Muslim Albanians in the context of Persecution of Muslims

⭐ Core Definition: Muslim Albanians

Islam arrived in Albania mainly during the Ottoman period when the majority of Albanians over time converted to Islam under Ottoman rule. Following the Albanian National Awakening (Rilindja) tenets and the de-emphasis of religious tradition in Albania, all governments in the 20th century pursued a secularization policy, most aggressively under the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, which actively persecuted Muslims. Due to this policy, Islam, as with all other faiths in the country, underwent radical changes. Decades of state atheism, which ended in 1991, brought a decline in the religious practice of all traditions. The post-communist period and the lifting of legal and other government restrictions on religion allowed Islam to revive through institutions that generated new infrastructure, literature, educational facilities, international transnational links and other social activities.

According to the 2023 census, Islam is the largest religion, with a 50.67% majority of Albanians identifying as Muslim, including 1,101,718 (45.86%) Sunni Muslims, and 115,644 (4.81%) Bektashi Muslims.

↓ Menu

Muslim Albanians in the context of European Islam

European Islam, or Euro-Islam, is a hypothesized new branch of Islam that historically originated and developed among the European peoples of the Balkans (primarily Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and European Turkey, but also in Bulgaria, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, countries with sizable Muslim minorities). These communities, alongside those in some republics of Russia, constitute a large population which constitute large populations of European Muslims. Historically significant Muslim populations in Europe include Azerbaijanis, Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians, Balkan Turks, Bosniaks, Böszörmény, Chechens, Circassians, Cretan Turks, Crimean Tatars, Gajals, Gorani, Greek Muslims, Ingush, Khalyzians, Kazakhs, Lipka Tatars, Muslim Albanians, Muslim Romani people, Pomaks, Torbeshi, Turks, Turkish Cypriots, Vallahades, Volga Tatars, Yörüks, and Megleno-Romanians from Notia today living in East Thrace, although the majority are secular.

The terms "European Islam" and "Euro-Islam" were originally introduced at a conference that took place in Birmingham in 1988, presided by Carl E. Olivestam, senior lecturer at Umeå University, and subsequently published in the Swedish handbook Kyrkor och alternativa rörelser ("Churches and Alternative Movements"). "European Islam" defines the ongoing debate on the social integration of Muslim populations in Western European countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. There are three Islamic scholars who participate in the debate on "Euro-Islam": Enes Karić, Bassam Tibi, and Tariq Ramadan, who adopted the term in the second half of the 1990s but use it with different meanings. The foremost Western, Non-Muslim scholars of political science and/or Islamic studies involved in the debate on "Euro-Islam" are Jocelyne Cesari, Jørgen S. Nielsen, and Olivier Roy.

View the full Wikipedia page for European Islam

↑ Return to Menu