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. Its an assertion without evidence. Weve been here for so long, said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, and not seen any evidence of it, that weve reached the assumption that it is not a viable threat.
Nine in 10 of Kosovos 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 doesnt 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 arent there in significant numbers now, and they arent likely to be in the future. Some places may be fertile ground for radicalism in the future, but Kosovo isnt one of them for many of the same reasons that Christian theocracy isnt 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 werent 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. Theyve had a small amount of success with a similar project in nearby Bosnia, but theyre meeting stiffer resistance from Kosovos 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 countrys 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 Kosovos 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 Milosevics 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 dont 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 isnt 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.
Please allow me to translate this double-speak into understandable English: The KLA, being nothing more than a gang of international drug traffickers and common criminals, more resemble the Taliban of Afghanistan than they do the fundamentalist jihadist Balkan Hamas or Hezbollah.
Amazing that anybody would see the action of running and terrorizing every other ethnic group out of the province as “liberal” or anything like that. The Albanian Kosovars are basically savages; barbarism would be a step upwards for them.
the part i think is interesting is how the albanians were
communist chinese affiliated during tito’s yugoslavia.
now, they emerge as islamic jihadists!
Don’t you mean the Serbs?
Point is more than enough guilt to go around for alll parties.
Bump
Yeah right....just play the youtube in my name
So this means they haven’t been razing hundreds of churches for years now? Or ethnically cleansing Christians when they are in the minority in an area?
No, I emphatically do not mean the Serbs. From everything I’ve ever managed to get hold of which appeared believable, the Serbs are the closest thing there is to normal, decent, middle-class people in the Balkans. I’m convinced everything we’ve been fed by NATO and Clinton propaganda organs about the Balkans over the last 15 years or thereabouts is total unadulterated BS. Christians simply and basically do not do the kinds of things Serbs have been accused of. Slammites on the other hand not only do those kinds of things, but excel at falsely accusing others of doing them.
Tell that to four of the Kosovo Albanian members of Ft. Dix Six, one of whom was a KLA sniper during the war.
Or how about the now-renamed bin Laden mosque in Kosovo?
Totten is apparently fairly well respected on Iraq, but he's a complete moron on the Balkans. He thinks that just because he sees Albanian women without covered heads, he is seeing "moderate Islam". Yeah, right -- someone should take him on a tour of the 150+ Christian churches that were destroyed by these "moderate Muslims" -- or introduce him to YouTube where he can see it as it happened!
You really don’t know much about the Balkans then.
The Churches were demolished because they were Serbian churches and those acts were of a national, not a confessional nature. In the meantime, the Albanians in Kosovo are raising a Roman Catholic Church.
Jared Israel's site is as good a place as any to educate yourself about the Balkans.
The question anybody has to ask himself is, after that one, what part of the BS are we supposed to go on believing??
The Yugoslav Wars of Dissolution
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/yugoslavia.htm
Lecture 25: The Yugoslav Civil War*
http://www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect25.htm
Google Yugoslav Wars
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22yugoslav+wars%22&start=0&sa=N
“Christians simply and basically do not do the kinds of things Serbs have been accused of.”
Don’t read much history do you.
I read a LOT of history; apparently considerably more than several of the people posting on this thread.
Considering that I’m from the Balkans I’ll pass on Jared Israel and his Marxist interpretation of Balkan history. Why a member of Free Republic would use a Marxist source like Jared Israel is beyond me.
The recent problems in Kosovo started when Milosevic rescinded the autonomy of the region in 89. Basically, he HAD to; every other ethnic group in the province was being brutalized by the Albanians.
The stories on that page are from the NY Times before there was any sort of a NATO or KKKlinton axe to grind on the topic. The stories describe AK behavior:
...Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls....
...The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units....
I mean, the behavior of these people hasn't changed, they were a gigantic problem in Yugoslavia and Kosovo is a gigantic problem now, basically the crime capital of Europe responsible for or involved in more than half of all of numerous major categories of crime including narcotics trafficking, trafficking in women, trafficking in stolen vehicles, and pretty much any sort of thing you could name.
And they are milking it for all the publicity they can get, to whitewash the bin Laden Mosque debacle.
“Valin; Hoplite; Tailgunner Joe”
... Uh-oh, Dio just called in the rest of the Black Shirts. LOL!
These liberal Kosovo Muslims sure dynamited a lot of monasteries and churches and drove out a lot of Orthodox Serbs
I don't see how that's relevant to anything unless Binder had enough pull at the NY Times to cause them to totally fabricate stories in the late 1980s. It's basically the NYT describing albanian kosovars as savages (which they are) and, if you don't like the one Binder cited, there are many more to choose from.
Funny, every ethnic group other than albanians seems to have been driven out of KosovO by now and you claim nothing serious caused that? You think maybe the albunnies just made faces at all the other people until they got the creeps and left??
"What is remarkable is that about 10,000 members of Father Gjolaj's midnight congregation will be young Kosovar Albanian Muslims. Thousands more are expected at Catholic churches in other towns and cities across Kosovo.http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/000164.html or go here that shows that people are embracing Catholicism, but slowly as the region is not 100% ready yet to do it in masse.
What's more, the custom is welcomed by the Catholic clergy and generally smiled upon by Muslim religious leaders.
Father Gjolaj says he does not know how or precisely when the custom of interfaith visitation began in Kosovo. He said he would like to see the phenomenon studied by social scientists: "When it started, I don't know, [at least] since I've been here for the past 11 years. But it is obvious that massive participation began before the war. I think we're talking about approximately 10,000 people, most of them standing inside the church's front yard, since there was not enough place for all of them inside."
More than 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are Muslim. Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999, when a NATO air war ended a Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing aimed at Albanians in the province.
The Kosovar Muslim interest in Christmas signals neither an abandonment of Islam nor the adoption of Christian belief. Blerta Krasniqi plans to attend Christmas Mass at Father Gjolaj's church this year. She's a Muslim who lives in Pristina. "
If every ethnic group other than Albanians was driven out, then why are there still over a hundred thousand Serbs living in Kosovo?
These rabid Miloseviknik commies always turn to marxist and anti-American sources to sell their lies. Just look at which countries support Serbia over Kosovo: Red China, North Korea, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, and KGB-run Russia. Their whole mission here is to spread anti-American communist propaganda and whitewash their genocidal communist hero, Slobo.
"While under the watchful eye of NATOs Kosovo Forces since 1999, more than 150 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries have been destroyed or desecrated and dozens of new mosques have been built including the Osama bin Laden mosque that now stands on Serbian soil."
"Western governments are pushing for independence for a group of Jihadist thugs who recently wanted to create the Osama bin Laden mosque in Kosovo. This name was eventually changed for public relations reasons since the Albanians knew they needed American political support.
Brussels Journal: "How to Fight Eurabia"

This isn't just "talk". It is specific.
For those who don't know, the "Metohija" name in "Kosovo-Metohija" means "Church Land" and we just helped turn it into "Mosque Land".
So this nationalism?????
The Vatican, The Vatican City State (VCS), an enclave of Rome and a sovereign monarchical-sacerdotal state will not recognize Kosovo, btw!!!!
43 countries did so far, the other 109 that didn’t speaks volumes
As to communism, most of the albunny kosovars are basically illegal immigrants and refugees from one of the worst regimes there was in the commie world. Milosevic on the other hand grew up in a world in which only commies lived past eight or nine but eventually grew out of it. The most major reason the NWO types hated the guy was basically that they viewed him as one of their own gone bad i.e. he started off as a banker and then took Yugoslavia out of the IMF.
There were a baker's half dozen or so realpolitik type reasons why anybody in Slick KKKlinton's position might have wanted to do Kosovo and the Pentagon added them up and determined they did not add up to a case and advised Slick not to do it but the overriding concern was the Juanita Broaddrick story.
I can’t think of a reason to recognize a gangster state, anywhere. That would be like recognizing Chicago as a sovereign nation after Al Capone took it over.
The other 109 countries that didn't: Countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe, etc., etc.
"Washington's plan is that the negotiations on Kosovo end with its unilateral recognition, but we will take care that the plan seems unattractive to them (Americans) as much as it is possible, Serbian lobbyist in the United States James Jatras, who expects the negotiations to continue next year as well, said in an interview with the Monday issue of the Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti....
Europe is reluctant, Jatras said. It is on us, the lobbyists, to strengthen its insecurity both in Washington and in Brussels. It is very important to work on the United States fear of isolation, and at the same time on a division within the European Union, he added."
Wrong. Kosovo has been majority Albanian for several hundred years.
Why don’t you tell us about the destruction, murders and rapes, that Serbs did before that? Doesn’t that matter or provide context?
Hello there, Ronly Bonly Jones!
Back again in spite of your repeated bans, I see, and still quoting from the same old sources.
Don’t you ever tire of this game?
Do you support the current pogroms being committed against the Christian Serbs based upon the previous actions of the Communist Serbs then?
Because it certainly sounds as if you’re taking that stand.
Still trying to use that disproved old strawman of yours, eh Chicago?
Calling us supporters of Milosevic makes you sound like just another Ustashe.
Ronly Bonly Jones returns with yet another screen name.
Hey, does anyone remember the one he was using last time? There have been so many, it’s hard to keep track.
The name of the place is and was for nearly the last thousand years called “Kosovo” — a word meaning “Field of Blackbirds” IN THE SERBIAN LANGUAGE. The Serbs named the place and virtually all the cities in it because it was and is theirs. “Kosova” is just an Albanian bastardization of the Serbian name “Kosovo” that has no meaning in the Albanian language. Who owned “Kosovo” in the Stone Age is irrelevant.
Re the references — you, the brand new FR K-Alb apologist, plays “judge” — how cute.
And pretending to be “Sonny Corleone”, well at least the gangster part probably fits...
But you might want to wipe that bit of foam off your mouth... there is nothing that you’ve said so far that veteran Freepers haven’t heard before, so if that’s the best you’ve got and you are already this worked up, you are in over your head.
If you've got nothing better to do with your time, by all means pick your date in the History of the Balkans....and let's roll... I'm ready to Link,Copy and Paste.
and “Albania” has NO meaning in Albanian and many names in Kosovo are from the time Bulgaria occupied it. What does that mean? Nothing. Names come and go and if they could they would change the name in a heartbeat.
>And pretending to be Sonny Corleone, well at least the gangster part probably fits...
No, I am not from Serbia.
> Re the references you, the brand new FR K-Alb apologist, plays judge how cute.
Irrelevant. You got called out on a repeated lie and now you distract. So tell us about your sources or how come those “jihadists” aren’t killing Americans. There are 20,000 NATO troops there. How many have been killed by those “Bin Laden supporters” ?
Go and wave the Obama banners thinking that he might help Serbia in Kosovo. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979378/posts
Funny, given that most of us are on "the side" of those who fought both the Nazis and the Yugo Communists and saved 500 American flyers during WWII, while the US State Department for 40 years was kissing Tito's communist butt!
But don't let "a little thing" like facts get in the way of your racist ramblings... spew on, along side your Nazi apologist friends.
I used to buy into your lies, but not any more. It's easy for you to convince people that Albanians are scum, they have a bad reputation, but when say the exact same things about the Christian Croats, you give away your game. You hate Catholics just as much as you hate Albanians. I am happy that Croatia escaped the communist enslavement of Belgrade, and I am proud to have the great Christian nation of Croatia as a US ally. You on the other hand can count on your communist and Islamist allies like China and Iran in your fight against the USA you hate.
"Irrelevant."
No denial from you. Gee, thanks for clearing that one up for us. For a fleeting moment back there, I actually thought that you might NOT be a K-Alb propagandist wind-up toy. My mistake.
But if you think that I am going to sit here and do research so that you can label it as "Serb apologist", you are delusional.
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