Religion
The country has an area of 11,100 square miles and a population of 3.6 million. According to the most recent census, conducted in 2011, Sunni Muslims constitute nearly 57 percent of the population, Roman Catholics 10 percent, members of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania nearly 7 percent, and members of the Bektashi Order (a form of Shia Sufism) 2 percent. Other groups include Protestant denominations, Baha’is, Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a small Jewish community. Nearly 20 percent of respondents declined to answer the optional census question about religious affiliation.
One of the major legacies of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule was the conversion of up to 70 percent of the Albanian population to Islam. Therefore, at independence the country emerged as a predominantly Muslim nation, the only Islamic state in Europe. No census taken by the communist regime after it assumed power in 1944 indicated the religious affiliations of the people. It has been estimated that of a total population of 1,180,500 at the end of World War II, about 826,000 were Muslims, 212,500 were Orthodox, and 142,000 were Roman Catholics. The Muslims were divided into two groups: about 600,000 adherents of the Sunni branch and more than 220,000 followers of a dervish order known as Bektashi, which was an offshoot of the Shia branch. Bektashism was regarded as a tolerant Muslim sect that also incorporated elements of paganism and Christianity.
A dogmatic Stalinist, Envar Hoxha considered religion a divisive force and undertook an active campaign against religious institutions, despite the virtual absence of religious intolerance in Albanian society. Although there were tactical variations in Hoxha's approach to each of the major denominations, his overarching objective was the eventual destruction of all organized religion in Albania. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the regime achieved control over the Muslim faith by formalizing the split between the Sunni and Bektashi sects, eliminating all leaders who opposed Hoxha's policies, and exploiting those who were more tractable. Steps were also taken to purge all Orthodox clergy who did not yield to the demands of the regime, and to use the church as a means of mobilizing the Orthodox population behind government policies. The Roman Catholic Church, chiefly because it maintained close relations with the Vatican and was more highly organized than the Muslim and Orthodox faiths, became the principal target of persecution. Between 1945 and 1953, the number of priests was reduced drastically and the number of Roman Catholic churches was decreased from 253 to 100. All Catholics were stigmatized as fascists, although only a minority had collaborated with the Italian occupation authorities during World War II.
In 1967 the Communist authorities conducted a violent campaign to extinguish religious life in Albania, claiming that religion had divided the Albanian nation and kept it mired in backwardness. Student of agitators combed the countryside, forcing Albanians to quit practicing their faith. Despite complaints, even by APL members, all churches, mosques, monasteries, and other religious institutions had been closed or converted into warehouses, gymnasiums, and workshops by year's end. A special decree abrogated the charters by which the country's main religious communities had operated. The campaign culminated in an announcement that Albania had become the world's first atheistic state, a feat touted as one of Enver Hoxha's greatest achievements.
Religious intolerance may be creeping into Albania, injecting tensions into communities that have otherwise peacefully coexisted. Since religious life has begun again in Albania after years of severe repression during the communist regime, people are struggling to come to terms with new forms of religious expression. Some of these forms of religious expression are simply new or different, contributing to the enrichment of Albanian culture. Others seem intolerant, divisive and extreme and threaten to erode the Albanian tradition of religious tolerance.
An informal survey conducted in June 2003 by the Institute of Studies and Opinions in coordination with Management Systems International, found that 70 percent of Albanians polled did not consider religion an important part of their lives, but identify themselves as belonging to one of the four major faith groups on the basis of family tradition. Almost a quarter of those surveyed considered themselves practicing believers, while 12 percent said they were willing to “fight in the name of God.” This last figure as well as manifestations of extreme attitudes raises concerns about the growth of fundamentalist and extremist sentiments within Albania. Without countervailing forces, fundamentalism could corrode the traditional tolerance that has characterized Albanian society and threaten the stability of the region.
According to the Ministry of Education, public schools are secular and the law prohibits ideological and religious indoctrination. Religion is not taught in public schools. According to official figures, religious communities, organizations, and foundations had 103 affiliated associations and foundations, with 101 of those managing 101 educational institutions, of which 15 were officially religious-affiliated schools. By law the Ministry of Education must license these schools, and curriculums must comply with national education standards. The Catholic and Muslim groups operated numerous state-licensed schools and reported no problems obtaining licenses for new schools. The Orthodox Church and the Bektashis operated strictly religious educational centers for the training of clerics.
The Government continued to address claims from each of the four traditional religious groups regarding the return or restitution of property seized during the former communist era; however, many of the property claims remained unresolved. With the newly signed bilateral agreements, the State Agency for the Restitution and Compensation of Property was instructed to give priority to properties owned by religious communities. The Orthodox Church continued construction of a new cathedral in Tirana on land that it received as compensation for land seized by the communist government, but it cited lack of action on other property claims throughout the country. Both the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church included in their restitution claims religious icons and precious manuscripts seized by the communist government that remained in the national archives. The Albanian Islamic Community continued to request building permits for a new mosque on land that was returned to the community through the post-communist restitution process. The request remained under consideration by the Municipality of Tirana.
One of the major legacies of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule was the conversion of over 70 percent of the population to Islam. When independence came, therefore, the country emerged as a predominantly Muslim nation, the only Islamic state in Europe. After the Turkish invasions of the fourteenth century, when the Islamic faith was introduced. The apostasy of the people took many decades. In the mountainous north the propagation of Islam met strong resistance from the Catholics. Gradually, however, backwardness, illiteracy, the absence of an educated clergy, and material inducements weakened resistance. Coerced conversions occurred, especially when Catholic powers, such as the Venetian Republic and Austria, were at war with the Ottoman Empire. By the close of the seventeenth century the Catholics in the north were outnumbered by the Muslims. Large-scale forced conversions among the Orthodox in the south did not occur until the Russo-Turkish wars of the eighteenth century. Islamic pressure was put on the Orthodox Christians because the Turks considered them sympathetic to Orthodox Russia.
Sufism, the transcendental sect of Islam, embodies ideas wholly at variance with its cardinal tenets, and represents the abiding efiects of Persian speculation on the Arab mind. The spiritual ideal of the dervish orders is the production of the state of trance, frenzy, or convulsion, during which the soul, in the suspension of its bodily consciousness, is supposed to anticipat'e its reunion with the Infinite. The individual annihilation of the Buddhist nirwana, or beatific absorption into the first principle of the universe, is achieved, in the dervish orders, by physical means for producing supersensuous exaltation.
The Bektashi order, founded by Hadji Bektash, who lived in Asia Minor, in the reign of Amurath I, about 763 A.H., differed from other Moslems, believe that it is not necessary to worship or to do good deeds as a means of winning favor with God. They divide mankind into two classes : “raw souls," who are still in bondage to legal restraint and ceremonial observances; and “cooked souls,” who have ripened into that knowledge of freedom which arises from the impossibility of offending God. These peculiar tenets of the Bektashi dervishes win for them the epithet of heretics among Moslems, and the name of freethinkers among foreign residents of Turkey.
Bektashis shared through its entire existence, in good report and evil report, the fame and fortunes of-the turbulent Pretorians of Eastern Rome. The Bektashi dervishes were suspected of atheistical tenets and of being allied to the Freemasons; the latter, or some branch of them,known in Turkey as Fermsson, being in exceedingly bad repute there, from their supposed infidel and socialistic tendencies. The Bektashis were, moreover, believed to be fomenters of the numerous factions— Reds, Whites, Masked, Intimates, Interpreters, and Kashashin — which convulsed Constantinople during this period. Their solidarity with the Janissaries gave them, undoubtedly, a potent leverage for political intrigue; hence, when the annihilation of the latter was decreed, their fate was shared by their monastic brethren. On June l7, 1826, the dissolution of the Janissary army and the suppression of the Bektashi order of dervishes were simultaneously decreed by imperial edict.
The particularly liberal Bektashi Sufi sect of Shia Islam was driven out of Turkey in the year 1920. The Bektashi dervish order had always been much more liberal and forward looking than the Sunni. During World War II a few leading Bektashi clergymen had joined the National Liberation Movement, and three of them — Baba Mustafa Faja Martaneshi, Baba Fejzo, and Sheh Karbunaro — played major roles in bringing about close collaboration between the Bektashi order and the regime. In March 1947, however, Baba Faja and Baba Fejzo were assassinated at the group's headquarters in Tirana, where they had gone to meet with the World Bektashi Primate Dede Abazi (the Bektashi had moved their world headquarters in the 1920s from Ankara to Tirana). As the Tirana press reported the event: "The leaders of the Bektashi, Baba Faja and Baba Fejzo, cooperating with the people's government, visited Dede Abazi to discuss the democratization of the religious organization. Dede Abazi answered with bullets, killing them both. Later he shot himself." Taking advantage of this incident, the regime eliminated those leaders of the Bektashi clergy it considered disloyal.
While historically Albanians have practiced a traditional, tolerant form of Sunni and Bektashi Islam, a third more radical school has been gradually introduced. The Selafi sect of Islam is followed by a very small minority within Albania and is associated with imams who studied in the Middle East after the collapse of communism. In recent years Albania has blocked several bank accounts and other assets of foreigners and Albanians working in Albania with links to terrorist activities, and organizations which were designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations.
While interfaith harmony and cooperation among the various religious faiths is the rule in Albania, intrafaith harmony and cooperation is sorely lacking in the Muslim community. The Islamic community was once one of the largest landowners in Albania prior to the appropriation of its assets under the communist regime. The restitution process is moving very slowly. Millions, of dollars are at stake in these cases. If all these complaints were resolved immediately, the Albanian Islamic Community (AIC) would overnight become the largest landowner in Albania.
The government legalized 135 buildings owned by religious groups during the 2019, compared with 105 in 2018, and the status of 11 additional properties was under review. The Agency for the Treatment of Property (ATP) reported that, through February, it rejected 150 claims for title. The law then required the ATP to send the remaining 410 pending cases to the court system. The Albanian Islamic Community (AIC) and the Bektashi community raised concerns about having to start over with their claims in the judicial system.
the leadership of the AIC is composed of older men largely educated in the Turkish schools of Islam. The majority of the imams in Albania were educated in Arab states. The AIC leadership was widely seen as highly corrupt and seemed to have little time for religion, spending most of its time on property deals. Dissent is rarely tolerated in political or religious circles in Albania.
Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen's movement, which Turkey terms the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO)" has a huge network of schools, institutions, universities throughout the Balkans: in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania and even though the Turkish government has asked for their closure, its requests have often been rejected. Under the guise of fighting extremism (which means Arab influence on Islam). Gulenists have gained control over the Muslim Community in Albania - which is the official state Church of Islam in the country. The Gulenists run a number of private schools, a private university, most madrassas and the only religious university of the Muslim Community of Albania.
As stated in the pages of the Gulenist run Bedr University, the aim of its leadership is to replace all the imams of mosques of Albania (which were educated in Turkey and the Arab world) with their own members. They have penetrated public universities in Albania. One case is University Alexander Moisiu of Durres, where ex directors (abilers) of the cult now administer the university. They own a national TV station in the country and even a number of private hospitals.
The capture of institutional Islam, schools and even universities have made the Gulenists a major force in Albanian politics. Imams who show sympathy for Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood or other democratic movements in the Muslim world face discrimination, interrogation and even expulsion from their mosques by the Gulenists.
