FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE ISSUE OF KOSOVO

Summary: When speaking of Kosovo, an ever topical thesis which can occasionally be heard from renowned Serbian academicians or university professors who are dealing with religious issues, is the thesis that the Albanians in this space are actually Muslim fundamentalists. This is at the same time, an attempt to create a belief among their own Serbian public that, should a war break out in Kosovo, it would not be only a civil war, but primarily a religious war. Such "tricks" were also present at the very beginning of the conflict in Bosnia&Herzegovina. Can a similar "scanario" be used for a possible future Serbian-Albanian conflict, especially for the international public?

The Serbian state and Church propaganda, especially the one oriented towards the world, in the past several years, has insisted on the thesis that the conflicts in Kosovo are motivated not only by national but by religious intolerance of the Albanians towards the Serbs, or that they are actually waging a specific type of a religious war, a jihad. Allegedly, this jihad is aimed at total islamizing of Kosovo as a territory which is an important corridor for maintaining a profound penetration of Islamic religion in Bosnia&Herzegovina into the heart of the Balkans. It is also claimed that Islamic fundamentalists are planning to form two Islamic republics in the Balkans, Greater Albania and Bosnia&Herzegovina, not only for the sake of reinforcing the only remaining Islamic enclave, but also as the advanced sentry posts which could in the future threaten the Old Continent again.

The reasons why the regime in Serbia and the majority of the opposition parties chose this type of propaganda are clear: the thesis that the Albanians are an instrument of Islamic fundamentalism has offered another mobilising argument for war obectives in relation to Kosovo, and it could serve well in presenting the problem in the West which addresses serious criticism at Serbia for implementation of its brutal repressive policy in Kosovo. For its permanent state of siege of Kosovo and the increasingly drastic police and administrative measures, Serbia is seeking more understanding in the West by presenting the Albanian national movement as one of the forms of the unpopular Homeinism. In other words, Serbia counts on the fact that it would be easier for it to ensure legitimacy and international support for its repressive and war policy if it could convince the West that the Albanians are in fact masked Islamic fundamentalists and that the Serbs are again, as they once used to be, on the barricades defending Christian Europe.

An attempt is being made to provide scientific foundations for this propagandist thesis in historical studies which present the current conflict in Kosovo as an interethnic conflict with a religious background which lasts for centuries. For instance, a Serbian member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts, Dimitrije Bogdanovic, in his book called "The Book about Kosovo" published in 1985, making a synthesis of viewpoints of most of Serbian historians, concluded that the Albanians and the Serbs became enemies only in late Middle Ages, at the time the Albanians started accepting Islam in great numbers and serving the interests of the Turkish Empire and the "aggressive Islamic religion". The religious split is presented here as a constant in the Albanian-Serbian conflict, moreover, as its basis. Kosovo with Sandzak, Bosnia, Albania and partly Macedonia are the zones of breakthrough of the so-called Muslim wedge that the Turkish imperial authorities shoved into the space which belonged to the living space and interest sphere of Eastern Christianity. It is claimed that the wedge was intended as a means for dismembering, crumbling and destroying the Orthodox Church, and the Serbian people unfortunately happened to be in the way of the penetration of this wedge and was therefore constantly pushed from the central parts of the Balkans towards the North, in the direction of the Panononian plain.

At a symposium held in 1984 in Rili Monastery in Bulgaria, late Dimitrije Bogdanovic, somewhat indirectly brought up the problem of the Islamic wedge again making it topical and speaking in favour of the need for all Orthodox nations in the Blakans to oppose jointly this wedge which is jeopardizing the compactness and spiritual and space unity of the Orthodox creed, that is, the need for creating some kind of a Balkan crusading alliance. This Orthodox alliance got quite an open support in Serbia lately, in the context of the disappointment in the Yugoslav project. Many prominent authors and ideologists claimed that Serbia had needlessly distanced itself from its Orthodox brethren, primarily from the Bulgarians, and had tied its destiny in a common state with disloyal Catholics, the Croats and the Slovenians.

At this point one could put a question how serious such historical constructions are, as well as making them topical again. We are actually dealing with the question whether the religious matrix really has such significance in current political conflicts in Kosovo? Such theories should not be rejected in advance, however, even though their abuse as political propaganda of the worst kind is quite clear. The conflicts in Kosovo, and in Yugoslavia and the Balkans, can certainly be observed as religious conflicts too, because among all the various fronts of these conflicts, differences in creed can clearly be discerned. What is more, when the current conflicts are observed through the religious angle, their profound, historical aspects are becoming transparent, and they can make unmasking of current mystifications and irrationalities a lot easier.

As it is well known, warming up of the conflict in Kosovo all over again, served for provoking much larger, tectonic divisions in the whole of former Yugoslavia, which brought about dissolution of the federation. It is indicative that the dissolution proceeded through confrontation of two political blocks which could best be discerned as religious differences: one block was Orthodox, the other was formed by the Catholics and the Muslims in the so-called "unprincipled coalition". Of course, a serious analyst cannot agree with the statement that the basis of present divisions and confrontations is religious in nature, but the religious configuration probably reflects best the branching of all those historical, national, civilizational, economic, developmental, cultural, linguistic and other differences gathered in time, which nowadays appear to be confronted in an irreconcilable conflict. The older the branching off, the more comprehensive the division balance is. For instance, the Slavs who have accepted Islam and who have nowadays become a separate nation, the Muslims/Boshniaks, are a branch of the same Slav tree, but the present divisions and conflicts are taking the form of a national confrontation, that is, of a struggle for recognition of national sovereignty of the Muslims/Boshniaks, which does not prevent some people to continue reducing the problem to the "primeval" conflict between the cross and the half-moon.

However, such reduction of the current national conflicts to a religious foundation is a form of historical diminishing and mystifying of the problem by making it anachronistic. It is not at all contestable that the fundamental configuration of present conflicts can be translated on to the denominational plane, especially in the central zones of confrontation, from Western Macedonia, via Kosovo and Sandzak to Bosnia&Herzegovina and the Dalmatian inland region. It is true that in all these regions, on one side the Orthodox population which complains that it is threatened and repressed by members of other religions, and on the other Muslims and Catholics who are allegedly supposed to be the "aggressors", the oppressors of the Orthodox population are in conflict. But, such reduction of the current political, state constructive, economic, national and cultural conflicts only to a conflict between one cross with the other cross and the half-moon, can by no means explain the problem, because religious differences are only external in relation to the essential contents of current conflicts.

But, the thesis that when speaking of Kosovo, it is a religious conflict is quite untenable, that is, that the Albanians are just a mere instrument of Islamic fundamentalism and that they are waging a jihad by orders received from a centre of Islamic extremism is quite absurd. Those who speak in favour of this thesis have never given a single specific argument which would verify religious motives of the Albanians. They rely only on the "self-understood" fact that the majority of the Albanians are of Islamic creed. Sometimes, they claimed that members of the Islamic clergy had participated in demonstrations and political activities in Kosovo, that a part of political activities took place in Islamic places of worship, and that some religious manifestations took the form of political protests.

When the contents of the Albanian movement is analysed ten years back, since the Kosovo crisis broke out, not a single indication that it is a religious movement can be found, nor that there is a trace of a religious resonance even in the second or third plane. All demands and proclamations of the Albanians since 1981, and even before that, are of a political and national, and in no way of a religious nature. That is why it is impossible to cite a single extremist religious move of the Albanians, which could be connected with their national movement. It can be said that religion was not given even a reserve post within the ideological matrix of national movement of the Albanians. And the fact that some Muslim priests participated in demonstrations and political activities or that some religious manifestations occasionally acquired political nature, should be attributed to their national, and not religious motives. Muslim priests participated in the Albanian movement only as Albanians, and not as believers, supporting national, and not religious objectives. As concerning religious manifestations, they spontaneously and in certain critical circumstances, served for promoting not religious, but national ideas, primarily as a substitute for banned public protest gatherings of the Albanians. It is clear that national ideas were not a function of religion, but vice versa, religion was a function of promoting national ideas.

In view of these facts, the story about religious fundamentalism of the Albanians becomes pointless; should anyone insist on the term of fundamentalism, perhaps one could speak of their national fundamentalism. This national fundamentalism has contributed to supra-religious national homogenization of the Albanians, through numerous examples of manifesting their common national will, regardless of the religious differences which exist among them. Recently, in fact, the Albanians in Kosovo almost conspicuously demonstrated religious tolerance, joint appearances of the Muslims and the Catholics. Islamic and Catholic priests were very active in the past few years in promoting ecumenism and national reconciliation, and they were followed in it by Muslim believers who took part in Catholic religious ceremonies during holidays, and vice versa, the Catholics who joined the Muslims in ceremonies on their holidays.

There are, however, those who warn about strengthening of Islamic and Catholic clericalism in Kosovo, because both the Islamic and the Catholic Church are increasingly active in daily politics. Participation of the Islamic and the Catholic Church in political life of Kosovo is undisputed. But this politicizing of theirs cannot be explained by clericalistic ambitions which were concealed before and which have now emerged on the surface since the fall of Communism, in other words, when the political space was demonopolized. On the contrary, both Churches in the Kosovo circumstances such as they are, were simply pushed into politics not in order to promote clerical ideas, but in order to survive as national Churches and to protect themselves of drastic drifting away of their believers. A neutral position of the Churches in the conditions of terrible police repression and national segregation and apartheid implemented in Kosovo would be equal to national treason, in other words, it would threaten their social role and deprive them of much of the influence and significance they have.

Taking into account some of the general spiritual developments in the Albanian national movement, the thesis that Islamic religion is considerably jeopardized by the dominant orientation of the movement is somehow closest to the truth, and not that it may, if not in the present, then in a future phase be used for effectuation of radical Islamic objectives and creation of an Islamic Albanian republic. No matter how much the Albanian national movement may be in a period of a certain ideological vacuum, when the "Marxist", i.e. "socialist" foundations it relied on for decades are being destroyed, and when it is gaining affirmation only in some vaguely discernable landmarks as a hovering value which is still seeking foundations, with religion as one of the supports of the movement, I do not see that the Islamic Church is facing happy times of renewal, strengthening and creation of the greatest among Albanian national Churches. The problem lies not only in the fact that the Albanians do not have a unique national Church because they belong to two religions and have four Churches: the Orthodox, the Catholic, the Uniate and the Muslim of the majority. Nor does the problem lie in the fact that, as ideologists of Albanian renaissance who have saved the Albanian people from a religious split put it, "the creed of the Albanians is their Albaniandom", the "creed" which the regime of Enver Hodza tried to embody by a decree of the first atheist state in the world. The danger the Islamic Church is in lies in the fact that after the ruin of the Socialist utopia which could gather the entire dismembered Albanian universe and carry out experiments with forcible proclamations about an atheist nation and state, the question of national self-determination of the Albanians between the East and the West has been opened again, as the question of an urgent step that is expected to homogenize the formerly too dismembered and diversified national cultural matrix.

In spring 1990, the idea about a collective religious conversion spread among the Kosovo Albanians of Muslim religion. Many wondered whether a return to the religion of the ancestors, implying mostly Catholicism, was possible. It was the period of collective dispair due to intense police repression, but also of collective catharsis due to dissolution of Bolshevism and liberation from bureaucratic tutorship of self-elected national leaders. This wish to convert into Catholicism actually meant a specific symbolical civilizational shift: transition from the East to the West, return to Europe and European roots of the Albanian culture and Albanian national being. The Albanians do not wish to be a outflow of Orientalism.

That is the sense in which one should understand the asylum which the greatest Albanian writer and a great patriot, Ismail Kadare sought in France. Kadare is greatly opposed to Orientalism and he believes that the Albanians must return to their home - Europe.

Despite such opinions, the Islamic Church and the Islamic religion will persist among the Albanians. The collective civilizational shift which has spiritually perhaps already taken place, will not allow the Albanians to return to anachronic objectives, least of to all the extremist ones which are being attributed to them. That is why the accusations on their account are both wrong and unjust. But, there is reason for doubt about the motives of perjurers, those who are accusing the Albanians of fundamentalism. The army of crusaders against the Albanians supported by Serbian chauvinist circles prove exactly the opposite of what their objective is: that they themselves personify an anachronistic project, demonstrating a strong inclination towards religious and national intolerance and in this way proving that an aggressive Orthodox fundamentalism does exist.

Shkelzen MALIQI AIM Prishtina