Islam arrived in Albania mainly during the Ottoman period when the majority of Albanians over time converted to Islam under Ottoman rule. Following the Albanian National Awakening (Rilindja) tenets and the de-emphasis of religious tradition in Albania, all governments in the 20th century pursued a secularization policy, most aggressively under the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, which actively persecuted Muslims. Due to this policy, Islam, as with all other faiths in the country, underwent radical changes. Decades of state atheism, which ended in 1991, brought a decline in the religious practice of all traditions. The post-communist period and the lifting of legal and other government restrictions on religion allowed Islam to revive through institutions that generated new infrastructure, literature, educational facilities, international transnational links and other social activities.
According to the 2023 census, 51% of the population are Muslim, with 46% being Sunni Muslims and 5% being Bektashi.
History 13th century Albania first came into contact with Islam in the 13th century when Angevin expansion into Albania during the reign of Charles I Anjou was made possible in part by Muslim involvement. Lucera is located only about 240 km northwest of Brindisi, which was the main port of disembarkation. Charles claimed rights in Albania, as Manfred's successor, since 1267 when the Treaty of Viterbo was drawn up. During the winter of 1271, the Angevin forces took Durrës. Within a year, Charles began to use the title "rex Albaniae", a title that was later recognized by the king of Serbia and the tsar of Bulgaria. In 1273, both Muslim and Christian contingents sailed across the Adriatic. In April 1273, a Muslim from Lucera named Leone was appointed captain of the Muslim forces in Durrës. A month later, Musa took Leone's place as commander of 200 Muslims stationed "in partibus Romaniae". Although relations between the Church of Rome and Byzantium improved, Charles I of Anjou continued to send Muslim and Christian military forces to the east, towards Albania. The Muslim knight Salem, a regular army officer, led 300 Lucerians - archers and lancers - to Vlora, in 1275. In September of that year, Ibrahim became the captain of the Muslims of Durrës, who took the place of Musa. On 19 April 1279, Charles I ordered 53 of the best Muslim archers from Lucera to be selected by the Capitanata's justiciary, Guy d'Allemagne, to go to Durrës. As usually happens in the recruitment process, the advice of Muslim military leaders was sought. Ibrahim had to approve the selections. Orders were given that Ibrahim could take four horses with him as he crossed from Brindisi to Durrës. Ibrahim served in Durrës again in the early 1280s, as did a man from Lucera, named Pietro Cristiano. One source identifies him as "de... terra Lucerie Saracenorum", most likely a Christian convert from Islam. The demand for Muslim carpenters and blacksmiths to build war machines in Albania was so great during the summer of 1280 that it threatened to exhaust the skilled workers' pool for the construction of forts on the Italian coast. In June 1280, the king ordered the archers of the Capitanata and the Land of Bari to send 60 Muslim archers, as well as carpenters, stonemasons and blacksmiths to Albania. The archers had to report to Hugues le Rousseau de Sully in Berat. In the fall of the same year, 200 archers from Lucera were sent to Vlora. At the beginning of December, 300 archers were stationed in Durrës. Angevin forces took part in the unsuccessful siege of Berat castle, and were repulsed by Byzantine forces.Julie Taylor: Muslims in Medieval Italy: The Colony at Lucera, p.106-108
Conversion and consolidation (15th–18th centuries)
Islam was further introduced to Albania in the 15th century after the Ottoman conquest of the area... "The Ottoman Turks first introduced Islam into Albania when they conquered the country in the late 15th century." During the 17th and 18th centuries, Albanians in large numbers converted to Islam. As Muslims, many Albanians attained important political and military positions within the Ottoman Empire and culturally contributed to the wider Muslim world..
National Awakening (19th and early 20th centuries)
By the 19th century, Albanians were divided into three religious groups. Catholic Albanians who had some Albanian ethno-linguistic expression in schooling and church due to Austro-Hungarian protection and Italian clerical patronage. Orthodox Albanians under the Patriarchate of Constantinople had liturgy and schooling in Greek and toward the late Ottoman period mainly identified with Greek national aspirations.. "The political thinking of the Orthodox Albanians was divided into two categories. Those who lived in Albania were dominated by Greek influence. The majority of them- especially the notables-desired union with Greece. The Orthodox Christians in general had an intense hatred of Ottoman rule. Although this feeling was shared by their co-religionists who lived in the colonies abroad, their political thinking was different.". "The Orthodox Christian Albanians, who belonged to the rum millet, identified themselves to a large degree with the rest of the Orthodox, while under the roof of the patriarchate and later the influence of Greek education they started to form Greek national consciousness, a process that was interrupted by the Albanian national movement in the 19th century and subsequently by the Albanian state."; p. 153. "The influence of Hellenism on the Albanian Orthodox was such that, when the Albanian national idea developed, in the three last decades of the 19th century, they were greatly confused regarding their national identity.". para. 2, 27. Muslim Albanians during this period formed around 70% of the overall Balkan Albanian population in the Ottoman Empire with an estimated population of more than a million.. With the rise of the Eastern Crisis, Muslim Albanians became torn between loyalties to the Ottoman state and the emerging Albanian nationalist movement.. Islam, the Sultan and the Ottoman Empire were traditionally seen as synonymous in belonging to the wider Muslim community.. the Albanian nationalist movement advocated self-determination and strived to achieve socio-political recognition of Albanians as a separate people and language within the state.
Wars and socio-political instability resulting in increasing identification with the Ottoman Empire amongst some Muslims within the Balkans during the late Ottoman period made the terms Muslim and Turk synonymous. In this context, Muslim Albanians of the era were conferred and received the term Turk, despite preferring to distance themselves from ethnic Turks.."After 1856, and especially after 1878, the terms Turk and Muslim became practically synonymous in the Balkans. An Albanian who did not know one word of Turkish thus was given the ethnic name of Turk and accepted it, no matter how much he might have preferred to distance himself from the ethnic Turks." This practice has somewhat continued amongst Balkan Christian peoples in contemporary times who still refer to Muslim Albanians as Turks, Turco-Albanians, with often pejorative connotations and historic negative socio-political repercussions.."Muslim Albanians have been called "Turkalvanoi" in Greek, and this is pejorative.". "Instead of the term "Muslim Albanians", nationalist Greek histories use the more known, but pejorative, term "Turkalbanians".League of Nations (October 1921). "Albania". League of Nations –Official Journal. 8: 893. "The memorandum of the Albanian government… The memorandum complains that the Pan-Epirotic Union misnames the Moslem Albanians as "Turco-Albanians"". "The attitude of non Muslim Balkan peoples was similar. In most of the Balkans, Muslims were "Turks" regardless of their ethno-linguistic background. This attitude changed significantly, but not completely, over time.". "As state policy, post- Ottoman "nations" continue to sever most of their cultural, socioeconomic, and institutional links to the Ottoman period. At times, this requires denying a multicultural history, inevitably leading to orgies of cultural destruction (Kiel 1990; Riedlmayer 2002). As a result of this strategic removal of the Ottoman past—the expulsion of the "Turks" (i.e., Muslims); the destruction of buildings; the changing of names of towns, families, and monuments; and the "purification" of languages—many in the region have accepted the conclusion that the Ottoman cultural, political, and economic infrastructure was indeed an "occupying," and thus foreign, entity (Jazexhi 2009). Such logic has powerful intuitive consequences on the way we write about the region's history: If Ottoman Muslims were "Turks" and thus "foreigners" by default, it becomes necessary to differentiate the indigenous from the alien, a deadly calculation made in the twentieth century with terrifying consequences for millions."."Christians in ex-Ottoman domains have frequently and strategically conflated the terms Muslim and Turk to ostracize Muslim or Muslim-descended populations as alien (as in the current Serb-Bosnian conflict; see Sells 1996), and Albanians, though of several religions, have been so labeled." These geo-political events nonetheless pushed Albanian nationalists, many Muslim, to distance themselves from the Ottomans, Islam and the then emerging pan-Islamic Ottomanism of Sultan Abdulhamid II. Another factor overlaying these concerns during the Albanian National Awakening (Rilindja) period were thoughts that Western powers would only favour Christian Balkan states and peoples in the anti Ottoman struggle. During this time Albanian nationalists conceived of Albanians as a European people who under Skanderbeg resisted the Ottoman Turks that later subjugated and cut the Albanians off from Western European civilisation.. Albanian nationalism overall was a reaction to the gradual breakup of the Ottoman Empire and a response to Balkan and Christian national movements that posed a threat to an Albanian population that was mainly Muslim.."Nineteenth-century Albanianism was not by any means a separatist project based on the desire to break with the Ottoman Empire and to create a nationstate. In its essence Albanian nationalism was a reaction to the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and a response to the threats posed by Christian and Balkan national movements to a population that was predominantly Muslim." Muslim (Bektashi) Albanians were heavily involved with the Albanian National Awakening producing many figures like Faik Konitza, Ismail Qemali, Midhat Frashëri, Shahin Kolonja and others advocating for Albanian interests and self-determination.... para. 19, 26...