Mixed blessings for faiths in Kosovo

Christian Century, Nov 22, 2000 by Frank Brown

The dramatic rise of Vojislav Kostunica to the Yugoslav presidency and more recent election results in Kosovo are mixed blessings for some of the breakaway region's faiths, local religious leaders and analysts say. But Kosovo's Serbian Orthodox Church, with its dynamic, politically moderate bishop, is one of the few clear beneficiaries of changes in Belgrade.

Unlike his atheist predecessor, Slobodan Milosevic, Kostunica belongs to the Serbian Orthodox Church, Yugoslavia's dominant religious body and one that is viewed warily by Kosovo's Muslims. Kostunica is quite public about his faith, telling Belgrade crowds in a victory speech, "I am proud to be a citizen of Serbia. I am proud to belong to our sacred church."

Within days of securing his hold on power in Belgrade, Kostunica met with Kosovo's Bishop Artemije Radosavljevic, head of Kosovo's Serbian National Council. According to a Serbian Orthodox Church statement, the pair discussed the possibility of Kostunica's visiting Gracanica, the 14th-century monastery where Artemije lives under well-armed NATO protection. Such a meeting would have been unthinkable between Milosevic and the bishop.

"This puts him [the bishop] back in a more central position," said Alexander Belopopsky in a telephone interview from Geneva where he is Europe secretary for the World Council of Churches. As a religious leader who has "really consistently proposed a moderate line," Artemije fits in well with the WCC's Southeast Europe Ecumenical Partnership, said Belopopsky, referring to a program that helps churches cope with such issues as interfaith relations and the return of refugees.

Interfaith relations are generally warm in Kosovo, where about 70 percent of the population is at least traditionally Muslim. There are 60,000 Roman Catholics. Some religious leaders however, criticize Artemije for playing an overtly political role as head of' the Serbian National Council. The council, along with less moderate Serb groups in Kosovo, boycotted the October 28 elections. Kosovo's Serb leaders say free and fair elections are impossible as long as UN police and NATO troops fail to control frequent kidnappings and killings aimed at the 100,000 Serbs who remain.

All the same, the election results bode well for the Serb minority. The Democratic League of Kosovo, led by pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, easily outpolled the party of Hashim Thaci, the former leader of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army. The Democratic League of Kosovo won control of at least 21 of the region's 30 municipal governments in the first elections since becoming a UN protectorate last year.

Religion played a negligible role in the campaign, said Erik Torch, manager of the Kosovo justice and peace program of Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services. "This was a very secular campaign," Torch said in a telephone interview from northern Kosovo. "You even saw people putting campaign posters on the outside of mosques. It seemed kind of inconsiderate to me." Of Kosovo's three dominant faiths--Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy--Islam has the least influence with voters, Torch said, because Kosovar Albanians are highly secularized.

According to Torch, Orthodox voters tend to be the most influenced by their faith, but lost their voice with the Serb boycott. Catholic voters, the vast majority of them ethnic Albanians, are almost indistinguishable from their Muslim, ethnic Albanian neighbors, Torch said. "I know there have been sporadic incidents of violence and intimidation of the Catholic community, but by and large there is no segregation," he added.

In interviews from Kosovo in early November, two Muslim leaders expressed their satisfaction with the result. Responding by e-mail, Xhabir Hamiti, a theologian and assistant to Kosovo's Grand Mufti Rexhep Boja, wrote from the Kosovo capital of Pristina that "for us the result of election means more stability and more responsibility for local citizens to solve their daily problems." Hamiti said he was pleased with how smoothly the elections went, adding, "It will open the door for parliamentary and presidential elections after which will come the independence of Kosovo."

The desire for an independent, sovereign Kosovo is shared by all of the region's Albanian parties and marks the key sticking point with the Serb minority, Belgrade and, perhaps someday, the Western governments that gave Kosovo the degree of autonomy it has today. Belopopsky predicted that no matter how solid Rugova's record for tolerance, moderation and peacemaking, the Serbian Orthodox Church will have a hard time with that aspect of Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo platform.

Muslim leaders, too, are unhappy with at least one position of the Democratic League, said Qemajl Morina, vice dean of the Islamic Faculty in Pristina. One of the local Muslims' priorities has been to introduce religious education into the region's public schools. Morina said the intellectuals who predominate in the Democratic League "are very far from religious things. The Albanian intellectuals are not supporting us because they are saying that in Europe for 100 years the religions and schools have been separate, so why should we have this?"