The violent separation of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 & the declaration of her independence from Serbia in 2008 created many hopes for the Albanian Muslims of Kosovo. After 95 years of separation from the Ottoman Empire, they hoped that the time had come for them to enjoy their own state & long denied freedoms which they had lost under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. However, the independence from Serbia in 2008 did not help Muslim ethnic Albanians to create a state as they wanted, nor gain the long dreamed independence. The conditions of Muslim Albanians in post-Yugoslav Kosovo have deteriorated in every aspect. Many of them dream the days of Titos Yugoslavia, when they enjoyed economic prosperity & freedom of movement in the world, even though religiously they were discriminated as in the present time. [...] It is an open secret in Kosovo, known by all Albanians & admitted to by the press, that the most powerful persons in todays Kosovo are not its democratically elected parliamentarians, nor the president or the prime-minister, but the American ambassadors. They decide who will be appointed president,[14] prime minister, how the new governments should be formed, and how Kosovar politicians should resolve their disputes.[15] They decide even for the theological forms of Islam that the Kosovars should practice as well as which imams are good & which ones are deviant & should be removed from the mosques.[16] However, the Americans & their ambassadors are not consistent in their theological preaching to the Kosovars. When the Arab spring started & NATO was in need of al-Qaeda volunteers to fight its war against Syria, they ordered the Kosovar government to host a number of Syrian jihadists in Prishtina. The jihadists who were led by Ammar Abdulhamid were instructed how to fight against the government of Bashar al-Assad & learn from KLA tactics during its war against Yugoslavia.[17] The Saudi & Qatari allies of America who encouraged many European Muslims to make jihad into Syria, poured big money in the Balkans in 2012-2013, through which they brainwashed & recruited many Albanian believers to go into Syria & topple the Shiia president Bashar al-Assad & save the Sunnis. The export of the Kosovar Jihadis into Syrian was supported even by the foreign presence (US & EU) of Kosovo & their media, who instead of condemning the Kosovars – who were committing a crime against the Syrian Arab Republic – and the many imams who were inciting hatred against the Shiias, Alevis & other sects of Islam – praised & described them as freedom-fighters or Sunnis who were fighting against Shiias / Alevis & the Kuffars. Radio Free Europe[18] & many other Kosovar media praised their countrymen who volunteered to fight against the Syrian dictator. However, when in 2013 the Americans changed their plans about Syria, their relation to Islam in Kosovo changed drastically. The democratic freedom-fighters against the Syrian dictator were suddenly branded as terrorists by Kosovos foreign presence. The imams who were brainwashing the Kosovars to wage jihad in Syria against the Shiia of Assad – suddenly became recruiters of extremists who were going to fight in Syria. The charge against the Muslim Community was led by the American ambassador herself who attacked many Kosovar imams for their inappropriate & chauvinistic language.[19] In the International Religious Freedom Report of 2013, the US Department of State has even named four Kosovo imams whom it accuses of manipulating the elections for the leadership of the Muslim Community of Kosovo, attacks against other communities, women & one of them was accused for using anti-Semitic rhetoric.[20] Strangely enough the Department of State report makes no mention of the sectarian & anti-Shiia language that many of these same imams used in their mosques throughout 2013 (since this rhetoric is used even by US officials themselves), but is concerned with their anti-Jewish rhetoric only. What is even more telling is the fact that the US Department of State & their embassy in Prishtina became concerned with the Kosovars going to fight in Syria only in 2013, while in its 2012 report, (when the bulk of the Kosovars went to fight) it decided to ignore these politically correct jihadists.[21] [...] The latest International Religious Freedom Report by the US Department of State has created big shockwaves in Kosovo. The president, the prime-minister & all the cabinet ministers have expressed their readiness to fight the radicalism of those Kosovar citizens whom these very same people encouraged to go & carry out jihad in Syria before. On July 30, 2014 Kosovo was visited by the Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, Philip M. Breedlove who ordered the Kosovar leadership to take appropriate measures against their citizens who were involved with radical groups in Syria.[22] These developments have worried the Muslims of Kosovo, their imams & the whole structure of the Muslim Community who feel misused & betrayed by the foreign presence & the new rulers of post-Yugoslav Kosovo. Many religious Muslims feel cheated & angry with the new realities that they face in todays Kosovo. On the one hand, the state which they thought would be theirs, in accordance with the principles of democracy – is not so. Through its militant secularism, public Catholicization, open discrimination of religious Muslims, massive poverty & corruption, maximal subservience to the American ambassadors & unending media attacks against Muslims, the new Kosovo regime does not seem much different from the regimes that Serbia used to install in Prishtina not very long ago. On the other hand, some Kosovo imams who were indirectly encouraged by their government to support the Arab spring & their Sunnis – now find themselves accused as supporters of terrorism. The new Kosovar state & its politicians have shown & continue to show only hostility towards the religion & tradition of the bulk of their people. Even though Muslims make 95.60% of the population, they are not allowed to learn about their religion in their schools, are not allowed to wear hijabs in public institutions, are insulted for being Muslim, are attacked & blackmailed when they want to create a Islamic political parties or actively participate in the civil society, and are faced with hostile attacks by the media & the civil society that the foreign presence has created & maintains in the country. [...] When NATO separated their province from Yugoslavia in 1999, the Kosovars thought that after 90 years of subjugation & dependence to Beograd, the time had finally come for them to live free & preserve their Muslim identity in Europe. Many others thought that they would create a Greater Muslim Albania. However, none of them came true & today, many Kosovars regret the loss of the good old days when they lived under Titos Yugoslavia. In these times they were economically much better. However, others would probably envy Vladimir Putins Chechnya. The Chechens who do not have any American ambassador or a foreign presence over them, are preserving their Islamic identity much better than the Kosovars are under the NATO-ist Kosovo.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 17:47:17 +0000
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