KONVERTIMI DHE TOLERANCA FETARE TE SHQIPTARËT GJATË SUNDIMIT TË PERANDORISË OSMANE
RELIGIOUS CONVERSION AND TOLERANCE AMONG ALBANIANS DURING OOTOMAN EMPIRE DOMINION

Summary/Abstract: Albanians in their historical development flows accepted into their bosom three religions; two Christian and the Muslim one, but they preserved their ethnic identity uninfluenced by these divisions. Moreover they have cultivated strongly the feeling of inter-religious tolerance not only within Albanian ethnicity but even broader. Albanians or mediaeval Arbërs were identified by Christians since apostolic times and had a long Christian tradition both in building the objects of cult and in other religious and cultural aspects which are related to Christianism. Mentio-ned examples in this work argumentatively and source fully do testify this tradition. Meanwhile Islamization of Albanians was a relatively long pro-cess which started individually about the fifteenth century and ended massively by the end of the seventeenth century. This phenomenon, being as such, has also its peculiarities in time and space. While Islamization in the first phases and especially until the eighteenth century didn’t represent a relevant influence, for Albanians situation was changed when with weakening of the Ottoman Empire in scene were shown Balkan natio-nalism sponsored by Christian powers. However, despite the acceptance of Islam along with existing Christianism, among Albanians the identity reference remained above the religious one, above the regional one, the one of being Albanian, or as claims Ismail Kadare for Albanians religions were three and fatherland just one. Religions became different but the language remained one building that way Albanians as a nation with three religions but one identity and the tolerance per excellence which are even in present days.

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