MARRËDHËNIA JURIDIKE E KOMUNITETEVE FETARE ME SHTETIN SHQIPTAR - STATUTET 1949-1950
LEGAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES WITH THE ALBANIAN STATE - STATUTES 1949-1950

Summary/Abstract: The brutal intervention of the communist state in the "governance" of religious communities through their statutes not only violated their legal integrity, but in a number of articles these statutes expressed political brand in accordance with the regime line. The law was essentially a list of obligations that religious communities owed to the state. On the opposite end of the spectrum of a theocratic state (aiming to merge a state into a religious system), the PPSH regime, although proclaiming its secularism everywhere, did not secede at all from religion, but practically extended its power over every important aspect in the activity of religious communities. The political content of the imposed statutes removes the formal veil and in certain articles the glove of political engagement is slapped in the face of the religious communities, (just to mention the task of the clergy in educating poeople with the aim “to fight the old superstitions”. In a sense, historically justified, the statutes were an expression of a political compromise with the de facto situation of the religious communities, including the pious progovernment segments within them, conveying in statutory legal forms, a kind of extra guarantee for the new communist state, the communities will follow its lines. This new state already demanded from the religious communities an open political commitment, enthusiastic and sincere applauses to the point of exhaustion, from everyone. No exceptions would be tolerated.

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