Why Islam is not compatible with Albanians

[The Great Uniter]

But due to religion, they can prefer to marry a Bosnian or Turk as well. If you raise your children with nationalism, you will not have such problem no matter what they believe in.

"can"

Fortunately, they actually don't.

[itilvolga]

"can"

Fortunately, they actually don't.

in Turkey, they do.

[The Great Uniter]

in Turkey, they do.

No, they in truth not actual Albanians, they are traitors. You are gravely mistaken.

[Uski]

No, they in truth not actual Albanians, they are traitors. You are gravely mistaken.

Depends, Here in Macedonia Turks,Torbesis and Bosniaks intermarry with Albanians, and they end up assimilating into albanians.

On the other hand, The southern sandzak region in serbia and mnt, spoke albanian and considered themselves as such. Yet they married with bosniak women and were made to take slavic surnamed endings, same thing in Bar montenegro, Plav and Gusinje and rozaje.

Some muslim albanians in greece were shipped to turkey because as muslims they were "turk" in 1923. Another pop exchange happened in 1953-7 in Yugoslavian Macedonia, albanians declared themselves Turk and went there for a better life. Better Turk than Slav is a saying.

However Orthodox albanians assimilated way easier in comparison, and i mean who can blame them, their churches were greek and Slavic until 1922

[Uski]

Also itilvolga, in serbia they say "better to be tortured by a turk than to be taught by a latin"

Serbs can confirm this.

but yeah muslim albanians, are harder to assimilate, but Bektashis? Impossible

[Div]

Ok, this will take a bit..

[Div]

I've been thinking about this topic for a long time, and while I am originally from an Orthodox background. My family were very pious Bektashi Muslims, and I also have a maternal great-granduncle who was a Hoxha. So I know a bit about how Islam relates to Albania, I also thinkin Muslim Albanians are cool.

With all things related to Albania, you must look at history and see how it originated. Face it, Catholicism and Islam are foreign to Albania. Catholicism was actually originally brought to Albania (or as the Byzantines called it Arvanon) by the Norman Duke/warlord Robert Guiscard. Essentially he invaded the Balkans in the 1080s with the approval of the Pope and the Venetians. Europe had just gone through the most important event in its history since the Council of Chalcedon: the Great Schism in which the Patriarch of Rome succeeded from the church and established a seperate church. The Normans were very zealous followers of the Papal church, they invaded England and threw out the Orthodox Anglo-Saxons, and later invaded Orthodox Ireland. Many of the Orthodox Albanians went into communion with Rome, eventually two centuries later the Catholic establishment in Albania requested that the Angevin French invade Albania and throw out the Orthodox rulers there.

Islam in Albania is a bit different, there is a legend among the Muslims in Elbasan that the Albanians were originally a tribe of Muslim Arab associates of Muhammad who left to Sicily, and eventually, the Byzantines moved them to Epirus. They somehow found their way to what is now Elbasan, boom Albanians. Pretty silly I know, apperently this guy's grave is still somewhere there. Muslim Albanians will claim from loose interpretations of Byzantine texts that there were Muslims in the Balkans before the Turks. Again, it is very unlikely there were Muslim people in the region of Albania before the Turks. But the Bektashis also believe that Sarı Saltık Baba came to Albania sometime in the 1200s.

There is a surprisingly vast amount of works by Islamic Albanian poets, they are called the Bejtexhinj. Their early work was in Albanian and talked about things ranging from secular things (love, war, witty topics about life) but eventually, the Turks cracked the whip, and they were strictly poems about Islam. Dalip Frashëri, the uncle of the three Frasheri brothers wrote the Garden of the martyrs, the longest epic poem in the Albanian language. It is 60,000 verses and details the Battle of Karbala. This event is mourned by Shi'ite Muslims to this day. Diwan poetry from Persia was preferred among the court of Albanian pashas. Another great Muslim Albanian poet was Yahya bey Dukagjini, a court favorite of the Ottoman Sultan. Naim Frasheri himself studied Persian and spoke it so well, the Islamic Republic of Iran made a postage stamp of him. Words like Beqar, Hoxha, Dembel are all from Persian.

Around this time, aside from the north where they wrote Albanian in Latin letters. Everywhere else Albanian was written in Arabic letters, from the 15th to 19th century, the name for the specific style is called Elifba. There was also a strong Orthodox Sunni Albanian Ulema (Islamic scholarly community) mostly concentrated in central Albania, Shkoder, and Kosovo. Many educated men came from them. The most notable and recent of these men is Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, a Salafi scholar originally from Shkoder. Things like Madrasas, Shadirvans, etc. were common in almost every major city in Albania because they were necessary parts of the religion.

My personal thoughts are that Albania has and is multipolar, I don't consider Albanians to be intrinsically X Y or Z. This is in contrast to people like Russians, French, and Iranians. Where you can say they are always this one uniform religion. There is the Northern Catholic axis, focused mainly in the region known as Malesia. The middle central Sunni/Sufi region, oriented around Kavaja up to Kosovo and Macedonia. Finally, in the far south and extending up to Elbasan there are the dotted Orthodox regions. Notice how the Orthodox regions are always in close proximity to monasteries.

Albanian identity was preserved in Macedonia through a strong adherence to Islam. An Albanian from Tetova told me that his people, over centuries, used Islam as a defense mechanism of sorts against Slavic assimilation tactics. So anyone who spoke Albanian and was a different religion from Slavs who were Orthodox were not assimilated. In this respect, Albanians in Macedonia have made Islam a cornerstone of their Albanian identity. This is part of the reason why it's hard for me to communicate or convert Macedonian Albanians. They are very tribalistic about their religion.

Another thing to note is the Millet system. Millet comes from the Arabic مِلَّة meaning religious community or nation. The Ottoman Empire seperated "nations" by religion not ethnos. So the people who were Muslim in the Balkans were automatically known as Turks, because by presupposition if you were Turkish you were Muslim. There was also an Orthodox millet, which was exclusively run by the Phanar Patriarch of Constantinople. Can you see how this translates to the present day? This is partially why the Greeks always wanted to assimilate Orthodox Albanians. They have a post-colonial tendency to think any Orthodox in Albania are Greeks, Muslims are Turks. Islam is in my opinion highly ingrained in our culture, but the issue is that our culture is not ingrained in Islam at all. Almost all Islamic schools are against discrimination of skin and origin if you are a fellow Muslim. Muslims consider themselves as a civilization/global religious community known as the Ummah. So, Muslim Albanians (at least the informed ones) will be reluctant to be "pro-Albanianism" per se. They are pro-Ummah. In Islamic legalese nationalism is considered Asabiyyah, which can have a positive connotation but is usually considered negative due to its ties to pre-Islamic Arabian society.

During the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Sunni Albanians were overwhelmingly Pro-Ottoman. In 1914, there was a revolt by Caliphatist Muslim Albanians that lead by a man known as Haxhi Qamili. This revolt in central Albania essentially destroyed Prince Weid's and his western lackeys' rule over Albania. It was so bad, he had to leave the country after only a few years. And for a time Albania returned to Ottoman rule. I personally despise him, along with his bastard friend Essad Pasha Toptani. They demanded the following things:

1. The restoration of Ottoman rule or, failing that, the appointment of a member of the Imperial Ottoman Family as Prince of Albania.

2. If the Albanian language must be used at all, then only Arabic characters should be employed in writing it, while free use of Turkish should be allowed for a period of nine years.

3. The Chief Mufti of Albania should be named by the shaykh al-islam and the spiritual heads of other religious communities by their respective chiefs at Constantinople.

4. The Albanian flag should bear the crescent as it did during the Ottoman times.

Obviously, the Sunnis at the time considered themselves to be Ottomans and part of a Caliphate first and foremost. Their national identity plays second-place, and this is something that goes on to this day. HOWEVER, let it be known that there were definitely partisans among Muslim Albanians. Many of the signers of the declaration of Independence from the Turks were Sunni Muslims. The Pashas in Albania were traditionally reluctant subjects of the Turks. In other times, they were full out pro-Albanian and revolted. For example, of course, Ali Pasha. But most obscure is the planned Illyrian federation of Kara Mahmud Pasha Bushati.

Now, this is all history, obviously, we can see that things are not cut and dry. There is a strong tendency against Albanian nationhood, but there are also a few bright spots. Nowadays things are a bit more complex, so I can't say for sure. I won't say Islam is compatible with Albanians, because Islam is not monolithic and different Hoxhas, people, and schools interpret things differently. Go to a bearded Albanian guy in the streets, he will not go by what he thinks, but what his Hoxha has told him to think.

Sources:

https://www.academia.edu/36121842/A_...?auto=download

https://www.al-islam.org/articles/di...dice-asabiyyah

https://kosovabooks.files.wordpress....3ab-shqipe.pdf

[Uski]

I've been thinking about this topic for a long time, and while I am originally from an Orthodox background. My family were very pious Bektashi Muslims, and I also have a great grandfather who was a Hoxha. So I know a bit about how Islam relates to Albania, I also thinkin Muslim Albanians are cool.

With all things related to Albania, you must look at history and see how it originated. Face it, Catholicism and Islam are foreign to Albania. Catholicism was actually originally brought to Albania (or as the Byzantines called it Arvanon) by the Norman Duke/warlord Robert Guiscard. Essentially he invaded the Balkans in the 1080s with the approval of the Pope and the Venetians. Europe had just gone through the most important event in its history since the Council of Chalcedon: the Great Schism in which the Patriarch of Rome succeeded from the church and established a seperate church. The Normans were very zealous followers of the Papal church, they invaded England and threw out the Orthodox Anglo-Saxons, and later invaded Orthodox Ireland. Many of the Orthodox Albanians went into communion with Rome, eventually two centuries later the Catholic establishment in Albania requested that the Angevin French invade Albania and throw out the Orthodox rulers there.

Islam in Albania is a bit different, there is a legend among the Muslims in Elbasan that the Albanians were originally a tribe of Muslim Arab associates of Muhammad who left to Sicily, and eventually, the Byzantines moved them to Epirus. They somehow found their way to what is now Elbasan, boom Albanians. Pretty silly I know, apperently this guy's grave is still somewhere there. Muslim Albanians will claim from loose interpretations of Byzantine texts that there were Muslims in the Balkans before the Turks. Again, it is very unlikely there were Muslim people in the region of Albania before the Turks. But the Bektashis also believe that Sarı Saltık Baba came to Albania sometime in the 1200s.

There is a surprisingly vast amount of works by Islamic Albanian poets, they are called the Bejtexhinj. Their early work was in Albanian and talked about things ranging from secular things (love, war, witty topics about life) but eventually, the Turks cracked the whip, and they were strictly poems about Islam. Dalip Frashëri, the uncle of the three Frasheri brothers wrote the Garden of the martyrs, the longest epic poem in the Albanian language. It is 60,000 verses and details the Battle of Karbala. This event is mourned by Shi'ite Muslims to this day. Diwan poetry from Persia was preferred among the court of Albanian pashas. Another great Muslim Albanian poet was Yahya bey Dukagjini, a court favorite of the Ottoman Sultan. Naim Frasheri himself studied Persian and spoke it so well, the Islamic Republic of Iran made a postage stamp of him. Words like Beqar, Hoxha, Dembel are all from Persian.

Around this time, aside from the north where they wrote Albanian in Latin letters. Everywhere else Albanian was written in Arabic letters, from the 15th to 19th century, the name for the specific style is called Elifba. There was also a strong Orthodox Sunni Albanian Ulema (Islamic scholarly community) mostly concentrated in central Albania, Shkoder, and Kosovo. Many educated men came from them. The most notable and recent of these men is Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, a Salafi scholar originally from Shkoder. Things like Madrasas, Shadirvans, etc. were common in almost every major city in Albania because they were necessary parts of the religion.

My personal thoughts are that Albania has and is multipolar, I don't consider Albanians to be intrinsically X Y or Z. This is in contrast to people like Russians, French, and Iranians. Where you can say they are always this one uniform religion. There is the Northern Catholic axis, focused mainly in the region known as Malesia. The middle central Sunni/Sufi region, oriented around Kavaja up to Kosovo and Macedonia. Finally, in the far south and extending up to Elbasan there are the dotted Orthodox regions. Notice how the Orthodox regions are always in close proximity to monasteries.

Albanian identity was preserved in Macedonia through a strong adherence to Islam. An Albanian from Tetova told me that his people, over centuries, used Islam as a defense mechanism of sorts against Slavic assimilation tactics. So anyone who spoke Albanian and was a different religion from Slavs who were Orthodox were not assimilated. In this respect, Albanians in Macedonia have made Islam a cornerstone of their Albanian identity. This is part of the reason why it's hard for me to communicate or convert Macedonian Albanians. They are very tribalistic about their religion.

Another thing to note is the Millet system. Millet comes from the Arabic مِلَّة meaning religious community or nation. The Ottoman Empire seperated "nations" by religion not ethnos. So the people who were Muslim in the Balkans were automatically known as Turks, because by presupposition if you were Turkish you were Muslim. There was also an Orthodox millet, which was exclusively run by the Phanar Patriarch of Constantinople. Can you see how this translates to the present day? This is partially why the Greeks always wanted to assimilate Orthodox Albanians. They have a post-colonial tendency to think any Orthodox in Albania are Greeks, Muslims are Turks. Islam is in my opinion highly ingrained in our culture, but the issue is that our culture is not ingrained in Islam at all. Almost all Islamic schools are against discrimination of skin and origin if you are a fellow Muslim. Muslims consider themselves as a civilization/global religious community known as the Ummah. So, Muslim Albanians (at least the informed ones) will be reluctant to be "pro-Albanianism" per se. They are pro-Ummah. In Islamic legalese nationalism is considered Asabiyyah, which can have a positive connotation but is usually considered negative due to its ties to pre-Islamic Arabian society.

During the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Sunni Albanians were overwhelmingly Pro-Ottoman. In 1914, there was a revolt by Caliphatist Muslim Albanians that lead by a man known as Haxhi Qamili. This revolt in central Albania essentially destroyed Prince Weid's and his western lackeys' rule over Albania. It was so bad, he had to leave the country after only a few years. And for a time Albania returned to Ottoman rule. I personally despise him, along with his bastard friend Essad Pasha Toptani. They demanded the following things:

1. The restoration of Ottoman rule or, failing that, the appointment of a member of the Imperial Ottoman Family as Prince of Albania.

2. If the Albanian language must be used at all, then only Arabic characters should be employed in writing it, while free use of Turkish should be allowed for a period of nine years.

3. The Chief Mufti of Albania should be named by the shaykh al-islam and the spiritual heads of other religious communities by their respective chiefs at Constantinople.

4. The Albanian flag should bear the crescent as it did during the Ottoman times.

Obviously, the Sunnis at the time considered themselves to be Ottomans and part of a Caliphate first and foremost. Their national identity plays second-place, and this is something that goes on to this day. HOWEVER, let it be known that there were definitely partisans among Muslim Albanians. Many of the signers of the declaration of Independence from the Turks were Sunni Muslims. The Pashas in Albania were traditionally reluctant subjects of the Turks. In other times, they were full out pro-Albanian and revolted. For example, of course, Ali Pasha. But most obscure is the planned Illyrian federation of Kara Mahmud Pasha Bushati.

Now, this is all history, obviously, we can see that things are not cut and dry. There is a strong tendency against Albanian nationhood, but there are also a few bright spots. Nowadays things are a bit more complex, so I can't say for sure. I won't say Islam is compatible with Albanians, because Islam is not monolithic and different Hoxhas, people, and schools interpret things differently. Go to a bearded Albanian guy in the streets, he will not go by what he thinks, but what his Hoxha has told him to think.

Sources:

https://www.academia.edu/36121842/A_...?auto=download

https://www.al-islam.org/articles/di...dice-asabiyyah

https://kosovabooks.files.wordpress....3ab-shqipe.pdf

I want to thank you for putting time into this thorough explanation. Respekt nga Zajazi

[Skerdilaid]

Haxhi Qamili was a Sufi (type of Dervish). And his revolt was mostly kept in check by Albanians from Kosove (Isa Boletini etc) and North Albania (Mirdita) who were pred Sunni and Catholic.

[NotYourKind]

I don't think Kastrioti fought for religion. He fought for his race, his people, he was kidnapped as a kid (as were thousands of others) by these ugly freaks who wouldn't want to slice their heads off? He sided with Italy due to a long term relationship and obviously they happened to be Christian, this doesn't mean Kastrioti cared about it he just used religion to get their help (of which they didn't give enough)

Religion has nothing to do with anything, it is political nonsense

Jews vs Arabs vs Rome (christianity), thankfully the Jews are actually peaceful


As for religion in Albania you can be anything except Muslim because that is the enemy our ancestors fought against, I am agnostic myself because I don't care about any religion