The Catholic priest stood on the altar within the hilltop church for the mass baptism, dunking dozens of heads in water and tracing a cross together with his finger on every brow.
Then he rejoiced at Christianity’s restoration of souls in a land the place the overwhelming majority of individuals are Muslim — as the lads, ladies and youngsters standing earlier than him had been.
The ceremony was one in every of many in current months in Kosovo, a previously Serbian territory inhabited largely by ethnic Albanians that declared itself an impartial state in 2008. In a census final spring, 93 p.c of the inhabitants professed itself Muslim and just one.75 p.c Roman Catholic.
A small variety of ethnic Albanian Christian activists, all converts from Islam, are urging their ethnic kin to look to the church as an expression of their id. They name it the “return motion,” a push to revive a pre-Islamic previous they see as an anchor of Kosovo’s place in Europe and a barrier to non secular extremism spilling over from the Center East.
Till the Ottoman Empire conquered what’s at present Kosovo and different areas of the Balkans within the 14th century, bringing with it Islam, ethnic Albanians had been primarily Catholics. Underneath Ottoman rule, which lasted till 1912, most of Kosovo’s folks switched faiths.
By reversing that course of, stated Father Fran Kolaj, the priest who carried out the baptisms outdoors the village of Llapushnik, ethnic Albanians can recuperate their authentic id.
Ethnic Albanians, who hint their roots to an historical folks referred to as the Illyrians, stay primarily in Albania, a rustic on the Adriatic Sea. However additionally they make up a big majority of the inhabitants in neighboring Kosovo and greater than 1 / 4 of the inhabitants in North Macedonia.
On the church the place the baptisms passed off, nationalist emblems jostle with non secular iconography. The double-headed eagle image of Albania decorates the steeple and likewise a display behind the altar.
“It’s time for us to return to the place the place we belong — with Christ,” Father Fran Kolaj stated in an interview.
In lots of Muslim lands, renouncing Islam can deliver extreme punishment, typically even demise. Thus far, the baptism ceremonies going down in Kosovo have stirred no violent opposition, although there have been some indignant denunciations on-line. (It isn’t recognized what number of conversions have to this point taken place.)
However historians, who agree that Christianity was current in Kosovo lengthy earlier than the Ottoman Empire introduced Islam, query the considering behind the motion.
“From a historic perspective what they are saying is true,” stated Durim Abdullahu, a historian on the College of Pristina. However, he added, “their logic implies that we should always all grow to be pagans” as a result of the folks dwelling on the territory of at present’s Kosovo earlier than the arrival of Christianity and later Islam had been nonbelievers.
Like many different Kosovars, Mr. Abdullahu stated he believed that Serbia, which has a principally Orthodox Christian inhabitants, had helped stoke the return motion as a means of sowing discord in Kosovo. Whereas Serbia has lengthy been accused of undermining Kosovo’s stability, there is no such thing as a proof it has been selling the conversions.
Archaeologists in 2022 uncovered the stays of a sixth-century Roman church close to Pristina, and in 2023 discovered a mosaic with an inscription indicating that early Albanians, or at the very least a folks maybe associated to them, had been Christians.
Nonetheless, Christophe Goddard, a French archaeologist working on the web site, stated it was unsuitable to impose trendy ideas of nation and ethnicity on historical peoples. “This isn’t historical past however trendy politics,” he stated.
Traces of Kosovo’s distant pre-Islamic previous additionally survived in a small variety of households that clung to Roman Catholicism regardless of the danger of being ostracized by their Muslim neighbors.
Marin Sopi, 67, a retired Albanian language instructor who was baptized 16 years in the past, stated his household had been “closet Catholics” for generations. In childhood, he recalled, he and his household noticed Ramadan with Muslim associates however secretly celebrated Christmas at dwelling.
“We had been Muslims in the course of the day and Christians at evening,” he stated. Since popping out as a Christian, he stated, 36 members of his prolonged household have formally deserted Islam.
Islam and Christianity in Kosovo principally coexisted in peace — till Orthodox Christian troopers and nationalist paramilitary gangs from Serbia started torching mosques and expelling Muslims from the properties within the Nineteen Nineties.
Overseas Christian missionaries have stored their distance from Kosovo’s conversion marketing campaign. However some ethnic Albanians dwelling in Western Europe have supplied assist, seeing a return to Catholicism as Kosovo’s finest hope of at some point getting into the European Union, a largely Christian membership.
Arber Gashi, an ethnic Albanian dwelling in Switzerland, traveled to Kosovo to attend the baptism ceremony on the church in Llapushnik, which overlooks the scene of a serious battle in 1998 between Serb forces and the Kosovo Liberation Military.
He and different activists fear that funding for mosque-building and different actions from Turkey and international locations within the Center East like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with their extra conservative approaches, threatens Kosovo’s historically laid-back type of Islam. Most of this cash has gone into financial growth initiatives unrelated to faith.
The middle of Pristina has a statue honoring Mom Teresa, the Catholic nun and Nobel Peace Prize laureate of Albanian descent, and is dominated by a big Roman Catholic cathedral constructed after the struggle with Serbia. However Turkey is at present funding the development close by of an enormous new mosque that shall be even larger.
Mr. Gashi additionally stated that he feared a return of the Islamic extremism that emerged in Kosovo’s first, chaotic decade of independence. By some counts, Kosovo supplied extra recruits to the Islamic State in Syria than every other European nation.
Christianity, however, would open a path to Europe, he stated.
A crackdown by the authorities lately has silenced extremism and bolstered Kosovo’s historically relaxed tackle Islam. The streets of Pristina are lined with bars serving a variety of alcohol. Veiled ladies are extraordinarily uncommon.
Gezim Gjin Hajrullahu, 57, a instructor who was amongst these baptized not too long ago in Llapushnik, stated he had joined the Catholic church “not for the sake of faith itself” however for the “sake of our nationwide id” as ethnic Albanians. His spouse additionally transformed.
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian prime minister, Albin Kurti, in an interview in Pristina, performed down the significance of faith to Albanian id. “For us, religions got here and went however we’re nonetheless right here,” he stated. “For Albanians, when it comes to id, faith was by no means of first significance.”
That units them other than different peoples within the now vanished, multiethnic federal state of Yugoslavia, which disintegrated in the course of the Balkan wars of the early Nineteen Nineties. The principle combatants within the early phases of the battle spoke a lot the identical language and regarded related however had been clearly distinguished from one another by faith — Serbs by Orthodox Christianity, Croats by Roman Catholicism and Bosnians by Islam.
Activists within the return motion imagine that ethnic Albanians additionally have to cement their nationwide loyalties with faith within the type of Roman Catholicism.
Boik Breca, a former Muslim lively within the motion, insisted that the Catholic church isn’t an alien intrusion however the true expression of Albanian id and proof that Kosovo belongs in Europe.
He stated his curiosity in Christianity started when Kosovo, together with Serbia, was nonetheless a part of Yugoslavia. He was despatched to jail off the coast of Croatia as a political prisoner. A lot of his fellow inmates had been Catholics, he recalled, and helped stir what he now sees as his true religion and a perception that “our ancestors had been all Catholics.”
“To be a real Albanian,” he stated, “you must be Christian.”
This view is broadly disputed, together with by Mr. Kurti, the prime minister.
“I don’t purchase that,” he stated.
The present push towards Islam started with a gathering in October 2023 in Decani, a bastion of nationalist sentiment close to Kosovo’s border with Albania. The gathering, attended by nationalist intellectuals and former Kosovo Liberation Military fighters, mentioned methods to advertise “Albanian-ness” and determined that Christianity would assist.
“We’re not Muslims as of at present,” attendees said, adopting the slogan: “To be solely Albanians.”
The assembly led to the formation of what was initially referred to as the Motion for the Abandonment of the Islamic Religion, a provocative title since largely dropped in favor of the “Motion of Return.”
From his workplace in Pristina, adorned with a mannequin of Mecca, Kosovo’s grand mufti, Naim Ternava, has watched the return motion with nervousness and dismay. The push for Muslims to modify to Christianity, he stated, risked disrupting non secular concord and was being utilized by “international brokers to unfold hatred of Islam.”
“Our mission,” he added, “is to maintain folks in our faith. I inform folks to stay in Islam.”
