A Catholic priest stood at the altar of a hilltop church for a mass baptism, dunking dozens of heads in water and tracing a cross with his finger on each forehead.
And he, like the men, women, and children who stood before him, rejoiced at the restoration of souls that Christianity had brought to a land where the majority of people were Muslims.
The ceremony was one of several held in recent months in Kosovo, a former Serbian territory mainly inhabited by ethnic Albanians who declared an independent state in 2008. In last spring’s census, 93 percent of the population declared themselves Muslim, with just 1.75 percent Roman Catholic. .
A small number of ethnic Albanian Christian activists, all converts from Islam, have appealed to their ethnic group to look to the church as an expression of their identity. They call it a “movement of return,” seeking to revive a pre-Islamic past that they see as the bastion of Kosovo’s standing in Europe and a barrier to religious extremism spilling over from the Middle East. This is an initiative to
Albanians were primarily Catholic until the 14th century, when the Ottoman Empire conquered present-day Kosovo and other parts of the Balkans and brought Islam with them. Under Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1912, most Kosovans converted to their faith.
Father Fran Kolaj, the priest who performed the baptism outside the village of Ljapusnik, said reversing the process would allow Albanians to regain their original identity.
Albanians trace their roots to an ancient people called the Illyrians and live primarily in Albania, a country bordering the Adriatic Sea. However, they make up the majority of the population in neighboring Kosovo, and more than a quarter of the population in North Macedonia.
In the church where the baptism took place, nationalist emblems sit alongside religious iconography. A double-headed eagle, the symbol of Albania, adorns the spire, as well as the screen behind the altar.
“It’s time for us to get back to where we belong with Christ,” Father Fran Colai said in an interview.
In many Muslim countries, apostasy from Islam carries severe penalties, even death. So far, the baptism ceremonies in Kosovo have not sparked violent protests, but there have been some angry accusations online. (It is unknown how many conversions have been made so far.)
But historians agree that Christianity existed in Kosovo long before the Ottomans brought Islam, and question the thinking behind the movement.
“From a historical perspective, what they say is true,” says Durim Abdullah, a historian at the University of Pristina. But before the arrival of Christianity and later Islam, the people who lived in the territory of present-day Kosovo were non-believers, so “their logic means that we should all become pagans.” “I have,” he added.
Like many other Kosovars, Abdullah said he believed Serbia, which has a large Orthodox Christian population, helped fuel the return movement as a means of sowing discord in Kosovo. Serbia has long been accused of undermining stability in Kosovo, but there is no evidence that it is facilitating conversions.
In 2022, archaeologists discovered the remains of a 6th-century Roman church near Pristina, and in 2023, an inscription confirming that the early Albanians, or at least a group related to them, were Christians. Found a mosaic.
Still, French archaeologist Christophe Godard, who works at the site, said it would be a mistake to impose modern ideas of nations and peoples on ancient peoples. “This is modern politics, not history,” he said.
Traces of Kosovo’s distant pre-Islamic past lingered in a few families who clung to Roman Catholicism despite the risk of ostracism from their Muslim neighbors.
Marin Sopi, 67, a former Albanian language teacher who was baptized 16 years ago, said his family had been “secret Catholics” for generations. As a child, he and his family observed Ramadan with Muslim friends, but celebrated Christmas in secret at home, he recalled.
“We were Muslims by day and Christians by night,” he said. He said 36 members of his extended family have officially renounced Islam since coming out as Christians.
Islam and Christianity in Kosovo coexisted mostly peacefully until the 1990s, when Orthodox Christian soldiers and Serbian nationalist militias began torching mosques and forcing Muslims from their homes.
Foreign Christian missionaries have distanced themselves from the conversion movement in Kosovo. But some Albanians living in Western Europe have offered their support, believing that a return to Catholicism is Kosovo’s best hope of one day joining the Christian-majority European Union.
Alvar Gashi, an Albanian living in Switzerland, traveled to Kosovo to attend a baptismal ceremony at a church in Rjapšnik, which overlooks the site of large-scale fighting between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998.
He and other activists say funding for mosque construction and other activities from Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which have more conservative approaches, is undermining Kosovo’s traditionally laid-back form of Islam. I’m concerned that it’s a threat. Most of this money goes to non-religious economic development projects.
In the center of Pristina is a statue honoring Mother Teresa, an Albanian Catholic nun and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a large Roman Catholic cathedral built after the war with Serbia. But Turkey is currently funding the construction of a new, much larger mosque nearby.
Gashi also said he feared a return to Islamic extremism, which rose during Kosovo’s chaotic first decade of independence. According to some calculations, Kosovo provided more recruits to the Islamic State in Syria than any other European country.
Christianity, on the other hand, would open the way to Europe, he said.
A crackdown by authorities in recent years has silenced extremism and strengthened Kosovo’s traditionally tolerant attitude toward Islam. The streets of Pristina are lined with bars that serve different types of alcohol. Veiled women are very rare.
One of the recently baptized teachers in Ryapšnik, Gezim Guzin Hajrulav, 57, said he joined the Catholic Church “not for the religion itself” but “for the national identity” as an Albanian. He said it was. His wife was also converted.
Kosovar Albanian Prime Minister Albin Kurti downplayed the importance of religion to Albanian identity in an interview in Pristina. “For us, religion has come and gone, but we are still here,” he said. “Religion has never been the most important thing for Albanians in terms of identity.”
This point sets them apart from other ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic federal state that collapsed during the Balkan Wars in the early 1990s and is now extinct. The main belligerents in the early stages of the conflict spoke much the same language and looked similar, but were clearly differentiated by religion: Serbs were Orthodox, Croats were Roman Catholic, and Bosnians were Muslims. It was teaching.
Activists of the Return Movement believe that Albanians also need to solidify their national religious allegiance in the form of Roman Catholicism.
Boik Breka, a former Muslim who was active in the movement, said the Catholic Church is not an alien intruder, but a true expression of Albanian identity and proof that Kosovo belongs to Europe. insisted.
He said his interest in Christianity began when Kosovo, along with Serbia, was still part of Yugoslavia. He was sent as a political prisoner to a prison off the coast of Croatia. Many of his fellow inmates were Catholic, he recalled, and helped shake him out of what he now believes to be his true faith, and that “all of our ancestors were Catholic.”
“To be a true Albanian, you have to be a Christian,” he said.
This view is widely contested, including by Prime Minister Kurti.
“I don’t buy it,” he said.
The current pressure on Islam began with a meeting held in October 2023 in Decani, a stronghold of nationalist sentiment near the Kosovo-Albanian border. The meeting was attended by nationalist intellectuals and former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, who discussed ways to promote “Albanianness” and decided that Christianity could help.
Attendee: “As of today, we are no longer Muslims.” saidadopted the slogan “Only Albanian”.
This conference led to the formation of what was initially called the Movement for the Abandonment of Islamic Faith, but this provocative name has since fallen out of favor in favor of the Movement of Return.
Kosovo’s Grand Mufti, Naim Ternava, has watched the return movement with anxiety and disappointment from his office in Pristina, where a model of Mecca is displayed. Encouraging Muslims to convert to Christianity risks disrupting religious harmony and is being used by “foreign agents to spread hatred against Islam,” he said.
“Our mission is to keep people in our religion,” he added. I tell people to stay in Islam. ”
