The Albanian assimilation of Slavonic ethnic regions (Albanization from here on) - Macedonia, Serbia and Zeta - is a fact which has been observed by all historical sources from the moment the Albanians started converting to Islam and this process cannot be separated from Islamization (1), because the conquered areas were organized on an Islamic basis (2) by the Ottoman Empire considered a universal Islamic Caliphate in the Islamic world.

A well-known Turkish historian, Halil Inaldzik, says, “Gazza  -  the Holy War was like an ideal, a significant factor in the establishment and development of the Ottoman State. The society in these parts assimilated into a special culture and was permeated with the ideology of a constant holy war and a continuous spread of dar al Islam (the Arabic country of Islam i.e. the country where everything is ruled according to Islamic regulations – M.J.) until it should include the whole world”. (3)

The rule on the established territories was based on the shariat law i.e. legal norms based on the Koran, and the most important one relating to the ‘infidel’ countries is the one based on the following Koran ayah, (namely the whole thought). “Fight those from among the People of the Book, who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor hold as unlawful what Allah and his Messenger have declared to be unlawful nor follow the true religion, until they pay the tax with their own hand and acknowledge their subjugation”. (4) Based on this ayah a tax per capita was imposed on non-Muslims, namely a head tax or jizyah, which was paid only by those whose religion was not Islam. This tax, according to Mawerdi, one of the most important Islamic legal and political theorists, is the expression of ‘the inferior worth and the humiliation on the non-Muslims until they decide to free themselves of it by converting to Islam’. (5)

What is important and what should be emphasized in order to understand the entire Albanian-Serbian relationship is the Islamic attitude towards the concept of nation. Islam does not recognize nor know the concept of nationhood in the present European meaning. In Islam all mankind is divided according to an affiliation to a particular religion. There are Muslims as bearers of the true religion, then monotheists consisting of the Christians and Jews, then polytheists or mushrikun and finally infidels or kurfs , (which gained the form of dyaur or chafir in these parts). (6) All Muslims form a community of ummah without any differences.

Ummah is a religious–political community ruled by shariat. There must not be any differences between them, either formal or real. This community, as Inaldzik says, is constantly at war and its goal is to free other nations from misconceptions that there is another God apart from Allah, and from their disregard of the fact that Mohammed is his Messenger. (7) Therefore each war that the Muslims wage in the sense is a fight for a good cause since those lost must be guided to the right way. This fact is nowadays still a practice and theory in Islamic countries.

Therefore the bulletin of the Cultural Center of the International Organization of the Islamic Conference states that  “The conquest of the Balkans by the Turks-Ottomans in the 14th century brought justice and civilization into the region and saved the population from oppressive rule. The Ottoman gave these people complete freedom of religion and religious practice doing the same thing in the field of culture, language and tradition”. (8) This was said by representatives of these countries which, at the time that text was written, were considered to be friends of the former Yugoslavia. This is also confirmed by the Takvim, a referential annual of the Association of the Islamic clerical official in Bosnia and Herzegovina: “God has not given the Muslims the obligation of war so they could force Islam upon people, but to establish his righteous, noble and fair system in earth”. (9)

The authors of both texts do not answer how a noble system can be established against people’s will but they do not have to because they do not have any dilemma that Islam means subjection and leaves no freedom of choice. The Koran says: “Fighting is ordained for you, though it is repugnant to you, but it may be that you dislike a thing while it is good for you, and it may be that you like a thing while it is bad for you. Allah knows all things, and you know not”. (10)

Therefore, the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians and Albanians did not exist for the Muslim conquerors, except as Christians, namely infidels, since the Koran offers the possibility that Christians can be treated as infidels as well: “and the Jews say Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say the Messiah is the son of Allah, that is what they say with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those away”. (11)

As the Muslim conquerors’ attitude was identical to all the Christians at the time of conquest, not only were no serious conflicts between the conquered ethnic groups but there was co-operation and joint efforts to protect lives and freedom. An example of a multi-ethnic coalition is the Battle of Kosovo where Christian defenders were an ethnic mix of Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Greeks, etc.

Two eminent Albanian historians and members of the Albanian Academy of Sciences affirm the Islamic mistreatment of Albanians at the time of conquest: “The Turkish rule in Southern Albania was a great misfortune. The Turkish destroyed and looted everything with no limitations, which was their particularity. Their 15th century chroniclers proudly emphasized that they had taken great loot in Albania, they wrote about the systematic burning of towns and villages, indescribable savagery in the treatment of the local population, kidnapping of children to be janissaries or to be sold in slave markets in Asia”.(12) Islamic cruelty provoked strong resistance by ethnic Albanians that was a resistance of the Christians against the cruel, Islam-based rule. An example of resistance is the Georges Kastrioti, named Scanderbeg, who stopped being a Muslim bey, an Ottoman feudalist, returned to Christianity, and led a war against the local Ottoman officers, mostly Albanians such as Sultan’s servant Balaban-pasha and Balaban’s brother Jonus. (13)

Ironically, Ottomans were able to recruit Albanians to wage jihad against their own people and in service to the caliph from Istanbul. There could not have been any particular conflicts with the Serbs, Macedonians and others at that time, for the Albanians, being Christians by a great majority, fervently fought for their very lives and sympathized with every action of the Serbs and other Christians. As Polo and Puto said, the Albanians were trying to organize an anti-Turkish coalition together with the Serbs, Bosnians, people from Herzegovina, Dalmatians, Macedonians and Bulgarians. (14)

Albanian resistance lasted only until an active Islamization begun. The Islamization of the Albanians was initiated when the Muslim Ottomans began raising jizyah, namely the tax per capita that had become unbearable in addition to physical maltreatment. Albanian historians say that in the 15th century this tax amounted to 45 aspras per year, whereas it reached the amount of 580 aspras in the 17th century. (15) The unbearable tax, cruelty and social maltreatment of Albanians were sufficient catalysts to produce massive Islamization of Albanians and an end to any resistance to the Islamic rule of the Ottomans. Subsequently, Albanian relation with their ethnic neighbors with whom they worked as multi-ethnic partners while Christian also changed.

By accepting Islam in a religious State, where everything was determined on the principle of affiliation to different religions, the Albanians – but only those Islamicised – were equated with the ethnic Turks, from the point of view of the sultan, the caliph, ethnic Turks as well as their Albanian compatriots and the Balkan Slavs. Therefore they did not become Turkish collaborators as is stated in our historical textbooks but they actually became turks  - where the term turk with a small t is to denote that the concept of a turk has no national meaning, but only a religious one. Islamicized Albanians also became symbols and bearers of the occupation, oppression and destruction of Christians as were the ethnic Turks.

The sultan and caliph from Istanbul relied on the Islamicized Albanians and promoted them as exemplary representatives of Islam not just by high military offices but by promises of a free loot of their ethnic kin. Driven by a desire for material goods that the Koran promises to believers. (16) Islamicized Albanians ransacked and looted Christian Albanian villages. The possibility of an easy life based on the looting of their compatriots attracted other outlaw clans among Albanians that begun moving towards Western Macedonia, Kosovo and present day Montenegro. They had the full moral support of their supreme religious leader, the caliph in Istanbul, because the authorities in the capital felt that lawlessness rooted in Islam was strengthening the Islamic character of the State and helps in the final victory of Islam.

Ottomans had very little loyalty to their own ethnicity and their rule was also pronounced in this direction. For example, when the Ottoman sultans took that title of a calipf in 1517 (17), they proclaimed that they were not ethnic Turks but of an Arabic origin coming from the tribe of Vadi Safa (18), because according to the shariat theory, the caliph of an Islamic community may only be the person belonging to Mohammed’s tribe of Quraysh. (19)

An Albanian academician, Pollo, attests that Islamization of Albanians meant their assimilation with the Turks: “Mass Islamisation of the Albanians in the17th century caused a serious ideological schism… The religious schism undoubtedly was a serious obstacle… all the more because the theocratic State considered the Muslim Albanians to be Turks’. (20)

The fact the Muslim Albanians thought of themselves as ‘turks’ is particularly important and an extremely complicating factor for the Albanian national resistance. An example is Naim Frasheri, an Albanian nationalist trying to engage in a national renaissance in the 19th century: “We are all brothers of the same blood and language. Do not say Turks and dyaur, never say this”. (21)

Despite calls for national solidarity, Islamicized Albanians exhibited an extreme cruelty towards their own Christian kin. For example, Albanians that were Muslim exterminated Orthodox Albanian tribe of Suliots after a public call by an Albanian Ali-pasha Tepelini to wage jihad – the Holy War – upon them: “Agas…let us start with the extermination of the infidel race of Suliots from our surroundings and let us decisively meet the infidels… so, fellows, true Muslims, unite and swear in the name of the Prophet that we will conquer the Suliots  or die”. (22) On Friday in June 1800, Ali-pasha gathered all the leaders of  military expedition in the Tekie of the nakshibendi dervish order in Janina. “After ritual washing, talking the Koran from the hand of the renowned Sheikh Jusuph-effendi and swearing all those present by the Holy Book to fight against the Suliots, the sworn enemies of the Faith and State… the Sheikh read the appropriate extracts from the Koran and all present swore loyality’. (23)

Encouraged to fight by a monk Samuilo whom they thought to have been sent by God, Suliots counterattacked. (24) After a fierce battle, the Suliots were conquered. The conquering Muslim Albanians killed the prisoners, skinning or burning some of them alive, whereas the luckiest were slaughtered. Wombs of Suliot women were ripped then sliced into pieces (25).

The treatment of the Christian Slavs in Macedonia, Serbia or Montenegro was similar. The Albanians, being Muslims, penetrated into the parts where before they had lived in small numbers only. They expelled the Orthodox Slavs, took over their property and Albanized territories whose population was overwhelmingly Orthodox and Slav. Being Muslim made this forcible takeover of property legitimate because only a Muslim could demand protection of the Islamic State and the State did not accept Christian testimony against a Muslim. Even Enver Hoxha, the ex-dictator of Albania, attests to the Islamic legacy of the Albanians: “Brotherhood in Islam was a principle and a legal issue. In principle there had to be a spiritual and material unity between the members of the community and between the rulers and the ruled”. (26)

It was important for the State, namely the authorities in Istanbul, that the inhabitants of the parts conquered by the Albanians to be Muslim so as to be loyal and reliable subjects of the State, while the national affiliation of the Muslims was not important. The results was that the vast swaths of Slavic territory in the Balkans became not only Islamicized , but also Albanized because the Albanians were the undertakers of the Islamization process.

Exposed to terror, the Slavs who sought salvation could get it either by emigration or conversion. As a rule the process of Albanisation followed that of Islamisation. All those visiting the mentioned areas realized this. Says Victor Berar, a French author: “Conversion to Islam was not done by the Govornment but by powerful landowners. By the middle of the 18th century whole provinces had undergone circumcision on orders of Albanian beys… In 1740 the Slavs who lived near the Prespa Lake were ordered to become turks within three days. The Albanians were the greatest activists in the process of Islamisation ”. (27)

It is also significant that the Albanians were allowed to do what they wanted without impunity and were absolute masters of the Slavonic regions. Says Berar: “The Muslim Albanians fortified the hills around that Christian and agricultural Slavonic country. They encircled the town of Prizren, Djakovica and Pristina with their fortresses and settlements. They moved towards the valleys from all these points and murdered, raped or just looted – acting as they felt inclined. Being Muslims they gave themselves the right of being owners and rulers…that was the normal attitude of Muslims towards Christians. But the Albanians introduced an imaginative approach to the exploitation of Slavs in which anger and kindness, insincere friendship and smiling cruelty were intertwined, which made them in turn the worst of tyrants and the best of friend”. (28)

An American historian of Albanian descent, Stavro Skendi, himself says that the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo were less tolerant in the religious sense than their compatriots and co-religionists in the homeland of Albania (29).

The well-known French historian Rene Pinon describes the effects of this Islamic intolerance of the Christian the Slavonic population and how it was reduced in favor of the Albanians. Says he: “In 1906 the Tetovo valley of Polog the population consisted of one quarter Albanians and three quarter Bulgarians. Yet only four years later the proportion was reversed”. (30) Explaining how this happened Pinon adds: “An Albanian got the land he liked due to his rifle”. (31) If we disregard the term ‘Bulgarian’ which Pinon uses incorrectly one sees that Islamic terror reduced the Slavonic ethnic regions were into Albanian, i.e. Muslim ones.

The salient fact is the one earlier mentioned, namely Islam as a source of ideology and legitimacy within the State, a process which can be divided into several stages. The first is the stage of Islamisation. It was important then as to who was Muslim and who Christian, and this stage lasted until the end of the Ottoman rule in 1912. During this period, the process of Albanisation also took place because religion was used for spreading the ethnic group of Albanians and those Slavs who converted to Islam were Albanised; but the fact was not of supreme importance at that time for Albanians themselves because they had no national awareness as the concept of nationhood meant very little. According to Stavro Skendi, despite his attempt to show that the Albanians had overcome their mutual religious differences, cannot help admitting that the “Albanians from Kosovo had no inclination to renounce the Sultan whom they called baba-mbret  - the king-father’.(32) Which meant that the Albanians from Kosovo were not for the independent Albania as a national state for it meant nothing to them.

Skendi also underlines that, in 1908, only four years before the end of Ottoman rule, the representatives of the Young Turks Committee promised to the Albanians gathered in Urosevac that the new constitution would not be in contradiction with the Koran, that the shariat law would come into force again, and especially that their baba-mbret would stay sacrosanct.(33)

The official Serb State documents also indicate that the Albanisation of Slavonic regions was less important then their Islamization. A report of the Serbian Royal Consulate in Pristina dated October 21, 1908, on Albanian crimes against the Serbs, cites a Muslim man Mahsut described by the locals as an “extreme oppressor” whose evil deeds were ascribed to the Albanians, but the report indicates that Mahsut was of Serbian origin by name Maksim Veselinovic and a recent convert to Islam, so by implication of the time an Albanian convert as well. (34)

Case of Mahsut also illustrates ethnic conversion of Slavs that went right along the religious one. A great number of Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia are of a direct Serbian descent, a fact confirmed by numerous sources. (35) While the assimilation into the Islamic community was the primary goal the acceptance of the Albanian language was an entirely secondary fact and implicit in the religious conversion. Says the Albanian academician Pollo: “The Muslims used the privileged legal status and enjoyed political rights of which Christians were deprived. During the 18th and 19th centuries that class presented itself not as a representative of the Turkish nation, but as an emanation of the religious Islamic State”. (36)

The acceptance of the Albanian language, therefore, meant joining the Islamic Ummah locally referred to “turks” that also expressed the general Albanian desire to, in effect, be ethnic Turks. Stavro Skendi comments: “The Muslims from Skadar did not want Albanian schools nor their language and did not want any other official language except Turkish”. (37) Skendi adds that this phenomenon was widespread in Skopje and Western Macedonia where many Albanian families only spoke Turkish. (38)
 

The pan-Turk feeling that was the same as pan-Islamic was not limited to religious nor cultural affairs, but those very feelings dictated the political demands of the layman Albanian Muslims so mush that, at the time of formation of an independent Albania, the Albanians denounced their State and their nation in the name of Islam. During the formative talks on independent Albania, for example, a mass rebellion of Albanian Muslim peasants occurred protesting the Albanian independence and demanding a reunion with the Ottoman Empire as one of the basic conditions. (39)

Although there were attempts in the State of Albania to create a concept of a lay nation, the conditions were different than in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. All political parties and organizations among the Albanians acted on a plan on a pan-Islamic basis. The two significant political organizations of that time: Dzamijet and The Kosovo Committee. (40) both campaigned on a pan-Islamic platform and gathered all the Muslims in the neighbouring regions - Macedonia, Kosovo and Raska .(41) The policy of The Kosovo Committee was of special importance in this sense as although its goal was a Greater Albania its mainstay was the Muslims who regardless of nationality would be gathered as a later stage into the Albanian nation with the Islamic symbol.

Finally there remains the most important organization: the Second League of Prizren. Sinan Hasani, a former Yugoslav high official, says that, like the previous two Albanian organization, on the basis of the idea of its chief, Dzafer Deva, the Second League had as its goal the creation of Greater Albania as a Muslim State which would be a bulwark against Communism and Slavdom by relying on the Islamic world (42). The League appealed to all Muslims and all slogans were religious. (43) The results was that national and religious affiliation were constantly mixed and the majority ethnic component, in this case the Albanians, won, but all this had an overtone of Islamic unity even then. The following is especially illustrative. After World War II the population in some villages in Western Macedonia expressed their wish to the new Yugoslav communist authorities to have their children educated in the “Turkish mother tongue”. A Turkish teacher, however, who had been sent by the authorities to do this job, sent back reports that all of them were Albanians who did not know a single word of Turkish. (44)

Finally, after the World War II and with a rise of a communist dictatorship in Albania, pan-Islamic ideological domination began to wane among Albanians. Influenced by the atheistic nationalism of Enver Hoxha’s ideology one is also to expect that the newly emerging Albanian nationalism may also be radically anti-Islamic. Yet, despite the formal atheism, Islam was still used by the communist Albanian state in an attempt to amputate Kosovo from the Yugoslav state. In 1956, at the sentencing in Prizren, for example, Albanian Sheiks of the dervish orders, Sheikh Hasan, Sheikh Ramo and Sheikh Mujedin, were imprisoned for their secessionist activities and their help to terrorist gangs coming from atheist Albania. Sheikh Mujedin formed the committee for anti-Serbian activities in his tekija in Orahovac. (45) Communist Albania used Islamic dervishes for the realization of its territorial conquests in Kosovo while at the same time, persecuted its dervishes in Albania itself.

The culmination of the use of Islam for political purposes could be seen in the example of the Communist League of Kosovo.

For example, in order to undermine the morale of the Serbian village Vitomirica near Pec, Albanian separatists obtained a permission with the help of Mahmut Bakali, head of the Communist League of Kosmet, to build there a mosque. (46) Bakali, a formal communist and atheist, worked hard to have the permission granted because, according to him, by promoting Islam Marxist-Leninst ideology is also promoted.

The use of Islam to intimidate or force assimilation of Kosovo non-Albanian Muslims such as Romanies, Gorans, Torbes, Turks, etc. was pronounced as a sociological norm for Islamic struggle by the organization of Macedonian Muslims. (47) The ethnic Turk journalist from Pristina, Aljaetin Morina, openly said that assimilating into Albanian made it easier to get a job and obtain privileges. (48) The tiny Albanian Roman-Catholic minority of Kosovo was also intimidated by the ‘Marxist-Leninsts’ so that many of them emigrated the to Roman-Catholic Croatia. One of these, Marjan Markaj, for instance, emigrated to the village of Bodenik near Bjelovar. (49)

The fourth stage of Albanisation begun after the fall of communism in Albania. A research on religiousness conducted by the Centre for Political Research of the Institute of Social Sciences after the fall of communism in Albania (1990) indicates that two thirds of the population in Kosovo were religious despite professed atheism, and 70% of them were Albanians. (50)

The Islamic character of Albanian separatist movement in Macedonia is, however, more pronounced. The campaign slogan of the Democratic Party of Albanians in Tetovo, Macedonia, on July 6, 1997, held a slogan “with Islamic spirit and Albanian blood”.

Little different is Kosovo. The most influential party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (DLK) led by Hidajet Hisani , who had been a Leninist in the 1980s, tried to project  itself as a liberal and secular one but despite its official ‘secularism’, its political identity is shaped by the head of the Islamic Community in Kosovo, Redzep Boja. Boja was instrumental in establishing Party’s Turkish links by arranging a visit for the party members to Istambul.. (52) Boja regularly allowed the premises of the Islamic Community to be used by DLK political purposes. It was particularly important that he tried to show himself as a great fighter for Albanian rights and so he announced that the Albanian national cause is always above the Islamic. (53)

Yet Redzep Boja is Saudi educated Islamic theologian. He was in Saudi Arabia from his early youth where he finished both secondary school and university; and where he was taught in both institutions that the concept of nationhood did not exist for a Muslim. (54) Boja’s pronouncement that Albanian nationalism supercedes Islam is contrary to the basics of a good Muslim so it appears to be tactical in nature designed to appeal to the Western secularism in order to obtain independence for Kosovo but with a long view that once independent, Kosovo will be free to undergo Wahhabi indoctrination.

Commenting to Boja’s statement in the Islamic magazine Preporod, an annonimous author says that Boja “said this without regret which I resent, for he is a representative of religion and not the nation. This is the reason why such statements by the head of the Islamic Community are harmful (55). But the author was quick to add that he is “an optimist despite all the difficulties. The development of events in Albania which had been the greatest enemy of Islam, and the creators and originators of such policies themselves now admit that such negative and wrong policies have brought much evil to Albania and our people. It is to be hoped that the remaining Marxist-Leninists, the heirs of Enver Hoxha, will eventually realize that there is no peace or good future for us, Albanians, without the Islamic faith’. (56)

The situation in Macedonia, however, was different. In the interview which the President of the Macedonia Meshihat (religious headquarters), Suleiman Redzepi, gave to Preporod, he said: “there is no doubt concerning the way which the Islamic Community of Macedonia will take. Our way and the way of all Muslims is the road of Allah” (57) which means, there is a way but with no room for nationalism as the Koran states, not even for the Albanian one (58). Then Redzepi added: ‘The Albanians from Macedonia are very good Muslims and believers and I would not agree with you that a considerable number among them deny Islam. Allah’s faith cannot be denied. It is among us and the Albanians feel it as being theirs. (59)

Finally Redzepi  adds an absolute untruth also found also found in Albanian textbooks: “Albanians accepted Islam from the Turks of their own free will and it represented a bulwark to resist the assimilation practiced by their neighbors through the centuries’.(60) Not only did he deny the truth, but he denied the idea of a special Albanian nation in relation to other Muslims. If the Albanians voluntarily accepted Islam from the Turks, then the Turks did nothing wrong with their military occupation and the authentic rebellions by the Christian Albanians such as George Kastrioti are not expressions of genuine Albanian nationalism but an Albanian national sacrilege against the Shariat law. (61)

Importantly, people who were attempting to awaken Albanian nationalism were not Muslim Sunnites but Christians: Naum Vecilhardzi, Zef Jubani, Konstantin Kristoforidji, Jeronim de Rada. Ramiz Alija , a Muslim and President of Albania, admitted to this.(62). The brothers Frasheri: Abdul, Naim and Sami who joined the nationalist cause later on were not Sunnites either but members of the dervish sect, Beqteshi, herecital from the Sunnites viewpoint and who were neither then nor are now in communion with other Muslims either in Kosovo, Albania or Macedonia.(63)

It is for that reason that Ramiz Alia said: “The Albanian Prizren League and all the Albanian national renaissance activists deserve much recognition for opposing and solving all those problems that religion was creating in Albania, in the interest of the nation. Experience shows us the great damage which fanaticism and religious division have caused and continue to cause to our country… Unlike in some other Balkan countries no religion in Albania contributed to the national liberation by raising the flag of liberty… Rising above religions, divisions and religious fanaticism…..the ideologists of the national renaissance have put forward the fighting motto that the religion of the Albanians is Albanianhood’.(64)

As this was valid in Albania since 1945, and as the concept of a modern Albania was spreading out of Albania, so did this idea become a part of the spoken word of the Albanian intelligentsia educated in Macedonia and Kosovo although there it was linked to a different religious reality than in Albania. This is the reason why at present Redzep Boja dare not speak openly about his goal, firstly because religious awareness is somewhat weaker in Kosovo than among Macedonian Albanians and also on account of the Roman Catholic minority and requests from the Vatican.

Free of these considerations Suleiman Redzepi speaks completely differently on behalf of Albanians in Macedonia as does the Arban Dzeferi, Albanian Party chairman from Tetovo. But their intentions are clear: there is no compromise on religion- one either respects all dogmas and one is a Muslim, or if one negates only one, one loses the status of a believer and death awaits. What is clear is, that by acting as they do, secessionists in Kosovo and Macedonia are destroying the very idea of the Albanian nation and everything that Vecilhardzi, Kristoforidi and others have been working towards for 200 years.

If what the secessionists want should become real, a Greater Albania would be created but only for a brief while for there would follow a settling of accounts with the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox and former Muslims turned atheists.(65) This would bring about the break-up of the Albanian nation into three disparate groups, and if Islam should triumph it would also mean the disappearance of the Albanian nation and its assimilation into the general and non national mass of other Muslims in the world.

Footnotes:

(1) Istorija Srpskog Naroda, Belgrade, 2nd ed. 1994

(2) Istorija Naroda Jugoslavije, II, Zagreb, 1959, p.13

(3) Inaldzik H. Osmansko Carstvo, Beograd, 1974,p.11

(4) Kuran sa Prevodom, Leadership of the Islamic Community for Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, Sarajevo 1984, surah IX, ayah 29.

(5) Mawerdi, Les Status Gouvernamentaux, E. Fagan, Paris 1982, p.299.

(6) Nerkez Smailagic, Leksikon Islama, Sarajevo 1990.

(7) ‘It is needless to say the Muslims have done a civilisational mission wherever they came with arms; I must emphasise that they never tortured or persecuted the defeated,’ Takvim, for 1992 p55, Sarajevo.

(8) Ircica, Bulletin d’information, Nr. 21/1989, Istanbul.

(9) Takvim, ibid., p.44

(10) Koran,ibid.II, 216

(11) Ibid, IX ,30.

(12) Arben Puto, Stefanaq Polo : Histoire d’Albanie des Origines a nos Jours, Roanne, 1974,p.75.

(13) Krasniqui  Rexhep, Georges Kastrioti-Scandarbeg, Paris, Florence 1983; Balaban-Pasha captured seven of Kastrioti’s officiers and the were skinned alive in Istanbul,p.154,

(14) Pollo and Puto, ibid. p.105.

(15) Ibid.p.105.

(16) Koran, XXXIII, 26,27, ‘ And He brought those of the People of the Book who aided them down from their fortresses, and cast terror into their hearts. Some you slew and some you took captive. And He made you inherit their land and their houses and their wealth, and on which you have not yet set foot. And Allah has power over all things.’

(17) Ivanov N.A., Osmanskoe Zavoevanie Arabskih Stran, Moskow 1984, p.68.

(18) Hiti Filip, Istorija Arapa , II edition , Sarajevo, 1983, p.633.

(19) Mawerdi,ibid.P/8. Hiti Filip.

(20) Stefanaq Polo, Les Contradictions Dans la Formation de la Conscience Nationale, Studia Albanica, nr.2/1986,p30, Tirana.

(21) Korm Zorz, Multikonfesionalne Zajednice, Sarajevo, 1977,p.273.

(22) Ramerand Gabriel, Ali de Tebelen, Pacha de Janine 1744-1822, Paris, 1928,p.68.

(23) Ibid, p. 69.

(24) Ibid. p. 79.

(25) Ibid. P. 79.Apart from annihilation of the Albanians, Ali –Pasha massacred the Frenchmen  as well. After the battle with the Frenchmen, Ali-pasha ordered the prisoners and the dead to be decapitated and tower to be made: ”In the morning there was a terrible sight; Turko-Albanians built a pyramid out of the decapitated heads from French soldiers’ corpses on the battle-field… The story goes that black executioner who had been cutting the heads of these poor people fell beside the bodies of his victims and died before Ali’s eyes, exhausted by tiredness and the  stench of blood. Ali ordered that the lives of eight French officers and 147 soldiers and sub-officers be spared…these poor devils were forced by beating to skin those heads and put them in salt and on their back in the bags and carry them. Carrying that dreadful trophy, they were taken to Janjina where the crowd waited for them with stones as criminals. Whence they headed toward Constantinople in the most severe winter and across the mountains of the northern Greece; many of them did not come to the end of the road, they died of cold,hunger and fatigue. When one of those poor devils gave signs of weakness, one of the escort would  throw him on the ground,cut his head off which would be  then thrown into bag to be carried by some of his friends The quote from p.61.

(26) Hoxha Enver, Reflexions sur le Moyen Orient, Tirana, 1984,p.494.

(27) Berard Victor, La Macedoine, Paris, 1897, p. 20.

(28) Ibid. P.112.

(29) Skendi Stavro, Albanian National Awakining 1878-1912, Prinston, New Jersay, 1967, p.20.

(30) Pinon Rene, L’Europe et la Jeune Turquie, Paris, 1911,p.305.

(31) Ibid.

(32) Skedni, ibid. p.340.

(33) Ibid.P.343.

(34) Perunicic Branko, Svedocanstvo o  Kosovu, Beograd 1988,p.382.

(35) Today’s Albanians have confirmed this to researchers such as Atanasije Urosevic. See his book Etnicki Procesi na Kosovu Tokom Turske Vladavin, Belgrade 1987,p.62 and further.

(36) Stefanaq Pollo, Les Contradictions…ibid.p.27.

(37) Skendi…ibid.P.368.

(38) Ibid. P.348.

(39) Pollo, Puto, ibid. P.187.

(40) Islam, Balkan I Velike Sile XIX-XX Vek, SANU, Beograd 1997, p.452.

(41) Ibid.

(42) Sinan Hasani, Kosovo – Istine I Zablude, Zagreb, 1986, p.113.

(43) Ibid.

(44) Sveske, Sarajevo, No.15/1986,p.288.

(45) Sinan Hasani, ibid, p. 160.

(46) Politika,6.9.1987, p.19.

(47) Politika, 31.8.1987, p.6.

(48) Politika, in the text: Iseljavanja Turaka sa Kosmeta, 4.7.1986,p.6.

(49) Ekspres, 19.4.1987, p.3.

(50) Quoted from Teme, Nis, nr. 1-2, 1997, p.154.

(51) Memorandum za golemiot abanskiot nacionalizam I separatizam, edition Zdruzenie   na Etnolozite na Republika Makedonija, nr. 03-43, from 16.8.1997.
(52) Preporod, Sarajevo, 1.8.1991, p.16.

(53) Ibid.

(54) See Jevtic Miroljub: Islam I Nacionalizam na Primeru Albanaca (Islam and Nationalism – the Albanian Example) in Islam in the Balkans and the Great Powers XV-XX century, SANU, Belgrade 1997. This paper quotes the book by the Iranian, Ali Moahammad Naqavi, Islam and Nationalism , TEHERAN 1984. Nakavi further says: ‘When Islamic ideology advances, nationalism is destroyed and when nationalism is on the rise, then Islam is destroyed.’ (p.107.) Nakavi gives a convincing Koran argument for these conclusions. Also see, for example, the attitude of the Islamic Community of the united SFRJ ‘… the moment when the national awareness among the Muslims started  growing and when it reached and even rose above the level of the religious awareness which considers all Muslims as brothers, the Muslim colossus started weakening. The giant that could not be destroyed by any external enemy turned against himself with all force,’ quoted by Preporod, 1.8.1991, p.13. See  in Miroljub Jevtic: Od Islamske Deklaracije do Verskog Rata u BiH,(From the Islamic Declaration to the Religious War in BiH)Beograd ,ed.Filip Visnjic,I ed, ‘Grafomotajica’ Prnjavor 1995,II,ed
(55) Preporod, 1.8.1991, p.16.

(56) Ibid.

(57) Preporod, 1.931991, p.12.

(58) It is very significant that the Islamic Community of Kosmet translated Nakavi’s book under the title Islam and Nationalism and it predominates on its bookshelves. And as the Pristina mosques were full for Bairam 1998, it was imparted to them that they can be Albanians today but tomorrow Islam would be more important.

(59) Preporod ibid.

(60) Ibid.

(61) In the mentioned translation of Koran on p.617, note 33 , part 1, it is stated that according to Shariat every Muslim that abjures Islam must be sentenced to death.

(62) La Ligue Albanaise de Prizren 1878-1881, Tirana, 1978, p.32.

(63) On Kosmet , Bektaashiyah are members of ZIDRA, the Association of the Islamic Dervish Orders of Alija, see Statute – ZIDRA, edition Prizren 1974. Also : Milivojevic M., Albania’s Fight for Survival,  London 1992, Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, nr.15,pp.35,40.
(64) La Ligue Albanaise…ibid.P.45.

(65) The Albanian Roman Catholic Archbishop Rok Mirdita stated to the Hamburg DPA : ‘I do not think that here we have the same problem as in Bosnia. There is only the danger of importing fundamentalism into Albania’. (Politika, 4.7.1995;). There is also the report quoted by the Albanian press about students of religious schools in Albania being instructed by their Arabic teachers to destroy frescoes in Orthodox churches.(Politika, 31.8.1996,p.5,) See also the book Miroljub Jevtic, Albanians and Islam , Prnjavor,1995,p.5. Latest reports also claim that the terrorist organization calling itself the Liberation Army of Kosovo is being radically Islamisiced. The Belgian paper La Libre Belgique reported: ‘The OVK is a group which has been undoubtedly trained by Islamic fundamentalism ’ ,as quoted by Nasa Borba , 9.3.1998,p.4. The New York Times writes : ‘Fighters in the mountains … most frequently conservative peasants …many of these guerrilla fighters are religious Muslims who carry the Koran with them,’ quoted by Nasa Borba ,7.4.1998,p.3. What the consequences are can be seen from the following: ‘ The Albanian Premier Fatos Nano has accused some political circles in Albania of pushing the Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, in an alliance with the terrorist Islamic organisation , into a conflict with the Serbs.’ Nasa Borba,18.3.1998,p.5.