Kosovo Embraces Islam 'Lite'

GNJILANE, Kosovo — Kastriot Sadiku has a confession: Like a good Muslim, he was near a mosque when Kosovo declared independence. But like a good Kosovar, he was just around the corner, sipping suds at his favorite pub.

As minaret loudspeakers broadcast afternoon prayers, "I was having a beer," Mr. Sadiku, 25, said. "In the entire Muslim world, I think that's probably something that can only happen here, where our religion doesn't interfere with the rest of our lives."

Much has been made of Kosovo's status as the world's newest mostly Muslim nation. But its secular government, religious leaders, and faithful have carefully distanced themselves from the slightest hint of extremism.

The Republic of Kosovo, they insist, embraces a decidedly laid-back version of Islam.

"Our Islam is 'lite' — like Coke Lite or Marlboro Light cigarettes," Ilmi Krasniqi, an imam at one of five mosques in the eastern town of Gnjilane, said. "This is not Baghdad, and what goes on in Saudi Arabia cannot happen here."

That is not to suggest that radical Islam has not impacted Kosovo's Muslim ethnic Albanians.

Last October, Agron Abdullahu — a 25-year-old Kosovo native living in America — pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to provide weapons to five other Muslims who allegedly plotted an attack on the U.S. Army's Fort Dix military base in New Jersey. No attack was staged on the base, which is used largely to train reservists bound for Iraq. Agim Hyseni, the chief imam in Gnjilane, said Muslims in feverishly pro-America Kosovo have distanced themselves from extremist ideology or acts.

Abdullahu "was an isolated individual," Mr. Hyseni said in an interview with the Associated Press in his office, decorated with a small globe and the flags of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, where he said he was schooled in the tenets of Islam.

"The people here feel no empathy for those kind of acts," he said. "They know very well what terrorism is because they've suffered through so many terrorist acts." "Terrorism" is an emotionally charged term in the Balkans, where an estimated 10,000 people were killed in Kosovo's 1998–99 war between ethnic Albanian separatist rebels and forces loyal to the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.