Abstract
In contrast to other Balkan states Albanian national identity is not bound to a state denomination. While all Orthodox nations (Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Romanians, Serbs, Montenegrins) and also the Roman-Catholic Croats and the Muslim Bosniaks define themselves primarily by religion, the population of Albania is split into three confessions roughly 70 % Muslims, 20 % Orthodox and 10 % Roman-Catholics which makes religion not an appropriate identity marker. We investigate the reasons for this exceptional situation by using Manfred Büttner’s “Bochum Model” of religion geography. Next is a survey over the role of religion and religious communities in other Balkan and eastern European countries. We examine the role of religion with Albanian nation-building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its current religious structure and religious communities, their function in public life and relations to the state. The conclusion seeks answers to this question: why was it possible to develop a national identity across religious boundaries under the conditions of usual coincidence of religion and nation in the Balkans. The following answers are provided: (1) a common and very specific language, which contrasted Albanians from all neighbors and gave them a feeling of communality, (2) an imagination of a common ethnic descent from the Illyrians, (3) exclusive national ideas and policies of all neighbours (mainly Serbs and Greeks) offering Albanian-speakers finally no alternative for national affiliation, and (4) the in a fact forced and heavily supported formation of an independent state, where national consciousness could be further cultivated. The chapter asks whether this Albanian model was transferable to the second essentially multireligious Balkan state, viz., Bosnia and Hercegovina.
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Notes
- 1.
The author acknowledges also the works of Brunnbauer (2002), Büttner (1985), Daxner et al. (2005), Deutsch (1989), Doka (2001, 2005), Goehrke and Gilly (2000), Harris (1993), Ivanišević et al. (2002), Kahl et al. (2006), Kahl and Lienau (2009), Kraas and Stadelbauer (2002), Lichtenberger (1976), Lienau and Prinzing (1986), Lienau (2001), Louis (1927), Lucic (2012), Matuz (19943), Milo (2002), Mitchell (2000), Moore (2002), Okuka, (2002), Paulston and Peckham (1998), Pichler (2002 ), Roth (2005 ), Rugg (1994), Schermerhorn (1970), Schmidt (1961), Schubert (2002), Seewann (1995), Seewann and Dippold (1998), Smith et al. (1998), Sugar (1980), Sundhaussen (1994), Suppan and Heuberger (1991), Symmons-Symonolewicz (1985), Todorova (1997, 2002) and White (2000 ) as basic for this chapter and refers to his own findings in Jordan (2007), Jordan et al. (2003, 2006) as well as Jordan and Lukan (1998).
- 2.
According to the Czech population census of 2001, 59 % of the population declared themselves not to be affiliated to a religious denomination.
- 3.
“Southeast Europe” and “the Balkans” are used here as synonyms.
- 4.
A last relevant clause was deleted from the Macedonian constitution after the Ohrid Agreement in 2001.
- 5.
The Roman Empire had adopted Christianity as its exclusive state religion in 391.
- 6.
A Macedonian nation was immediately after World War II established by the Tito regime as a means of implementing a federative structure and national balancing within the second, federative Yugoslavia. Besides a Macedonian standard language consequently also a Macedonian-Orthodox church was established. Montenegrin nation-building proceeded in the later 1990s, when the government lead by Milo Đukanović progressively dissociated itself from Belgrade. In due consequence also a Montenegrin-Orthodox church was founded.
- 7.
While Sunni Muslims were in full concordance with the Empire in religious as well as in political terms, the mystical Dervish order of the Bektashi did and does practice a more liberal, “European” variant of Islam integrating in a syncretistic way elements of Shia as well as Christianity (Clayer 1996). The Bektashi migrated form Anatolia, according to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, to various parts of the Balkans. From 1780 onwards they developed Gjirokastër in the South of Albania into their stronghold. Their number there grew towards the end of the nineteenth century considerably, and southern Albania turned into their center in the Balkans. Due to this fact and based on their balanced “European” variant of Islam, they conceive themselves as a true Albanian community and engage themselves much more than Sunni Muslims in Albanian nation-building. Certain intellectuals styled Bektashism also as a “bridge between Islam and Christianity” (Clayer 2003: 279).
- 8.
This assumption has, however, been seriously contested by Gottfried Schramm’s findings that Albanian toponymy on the territory of modern Albania has adopted many Slavonic names, which means that a layer of Slavonic settlement must have existed before Albanians arrived (Schramm 19992).
- 9.
Most Albanians outside modern Albania, for example, in modern Kosovo and Macedonia, were (and are) Sunni Muslims.
- 10.
The Ghegs (in the North) and the Tosks (in the South) are the main tribal groups of Albanians speaking specific dialects. Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia belong in general to the Ghegian group, who migrated to these regions under Ottoman rule, while the Toskian group was a major source of Albanian emigration to abroad.
- 11.
This second Albanian-Orthodox church did not gain ground because it was just the undertaking of an elitarian dissident group and did not receive support by a wider part of the population.
- 12.
The two entities (Federation and Serbian Republic) are almost equal in population number.
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Jordan, P. (2015). An Exception in the Balkans: Albania’s Multiconfessional Identity. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_83
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