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.
Listen, as long as these types keep posting bull about Croatia and Croatians, I'm gonna call them on their propaganda.
As for Kosovo, you know full well that I side with the Serbs on the matter, but the notion being spread by some that Kosovo is an Islamist jihadi state is patently ridiculous, as you well know. Albanians aren't much for Islam (or Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy) with a few minor exceptions that prove the point. You guys have truth on your side....there's no need to engage false propaganda to prove your point.
For God sake, TGJ, is that really what you think? That "Serbs hate all Catholics" or "hate Croats because they are Catholic"? That's absolutely crazy! Half my family are married to Catholics and my stepchildren (who I dearly love) and step grandchildren are all Catholics!
The problem between Serbs & Croats is that during WWII, Croats & Muslims under the Ustashi banner and backed by Nazi Germany, went on an evil killing spree against the Serbs, Gypsies and Jews in Croatia and Bosnia. The depravity of some of these murders was so bad, it even shocked the Germans. The Croat Ustashi plan for Serbs was to "kill one third, (forcibly) convert one third to Catholicism and expel one third", and unfortunately much of the Croat Catholic clergy joined in on this "forcible conversion" plan -- and they significantly succeeded, until Nazi Germany lost. But that action was localized to Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo (the former Yugoslavia) -- not "all Catholics against all Orthodox in the world".
But when the war started in Croatia in the 1990's, one of the first things that happened was that Croats started using the same WWII symbols that had sent hundreds of thousands of Serbs to their death less than fifty years before, and it rightfully scared the crap out of the Serb civilians. Things got much uglier from there.
Unfortunately most of those old WWII Ustashi got away and never faced justice. One of the last Nazis left that even the Simon Weisenthal Institute is trying to extradite as part of "Operatio Last Chance" is a Croat Ustase named Milivoj Asner
The classic Ustase apologetic for anyone who calls them on these horrible crimes is to label their detractors "communists" to take away from the fact that they are literal fascists..
So when I referred to "your Nazi apologist friends" -- I meant that literally.
Russia uses the same Soviet communist symbols today as when they killed hundreds of millions of people in the last century. They even call the removal of such communist symbols by ex-Soviet nations “blasphemy.” You don’t seem too bothered by that though, you are too busy counting on the anti-American support of your Soviet apologist friends in the Kremlin.
When it comes to the topic of Croatia specifically, never, ever trust Bokababe for instance. She's been corrected time and time again with facts, only to conveniently forget them the next time so that she can repeat falsehoods.
The admitted grandson of an Ustase speaks!
Dio is right --don't trust me -- just put the words "Ustase" or "Jasenovac" into any search agent and see what you come up with. Better yet, try "Milivoj Asner" because he has been in the press lately
If you want to defend that literal Nazi ideology just because they are "Catholic, too", then at least you will know what you are doing.
Regarding Mr Laden’s fate and how his fate intertwines with our foreign policy failures we shall see. Caretaker Bush has nothing to do with any of that. He was unable, unwilling, and too weak to reform the institutions (State, CIA, UN etc) he claimed he would. Read Bolton's stuff on all that.
You are the one who supports Russia, the self-declared enemy of Western Civilization and best friend ever of Islam. You support anti-Christian Russian-enabled Iranian nuclear islamic jihad.
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Bla bla bla... Stop using the word Russia/Russian to describe international Bolshevism, an ideology that devastated the Russian people.
Beginning with the Czar and his family the Bolsheviks slaughtering their way up and down and all across Russia butchering millions of people of all ethnicities who refused to succumb to Communism, the final disease given birth by the Enlightenment.
If you find it difficult to understand these simple facts do not desecrate the memories of the victims by claiming that the victims killed themselves!
Hopefully this helps, but I doubt it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe the jihadis would be so connected to forced prostitution, the heroine trade or even this horrible accusation against the Albanians of harvesting the organs of young Serbians from Kosovo. I'm not sure the organ harvesting accusations are true, but I wouldn't put it past the Albanians for one second. I'd be more skeptical of your average everyday jihadi group.
The religion of the Albanians is "Albanian". I'd much rather deal with Muslims.
You are absolutely right.
Hey, I’m the last guy you’ll have to explain Albanian criminality to on FR. I can’t agree with you more on that subject.
As long as Russia is ruled by unrepentant Chekists who are proud of their loyalty to the Soviet Union and lament its collapse, I will continue to denounce the anti-Christian anti-American evil which emanates from Moscow.
Have Fun!
Yeah you are, Dio. Because I've asaid repeatedly, that "I had no problem with Croat independence", just the manner in which it was brought about.
Yet, you defend Tudjman's statement about "thanking God his wife was neither a Serb, nor a Jew" with the most bizarre apologetic I have ever heard. You go on about the WWII Cetniks as though "THEY were fascists" and the Ustashi weren't so bad. You defend Marko Perkovic when even Croat President Mesic said that his Zagreb concert was bad for Croatia, and he has been repeatedly banned in country after country.
But what really pisses me off is that on one hand you can say "Kosovo is Serbia" and on the other hand you jump into every Kosovo post and defend Albanians (or is it just trash Serbs?).
If "Croatia" were still being threatened or still vying for its independence, I could understand it. But it's not. Croatia is in the loving arms of its EU German protectors, and yet it still can't get over the "hate the Serbs" mentality. Makes me think that you guys are warming up for another round of "cleaning" Croatia completely of all minorities, except your Muslim friends as "honorary Croats" again.
1. You are not conservative.
2. No one hates America here... Well, aside the other half of America that voted commies into Senate...
Just to explain something.
US have done more self-iinflicted damage than Soviets, Russians, Chicoms or Muslims can within next 200 years.
United States are occupied, and enslaved by very people like you are.
People that love money more than their own country, People that live in the past, expecting Soviet tanks on the streets of DC, while Muslims are killing you each day. Conservative stands for - Loyalty to Christ - Loyalty to nation - Loyalty for freedom and liberty for ALL people like you, not AMERICANS, but people like YOU - Ruined Christianity in MY country, and even more are killing the Christ all over the world in the name of "open society" G. Soros - Destroying MY OWN and American nation by fals conservativism, by masked communism and open support to homosexual ism and degenerative movements across antire Eastern Europe - Enslaving Christians and non-muslims an making US FRE PEOPLE slaves to Islamofascist buddies of NWO. YOU MY FRIEND are more dangerous than Osama, cause you are used to be Christian, and now have allied yourself to lowest of the lowest Islamic bastards. AMERICA do not need enemies, when it have people like you.
You remind of someone who was banned before...
Albanian apologists abound.
Actually, I think the Albanians just show the bastardized Muslim version of "unity in diversity":
1. ME Muslims all hate women and treat them like crap, so the Albanians selling women & children into prostitution doesn't faze them
2. The heroin connection runs from the poppies of Afghanistan through the Kosovo conduit and beyond to Western Europe so that all Muslims profit.
3. The body parts sale of kuffir proves the Albanians as Muslim brothers under the skin.
4. The Albanians have fooled America into thinking that they are friends by appealing the US politicians' vanity, meanwhile offering a people trafficking conduit to slip any jihadists they want from the ME and get them into Western Europe.
5. The Albanians are profiting from "Western sins", showing the West for the "evil dogs" we in the West are supposed to be.
Bump for later comment.
Considering that independent Croatia was brought about as the inheritor of the SR Croatia legally and not NDH, I question your statement. Considering that the leadership of the drive for Croatian independence were all former Partisans (those that were old enough) and none of them were Ustashi, again your statement is shown to be quite silly.
Yet, you defend Tudjman's statement about "thanking God his wife was neither a Serb, nor a Jew" with the most bizarre apologetic I have ever heard.
Because that's the context in which that comment was made. Have you bothered to research that speech? If you had, you'd realize why he made that comment.
Secondly, Tudjman was a Partisan who fought the Ustashi.
You go on about the WWII Cetniks as though "THEY were fascists" and the Ustashi weren't so bad.
The Serbian Fascists were led by Dmitrije Ljotic and his Zbor party in Belgrade. The Serbian Chetnik leader of Dalmatia, Pop Momcilo Djujic, was a member of his party. He was rescued by the Nazis and was granted exile in the USA where he died in 1999. I never said all Chetniks were Fascists since most weren't...they were authoritarian royalists for the most part.
You defend Marko Perkovic when even Croat President Mesic said that his Zagreb concert was bad for Croatia, and he has been repeatedly banned in country after country.
What's wrong with defending Thompson? What's wrong with freedom of speech? Not in one song does Thompson glorify the Ustashe nor does he mention Jews nor anything. I've asked you to specifically point out in which of his songs he does. You have been unable to do so at present.
But what really pisses me off is that on one hand you can say "Kosovo is Serbia" and on the other hand you jump into every Kosovo post and defend Albanians (or is it just trash Serbs?).
It's not about defending Albanians, but rather about defending the truth. You Serbs don't need to lie since the truth is on your side when it comes to Kosovo. Yet every day I read absolute crap about how Kosovo is an "Islamic Jihadist state" when nothing could be further from the truth. Even your fellow Serb getoffmylawn knows this to be the case.
If "Croatia" were still being threatened or still vying for its independence, I could understand it. But it's not. Croatia is in the loving arms of its EU German protectors, and yet it still can't get over the "hate the Serbs" mentality. Makes me think that you guys are warming up for another round of "cleaning" Croatia completely of all minorities, except your Muslim friends as "honorary Croats" again.
I suggest you seek help for your paranoia. Serbs in Croatia are doing quite well, to the point where the v-p is a Serb. They are fully integrated and reject the false policies of the Knin separatists who were betrayed by their fellow Serbs in Belgrade.
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