Securitising the Oriental
Securitising the Oriental

How Islam Becomes a Threat to Kosovo

Summary/Abstract: Ninety per cent of Kosovo’s population is Muslim. However, overt Islamic practice is increasinglybeing demonised as a threat to society. A tangible result of this discourse was the ban ofthe Islamic headscarf from Kosovo’s public schools in 2010.The article addresses a puzzle by taking the headscarf ban as a case study to investigate the discursive logic of the so-called “securitisation” of pious Islamic practice in Kosovo. The author does so by using the analytical framework of securitisation theory and the method of Analytical Discourse Evaluation to systematically reconstruct and examine the argumentative structure that underlies the policy. The contribution is based on discourse material from the online archives of twelve Kosovo-Albanian media outlets from 2010 until 2018.The author argues that the securitisation of the headscarf in Kosovo essentially follows a classic Orientalist logic, crystallizing in the shape of three existential threats (Islamic fundamentalism, psychological manipulation, and cultural backwardness) and three threatened referential objects (namely national unity, national identity, and the nation’s offspring). Together, these representan ‘Oriental meta-threat’ to Kosovo’s national self-identity.

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