Dec 23, 2007

Religions in Albania

The majority of Albanians today are either atheists or agnostics. According to an official US Government Report: "No reliable data were available on active participation in formal religious services, but estimates ranged from 25 to 40 percent.", leaving 60 to 75 percent of the population non-religious.

The country does not have a history of religious extremism and takes pride in the harmony that exists across religious traditions and practices. Religious pragmatism continued as a distinctive trait of the society and interreligious marriage has been very common throughout the centuries, in some places even the rule. There is a strong unifying cultural identity, where Muslims and Christians see themselves as Albanian before anything else. This has been solidified historically by the common experience of struggling to protect their culture in the face of various outside conquerors.

A Northern Albanian intellectual and poet, Pashko Vasa (1825-1892), made the trenchant remark, later co-opted by the totalitarian state, that "Churches and mosques you shall not heed / The religion of Albanians is Albanism" (Gheg Albanian: "Mos shikoni kisha e xhamia / Feja e shqyptarit âsht shqyptaria").

Anyway the religions in albania are three:
Roman Catholic,
Orthodox,
Muslim

I don’t want to put percentages, as very often is speculated about the percentages of religions in Albania, for certain aims. Anyway I want to stress that the first religion in Albania has been Catholicism. Later after Ottoman empire occupied Albania for centuries, they obliged many Albanians to convert from Catholics into Muslims. Later on a part of south of Albania were influenced by the Greece and converted into Orthodox.

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