and the SS Police.
ad nauseum
There may not be an official Nazi party in Croatia today but the sentiment is still there...very much alive.
Five out of the nine Prime Ministers of Communist Yugoslavia were Croats.
They seem to be attracted to the extreme left and right.
Not suprising.
Should we discuss the Serbian SS unit?
There may not be an official Nazi party in Croatia today but the sentiment is still there...very much alive.
Sorry, but no. There is no pro-Nazi sentiment in Croatia since no Croatians view the Germans as the master race nor is there any desire to find Lebensraum in Poland and Russia nor is there any desire to round up Jews, nor is there any desire to overthrow democracy, etc.
Five out of the nine Prime Ministers of Communist Yugoslavia were Croats.
63% of the members of the Croatian Communist Party in the 1980s were Serbs.
They seem to be attracted to the extreme left and right.
Just like Serbs.
I’ve been following the thread and I have to say that this issue is far more complex and confusing than I ever imagined and am way over my head in even engaging in the discussion. The thing I can’t help wondering though and must ask is how those on the pro-albania muslims side would feel about the country of Mexico taking the SW of the U.S.
We are experiencing a huge migration of Mexican citizens into our SW. What if the numbers grow to the point that they eventually make up over 90% of the population? Since possession seems to be 9/10th of the law these days, would they be justified in taking back the SW? How would the U.S. feel if this happened and some country with a much more powerful military came in and intervened on the side of Mexico? After-all, Mexico would have a legitimate point in that ethnic hispanics from Mexico have had a presence in the SW of the U.S. for many years.
“Don’t ever compare the birth of the US, to the birth of your little bastard narco-mafia state!”
Sonny doesn’t seem much like a grateful Albanian to me. Figures......we intervene on the side of Muslims just so we can say we stood up for muslims and this is the kind of loyalty we are shown in return. Not saying it was the right thing to do, just pointing out the results.
I was born, raised and live in California. It is precisely the same issue except for one thing: the Mexican population is primarily Roman Catholic and although Mexican & American cultures may be quite different, we still have some (but not all) basic values on which we can agree. Imagine if that same Mexican population were instead, Muslim.
To me, this has nothing to do with "race" or "nationality". It is simply the fact that religions have been the bedrock foundation of virtually every culture -- it determines the culture's values -- it determines what is "right" and "wrong", even if it doesn't require that every member of that culture be religious, it does require that they accept the prevailing value system which is based on that religion.
But when you have two religions that are so disparate hitting head-on, you have not only a cultural clash, but an entire values clash. If you and I can't even agree on what is right and wrong, good and evil, what chance do we have for getting along? It's the same for the Christian Serbs and the Muslim Kosovo Albanians. Both of these peoples are not even on the same operating system, so the same program can't ever work!
If the Kosovo Albanians were Christian (like a small number of their counterparts in Albania proper) they might have stood a chance, but instead they came as Muslim invaders, crossing the line between the East and West and demanding dominance in a traditionally Western Christian area.
Unfortunately, "the International Community" under Euro socialism, says that there is no "line", no "borders", no sovereignty", no "private property" -- just like the commies before them, modern socialism sells the idea that we are all "the same", Christian & Muslim holding hands, singing Kumbaya. It's precisely like in commie Yugoslavia communists sold the wonderful but impossible idea of "Brastvo Jedistvo" ("One Brotherhood"). Yeah well, look how that idea turned out for them -- it exploded into flames in 1991 when the Balkan wars started and has yet to go out.
Don't ever be afraid to ask questions, Lauren -- or even make comments. There are many subjects I don't have clue about -- and the former Yugoslavia IS very complicated. Anyone who tries to explain it with simple sound bites and slogans, "good guys" and "bad guys" based on ethnicity, is lying to you.
There is no "gratitude", there is only foot-kissing to the people that they need to please, statues and streets in Kosovo named after American politicians who do their bidding, and "Tee-hee-hee" behind America's back.
If you want to see something that will make you crazy, rent "The Brooklyn Connection". (Netflix and Blockbuster online both have it.) Watch how a Kosovo-Albanian who stole his way into the US illegally in a car trunk from Mexico, used our gun laws against us and not only armed the Kosovo Liberation Army, but laundered money for the Albanian Mafia by making large "campaign contributions" to American politicians in order to secure US foreign policy favorable to the Kosovo Albanians. In short, this one jerk headed up a movement to hijack US foreign policy and used our own laws against us!
Here's a quote from Krasniqi the KLA gunrunner
Krasniqi says he won’t stop gunrunning. “If we don’t get independence, there will be another war. Probably in a year or so. We were capable of luring NATO into our war, so I think we’ll be capable of pushing the UN out if we need to,” he says.
At the same Florin and his compatriots are preparing for war, they are also actively lobbying powerful American politicians. Both Wesley Clark and Richard Holbrooke recently attended one of their fundraising events.
In The Brooklyn Connection, Krasniqi gives a lesson on how to use the United States as a launching pad to wage war abroad, how high-powered sniper rifles and the assault rifles available on the open market in the United States often fuel guerrilla armies, terrorist organizations and organized crime beyond America’s borders"
Sound like "gratitude" to you?
note that the Albanians (non-Kosovar) are 25 to 40% Christian (Albanian Orthodox or Catholic), while the Kosovar Albanians were 90% Muslim, they were mostly Agnostic (a legacy of the Enver Hoxha years). the fight was ethnic.
The thing is that the Albanians may revert back to Christianity...
I was in doubt about the Kosovars for some time and I don’t quite agree with either of you, but what I’ve seen and read in the years since the crackup of Yugoslavia tells me that Albanians are not the jihadi nutjobs you make them out to be, not even the Kosovar Albanians. Did they commit atrocities — yes, did the Serbians do that too? Yes.
errr... Jim Belushi is an Albanian...
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