An Exception in the Balkans: Albania’s Multiconfessional Identity

In contrast to other Balkan states Albanian national identity is not bound to a state denomination. While all Orthodox nations (Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Romanians, Serbs, Montenegrins) and also the Roman-Catholic Croats and the Muslim Bosniaks define themselves primarily by religion, the population of Albania is split into three confessions roughly 70 % Muslims, 20 % Orthodox and 10 % Roman-Catholics which makes religion not an appropriate identity marker. We investigate the reasons for this exceptional situation by using Manfred Buttner’s “Bochum Model” of religion geography. Next is a survey over the role of religion and religious communities in other Balkan and eastern European countries. We examine the role of religion with Albanian nation-building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its current religious structure and religious communities, their function in public life and relations to the state. The conclusion seeks answers to this question: why was it possible to develop a national identity across religious boundaries under the conditions of usual coincidence of religion and nation in the Balkans. The following answers are provided: (1) a common and very specific language, which contrasted Albanians from all neighbors and gave them a feeling of communality, (2) an imagination of a common ethnic descent from the Illyrians, (3) exclusive national ideas and policies of all neighbours (mainly Serbs and Greeks) offering Albanian-speakers finally no alternative for national affiliation, and (4) the in a fact forced and heavily supported formation of an independent state, where national consciousness could be further cultivated. The chapter asks whether this Albanian model was transferable to the second essentially multireligious Balkan state, viz., Bosnia and Hercegovina.