Prestigious newspaper "New York Times” has dedicated a report to the conversions to the Catholic religion that took place during the past year in Kosovo. The protagonists say that it is hoped to revive the pre-Islamic past of the Albanian people, but such movements are opposed by historians.
A small number of ethnic Albanian Christians, all converts from Islam, are calling on their relatives to see the Church as an expression of their identity. They call this a "return movement", which is hoped to revive the pre-Islamic past and prevent the religious extremism that is spreading from the Middle East.
In the last population census, in Kosovo 93 percent declared themselves Muslim and only 1.75 percent Catholic.
Until the Ottoman Empire conquered what is now Kosovo and other areas of the Balkans in the 14th century, bringing the Islamic religion with them, ethnic Albanians were predominantly Catholic. Under the Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1912, the majority of the people of Kosovo changed their faith, writes NYT.
Father Fran Kolaj, commenting on the conversions that took place in the village of Llapushnik during November, said that Albanians can now take their original identity.
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In the church of Llapushnik where the baptisms took place, nationalist emblems collide with religious iconography. The double-headed eagle symbol of Albania adorns the bell.
"It is time for us to return to the place where we belong - with Christ", Father Fran Kolaj said in an interview with the NYT.
In many Muslim countries, renouncing Islam can carry severe penalties, sometimes even death. So far, the baptism ceremonies taking place in Kosovo have not caused violent protests, although there have been numerous reactions on the Internet (it is not known how many conversions have been made so far).
But historians, who agree that Christianity was present in Kosovo long before the Ottoman Empire brought Islam, question the work of the "return movement".
"From a historical perspective, what they say is true", said Durim Abdullahu, historian at the University of Pristina. But, as he said, "their logic means that we all become pagans" because the people who lived in the territory of today's Kosovo before the arrival of Christianity and later Islam were unbelievers.
Like many other Kosovars, Abdullah believes that Serbia, which has a predominantly Orthodox Christian population, helped fuel the "return movement" as a way to sow discord in Kosovo. While Serbia has long been accused of undermining Kosovo's stability, there is no evidence that it has promoted conversions.
Archaeologists in 2022 discovered the remains of a sixth-century Roman church near Pristina, and in 2023 they found a mosaic with an inscription indicating that the early Albanians, or at least a people possibly related to them, were Christians.
However, Christophe Goddard, a French archaeologist working at the site, has said it was wrong to impose modern concepts of nation and ethnicity on ancient peoples. "This is not history, but modern politics", he added.
Traces of Kosovo's distant pre-Islamic past also survived in a small number of families, despite the risk of expulsion from their Muslim neighbors.
Marin Sopi, 67, a retired Albanian language teacher who was baptized 16 years ago, said his family had been Catholic for generations. As a child, he and his family celebrated Ramadan with Muslim friends, but secretly celebrated Christmas at home.
"We were Muslims during the day and Christians at night," he said. Since he was baptized as a Christian, Sopi says, 36 family members have officially abandoned Islam.
Islam and Christianity in Kosovo largely coexisted peacefully — until Orthodox Christian soldiers and nationalist paramilitary gangs from Serbia began burning mosques and driving Muslims from homes in the 1990s.
Foreign Christian missionaries have kept their distance from the conversion campaign in Kosovo. But some ethnic Albanians living in Western Europe have offered support, seeing a return to Catholicism as Kosovo's best hope to one day join the European Union - whose members are mostly Catholic.
Arbër Gashi, an Albanian living in Switzerland, traveled to Kosovo to attend the conversion ceremony at the church in Llapushnik, which was also the center of a major battle between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998.
He and other activists worry that funding for mosque construction and other activities from Turkey and Middle Eastern countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with their more conservative approaches, threatens Kosovo's traditionally peaceful form of Islam. Most of this money has gone to economic development projects that have nothing to do with religion.
The center of Pristina has a statue honoring Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun and Nobel Peace Prize laureate of Albanian origin, and is dominated by a large Roman Catholic cathedral built after the war with Serbia. But Turkey is currently financing the construction of a mosque very close to the cathedral, which will be even bigger.
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Gashi also said he feared the return of Islamic extremism that emerged in the chaotic first decade of Kosovo's independence. According to some reports, Kosovo provided more recruits to the Islamic State in Syria than any other European country.
Christianity, on the other hand, would open a path to Europe, according to Gashi.
The crackdown by the authorities in recent years has silenced extremism and strengthened peaceful Islam in Kosovo. The streets of Pristina are full of bars that serve alcohol. Veiled women are extremely rare.
Gezim Gjin Hajrullahu, 57, a teacher who was among those recently baptized in Llapushnik, said he joined the Catholic Church "not for the sake of the religion itself" but for "the sake of our national identity" as ethnic Albanians. . His wife also converted.
The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, in an interview for NYT, rejected the importance of religion for the Albanian identity.
"For us, religions came and went, but we are still here. For Albanians, in terms of identity, religion has never been of first importance", said Kurti.
This sets Kosovo apart from the other nations of the former Yugoslavia, which broke up during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s. The main warring states in the early 90s spoke the same language and looked similar, but were distinguished by religion - the Serbs from Orthodox Christianity, Croats from Roman Catholicism and Bosniaks from Islam.
Activists in the "return movement" believe that Albanians should cement their national allegiance with religion in the form of Roman Catholicism.
Boik Breca, a former Muslim who has now converted to Catholicism, insisted that the Catholic Church is not a foreign intervention, but a true expression of Albanian identity and evidence that Kosovo belongs to Europe.
He said that the interest in Christianity started when Kosovo, together with Serbia, were still part of Yugoslavia. He was sent to prison on the coast of Croatia as a political prisoner. Many of his fellow prisoners were Catholics, Breca recalled, and it helped foster what he now sees as his true faith and the belief that "our ancestors were all Catholics."
"To be a real Albanian you have to be a Christian", said Breca.
This view is controversial, including Prime Minister Kurti.
"It doesn't convince me", said Kurti.
The push against Islam started with a meeting in October 2023 in Deçan. At the meeting, attended by nationalist intellectuals and ex-combatants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, they discussed ways to promote "Albanianism" and decided that Christianity would help.
"We are no longer Muslims from today", said those present, mentioning the slogan: "Let's be only Albanians".
The meeting led to the formation of what was initially called the Movement for the Abandonment of the Islamic Faith, a provocative name that later became the "Return Movement".
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The Chief Mufti of Kosovo, Naim Tërnava, has said that these movements risk disrupting religious harmony.
"This is being used by foreign agents to spread hatred against Islam. Our mission is to keep people in our religion. I tell people to stay in Islam", Tërnava said.
