Treatment of Christians in Communist Bloc Countries - Treatment of Christians Per Country - People's Republic of Albania

People's Republic of Albania

As early as 1945 (when the Communists came to power in Albania) laws were set down that dispossessed religious institutions of their property. This most especially affected the Bektashis, a Sufi order that included 20% of Albania's Muslim population, as they had their tekkes outside of cities and depended for support on their surrounding properties. Roman Catholics (who constituted 10% of Albania's population) had their schools taken away from them by this measure.

At the close of the war, certain religious leaders were imprisoned or executed on grounds that they were spies, that they had worked for the Italians (Mussolini had occupied Albania) or that they were affiliated with Balli Kombetar (a group that had lost out to the Communists). These leaders typically spent decades in prison and hard labour. Baba Murteza of Kruje was tortured and thrown from a prison window to his death in 1946; Baba Kamil Glava of Tepelen was executed by a court in Gjirokastër in 1946; Baba Ali Tomori was executed by a court in 1947; and Baba Shefket Koshtani of Tepelan was shot by a court in 1947. The following Sunni clerics also disappeared: Mustafa Effendi Varoshi (mufti of Durrës), Hafez Ibrahim Dibra (former grand mufti of Albania), and Sheh Xhemel Pazari of Tirana. By 1968, up to 200 religious leaders of all faiths may have been executed or imprisoned.

A drastic decline of religious clerics took place over the course of history from 1945 to 1992. The Roman Catholics had 10% of the clergy in 1992 as they did in 1945 and 0% of religious monastics. The Bektashis had 2% of the clergy in 1993 as they did in the 1940s. This is largely as a result of the virtual cessation of the training of new clerics and the decline related to the antireligious campaign. The Bektashis and the Roman Catholics were the most persecuted religious groups in Albania. The Orthodox (20% of the population) and Sunni Muslims (the majority of the country) were considered less threatening as neither group had been politically active in the 1930s and 1940s, and Sunni Muslims had been isolated from Muslims outside Albania since King Zog had severed ties in the 1930s. The Catholics were well-organized with schools and links to the church outside Albania, while the Bektashis had been active in fighting against the Turks for Albanian independence and had popular respect.

In 1947 the head of the Bektashis, Abas Himli Dede, was proposed a 'reform' to allow dervishes to cut their beards, to marry and to go about towns in civil rather than religious garb. After several days of fruitless dispute, Dede invited the two Communists who proposed the reform to come to his presence, where he shot both of them and then killed himself.

Considerable antireligious propaganda was produced with such slogans as "Religion is not of the enlightened world", "Marxist-Leninism is the true science; as for religion, it is a fabrication that breaks the minds of men", "Religion is tied to outsiders", and "He who believes is ignorant.". They attempted to lessen the power of important religious centres by moving the administrative authority of these centres to marginal centres with little historical or sacred association, and often in incovenient locations. The remaining religious leaders who accepted this transfer were then relegated to what was essentially house arrest in these marginal centres.

The culmination of the antireligious campaign occurred when Enver Hoxha declared the state atheist in 1967. He declared that

Albania is the world's first atheistic state, whose only religion is Albanianism.

(Pashko Vasa, during the movement of Albanian independence had also stated that Albania's only religion is Albanianism, and Hoxha's statement referred to this)

He conducted a campaign to extinguish all forms of religion in Albania in 1967 and closed all religious buildings. He was partly inspired by Mao Zedong's cultural revolution and he wanted to extend his own power as well as that of the party. Albania was the only Eastern Bloc nation that actually outlawed religion.

Article 37 was added to the Albanian constitution in 1967, which read:

The state recognizes no religion and supports and carries out atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people

Albania had a fundamentally violent and sustained antireligious campaign. In 1967 2,167 religious buildings had been closed, and they were converted to other uses or destroyed. The Roman Catholic cathedral in Shkodër became a sports arena and several Bektashi tekkes, including the headquarters in Tirana, became retirement homes. After the fall of Communism there were only three churches in Tirana; thirty of the most famous churches in the country survived by being marked for historical preservation. The 18th century Edhem Bey Mosque in Tirana was also protected as a cultural monument, but only foreign diplomats were allowed to pray there. Of 1,050 mosques in Albania before 1967, 800 survived to the fall of Communism, but most were damaged and in states of disrepair. Of the 53 Bektashi tekkes, 6 survived.

Young people were encouraged to attack mosques, churches and tekkes and to turn in remaining clergy to the authorities. Clergy who were still alive by 1967 and had survived twenty years of persecution, were killed or sent to hard labour camps. Most mosques had their minarets destroyed, tombstones with any religious symbols were overturned, people caught wearing religious symbols (e.g. crucifixes, medallions of the Quran) could be sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, and people stopped saying words such as 'mashallah' or 'inshallah' in public for fear of punishment. Merely mentioning religious holidays could lead to punishment; in one instance a drunk villager in Libohova said that the next day was Bayram (a Muslim holiday) and he was given a fine. Former religious holidays were changed to holidays that honoured the labour force. To prevent people from giving religious names to children, a dictionary of approved names for children was published and parents were legally required to choose from the names listed in the dictionary in order to name their children.

Hoxha during this time spoke about the condition of women in Albania; he scapegoated religion for lowering the status of women and congratulated Communism for raising their status. When Hoxha died in 1985, the government did not change its policies immediately. In 1988 Albanian emigre religious leaders were allowed to visit Albania; in 1989 Mother Teresa (herself an ethnic Albanian born in the Ottoman empire) came to visit Albania after being given permission (she was previously denied permission). In 1990 phrases like 'inshallah' were permitted to be said again. In November 1990, near the end of the regime, in the northern city of Shkodër a Catholic priest named father Simon Jubani was released from prison after 26 years, and he celebrated Mass in a cemetery for five thousand people; he was immediately arrested for worship in public, but when the people that he was being held in was surrounded by people, he was released again, and he performed another public Mass to 50,000 people. In December 1990, the law against public religious practice was rescinded; the regime was overthrown in the following months, and religious buildings re-opened.

See Communist and post-Communist Albania.