In Kosovo, Christian converts hope for a pre-Islamic revival

The Catholic priest stood at the altar in the hilltop church for the mass baptism, immersed dozens of heads in water and traced a cross with his finger on each forehead.

Then he rejoiced in the restoration of Christianity to souls in a land where the majority population was Muslim, as was the case with the men, women and children standing before him.

The celebration was one of many held in recent months in Kosovo, a former Serb region populated largely by ethnic Albanians that declared itself an independent state in 2008. In a census last spring, 93% of the population declared themselves Muslim and 1.75% Only % of Roman Catholics. .

A small number of Albanian Christian activists, all converts from Islam, are urging their ethnic relatives to view the church as an expression of their identity. They call it the “Return Movement,” an attempt to revive pre-Islamic times, and see it as an anchor for Kosovo’s standing in Europe and a barrier to the spread of religious extremism from the Middle East.

Until the Ottoman Empire conquered what is today Kosovo and other areas of the Balkans in the 14th century, bringing Islam with it, ethnic Albanians were primarily Catholic. Under Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1912, most of Kosovo’s population converted to their religions.

By reversing the process, ethnic Albanians can regain their original identity, said Father Fran Kullaj, the priest who carried out the baptisms outside the village of Labushnik.

Ethnic Albanians, whose roots go back to an ancient people called Illyrians, live mainly in Albania, a country located on the Adriatic Sea. But they also make up a large majority of the population in neighboring Kosovo and more than a quarter of the population in North Macedonia.

In the church where the baptisms took place, nationalist slogans conflict with religious icons. The symbol of the double-headed eagle of Albania adorns the church tower and also the curtain behind the altar.

“It is time for us to get back to where we belong — with Christ,” Father Fran Kullaj said in an interview.

In many Muslim countries, leaving Islam can result in severe punishment, and sometimes even death. So far, baptism ceremonies taking place in Kosovo have not sparked any violent opposition, although there have been some angry denunciations online. (It is not known how many transfers have been made so far.)

But historians, who agree that Christianity existed in Kosovo long before the Ottoman Empire brought Islam, question the thinking behind the movement.

“From a historical perspective, what they are saying is true,” said Dorim Abdullah, a historian at the University of Pristina. But he added that “their logic means that we should all become pagans” because the people who lived on the territory of today’s Kosovo before the arrival of Christianity and later Islam were non-believers.

Like many other Kosovo citizens, Abdullah said he believed Serbia, whose population is majority Orthodox Christians, helped fuel the return movement as a way to sow discord in Kosovo. While Serbia has been around for a long time On charges of destabilizing KosovoThere is no evidence that he was promoting conversions.

In 2022 archaeologists discovered the remains of a 6th-century Roman church near Pristina, and in 2023 they found a mosaic with an inscription indicating that the first Albanians, or at least a people possibly related to them, were Christians.

However, Christophe Goddard, a French archaeologist working at the site, said it was a mistake to impose modern concepts of nation and race on ancient peoples. He added: “This is not history, but modern politics.”

Traces of Kosovo’s distant pre-Islamic past also remained in a small number of families who clung to Roman Catholicism despite the risk of being ostracized by their Muslim neighbours.

Marin Subi, 67, a retired Albanian language teacher who was baptized 16 years ago, said his family had been “secret Catholic” for generations. He remembers that in his childhood, 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. He said that since his conversion to Christianity, 36 members of his extended family have officially abandoned Islam.

Islam and Christianity in Kosovo mostly coexisted peacefully – until Orthodox Christian soldiers and nationalist paramilitary gangs from Serbia began burning mosques and driving Muslims from their homes in the 1990s.

Foreign Christian missionaries have kept their distance from the conversion drive in Kosovo. But some ethnic Albanians living in Western Europe have offered support, arguing that a return to Catholicism is Kosovo’s best hope of one day joining the European Union, a largely Christian club.

Arber Gashi, an Albanian who lives in Switzerland, traveled to Kosovo to attend a baptism ceremony in the church in Labushnik, which overlooks the scene of a major battle in 1998 between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army.

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 approach, threatens the traditional form of Islam in Kosovo. Most of this money went to economic development projects that had nothing to do with religion.

In central Pristina there is a statue honoring Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun and Nobel Peace Prize winner of Albanian origin, and it is dominated by a large Roman Catholic cathedral built after the war with Serbia. But Türkiye is currently funding the construction of a giant new mosque near the mosque, which will be even larger.

Mr. Gashi also said he feared a return to the Islamic extremism that emerged in the chaotic first decade of Kosovo’s independence. On some charges, Kosovo has provided more recruits for ISIS in Syria than any other European country.

He added that Christianity, on the other hand, would open a path to Europe.

A crackdown by the authorities in recent years has silenced extremism and reinforced Kosovo’s traditionally permissive stance on Islam. The streets of Pristina are filled with bars serving a wide range of alcoholic drinks. Veiled women are extremely rare.

Gizem Jin Hajrallah, 57, a teacher who was among those recently baptized in Labushnik, said he joined the Catholic Church “not for the religion itself” but for “our national identity” because we are of Albanian origin. His wife also converted.

In an interview in Pristina, Albanian Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti downplayed the importance of religion for Albanian identity. “For us, religions have come and gone, but we are still here,” he said. “For Albanians, in terms of identity, religion has never been of primary importance.”

This distinguishes them from other peoples in the now-vanished multi-ethnic federal state of Yugoslavia, which disintegrated during the Balkan Wars of the early 1990s. The main warring parties in the early stages of the conflict spoke almost the same language and sounded similar, but were clearly distinguished from each other by religion – Serbs by Orthodox Christianity, Croats by Roman Catholicism, and Bosnians by Islam.

Activists in the Return Movement believe that ethnic Albanians also need to strengthen their national loyalties to religion in the form of Roman Catholicism.

Boik Preka, a former Muslim active in the movement, insisted that the Catholic Church is not an alien outsider but the true expression of Albanian identity and proof that Kosovo belongs to Europe.

He said his interest in Christianity began when Kosovo, along with Serbia, was still part of Yugoslavia. He was sent to prison off the coast of Croatia as a political prisoner. He recalls that many of his fellow prisoners were Catholic, and they helped spark what he now considers his true faith and his belief that “our ancestors were all Catholics.”

“To be a true Albanian,” he said, “you have to be a Christian.”

This view is widely disputed, including by Mr Kurti, the Prime Minister.

“I don’t buy that,” he said.

The current campaign against Islam began with a meeting in October 2023 in Decani, a hotbed of nationalist sentiment near Kosovo’s border with Albania. The meeting, attended by nationalist intellectuals and former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, discussed ways to strengthen “Albanian identity” and decided that Christianity would help.

“We are no longer Muslims as of today,” attendees said He saidAdopting the slogan: “Let them be Albanians only.”

The meeting led to the formation of what was initially called the “Movement to Abandon the Islamic Faith,” a provocative name that was largely dropped in favor of the “Return Movement.”

From his office in Pristina, decorated with a model of Mecca, Kosovo’s Grand Mufti Naim Trnava watches the return movement with concern and dread. He said that pushing Muslims to convert to Christianity threatens to undermine religious harmony and is used by “foreign agents to spread hatred for Islam.”

He added: “Our mission is to keep people following our religion.” “I tell people to stay in Islam.”