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Abstract
Reactions to the brutal Syrian War from European governments and Europe’s Muslims have been diverse and subject to many shifts over the past few years. This paper focuses on how Albanian political and Islamic religious figures living in the Balkans have come to interpret the war. I focus on discourse, the ways in which these different agents communicate with their audience, and the wider contexts they evoke. Government sources and religiously themed lectures delivered by prominent imams on the social networking site YouTube are used to assess these trends. The most obvious aspect of these debates is the ways in which these agents use the war to press their own agendas, the government to affirm their commitment to the “West” and an ethnicized view of Islam, while Islamic religious leaders use it to reconnect their audiences to a more cosmopolitan vision of their past. War thus becomes a catalyst for a resurgent contestation between different groups vying for control over what it means to be “Albanian” and “Muslim” in the twenty-first century.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 “Hafiz” refers to one who has committed the entire Qur’an to memory. Sami Abdullahi was also a veteran of the Kosovo War in 1998/1999 and the civil war in Macedonia in 2001. He finished his studies in the famous Islamic University at Azhar in Cairo, Egypt.
2 “Shaheed” has an expansive meaning, but in this context it refers to one who has died literally “fighting in the cause of God.”
3 The “ummah” refers here to the global body of Muslims; see Denny Encyclopaedia of Islam 2, Citation2012.
4 As an example, imams may use a liberal discourse to push their demands in society (Sadriu Citation2015), while left-wing nationalist parties are wary of irking Islamic mores and careful to accommodate Islam in their public. See as a case in point statements made by the political party “Lëvizja Vetëvendosje!” The party is made up of mainly young, left-wing activists of the former NGO which shared the same name. The former leader who is still actively involved in the party, Albin Kurti, came out in 2013 with an op-ed in one of the large dailies in Kosovo to denounce his party's own MP Alma Lama for what many perceived as her increasingly vitriolic Islamophobic statements. Lama left the party soon after (Kurti Citation2013). This is unsurprising since Kosovo remains the youngest country in Europe (53% of people are under 25 years of age; see European Union Commission Citation2010), while over 90% consistently declare themselves to be “Muslim” (Kosovo Population and Housing Census Citation2011).
5 There are no reliable figures on this. An excellent report which tried to quantify this reveals that, proportionally, Kosovo has a much smaller problem than many other European states. See Kursani (Citation2015).
6 Shkodra is important city in northern Albania with a strong presence of conservative Sunni Muslims.
7 Still, Syrtari also argues that “We are all for European integration, may God make it successful; but, maybe those Albanians [who went to fight] were reacting to the support of the West for the rebels initially?” RTV Klan (Citation2014).
8 The mosque that he preached in was not officially tied to the KMSH.
9 Albanian political elites in the early part of the twentieth century were very concerned about their precarious situation inside a Europe which was seen as largely intolerant of Muslims (Yavuz Citation2014).
10 On these, see Sadriu (Citation2015).
11 We will deal with alternative approaches to this in the next section as we review what the imams were arguing.
12 Kosovo's Islamic Community, BIK, had a more nuanced approach, which is discussed below.
13 Short for the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, otherwise known as “Daesh” or “ISIS.” For the evolution of the group, see Bunzel (Citation2015).
14 “Sham” or “Bilad al-Sham” (بلاد الشام) denotes a region, roughly corresponding to today’s occupied Palestinian territories, Syria, Lebanon, and a part of Turkey. These are mentioned numerous times in Islamic sources (the Qur’an and hadith literature). See a typical lecture on this by Dr Qadhi (Citation2012).
15 With related themes including the duty of Albanians to contribute to humanitarian and spiritual assistance and the links between the plight of the Syrians and the past experiences of Albanians.
16 Islamic songs are a major part of popular Muslim counterculture today. Jihadi nasheeds, or songs (usually not accompanied by musical instruments), have been extensively studied by security agencies as a window into the ways that different Muslims conceptualize the world around them. For the comparison with rap music, see Qureshi (Citation2015).
17 For music as part of counter-extremism efforts, see a report commissioned by the RAND corporation (see Benard Citation2003).
18 Founded in 1951. BIK runs numerous Islamic schools in Kosovo and an Islamic Faculty which is part of the University of Prishtina. See Ismaili (Citation2013).
19 “Arkan” is the nom de guerre of Željko Ražnatović, a Serb national who helped to establish paramilitary forces as Yugoslavia disintegrated. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but was assassinated in Belgrade in 2000 before he could stand trial.
20 These include Nasirudin al-Albani, born in Shkoder in Albania in 1914, and Abdul Qader Arnaut (born in Peja, Kosovo in 1928), among others. On al-Albani, see Brown (Citation2007), 417–431.
21 Imam in Skopje, Macedonia.
22 This is separate from the state-funded KMSH and is thus subject to fewer restrictions on what they can preach. For more information, see Endresen (Citation2015).
23 For the most cited Sunni textbook on this, see the translation of Mawardi by Wahba (Citation1996). For a general introduction, see Madelung, Encyclopaedia of Islam 2 (Citation2015).
24 On the Kharijites, the first sect in Islam, see Levi Della Vida, Encyclopaedia of Islam 2, Citation2015.
25 Dr Shefqet Krasniqi is a member of the International Organization for Muslim Scholars based in Kuwait since its founding in 2010.
26 On the Saudi program, see El-Said (Citation2012).
27 As of 15 May 2015, Al-Arefe had more than 19 million “likes” on Facebook and more than 13 million followers on the popular social networking platform Twitter. This places his account in the top 100 worldwide, and number one for the Middle East. See http://twitaholic.com/MohamadAlarefe/. [Accessed November 14, 2015]
28 al-Afasy has only a modest 13 million “likes” on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/AlafasyOfficialFanPage/?fref=ts&rf=434599769960068, [Accessed November 14, 2015]. For the video, see al-Afasy (trans.) Citation2012.
29 For a full list of these with no definitive “authors,” see the bibliography under “translated Arabic lectures.”
30 See “Ilahi me Titra Shqip - Siria [HD].” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7dA7JftQTY. [Accessed November 14, 2015]
31 Some of the lyrics were deemed so inflammatory that Arian Agushi was summoned to a local police station. For the song, see bibliography under Gold “AG (Citation2014).”
32 Pashko Vasa is one of the founding fathers of Albanian nationalism who came up with the nationalist mantra “the religion of the Albanians is Albanianism,” a concept which has had a remarkable impact on Albanian political elites. See Endresen (Citation2012).
33 The idea that ideology alone is a cause of violent extremism is roundly disputed by academics working on terrorism. See, for example, the works of Crenshaw (Citation2011); see also Della Porta (Citation2009) who argues that the “ideology” of one side alone cannot account for why people turn to violence and, instead, we have to analyze the mutually constitutive nature of how different groups come to view each other and lead to violence.