Islam had become consolidated within Albania by the beginning of the 19th century. This period followed the conversion of a majority of Albanians to Islam in the 17th- and 18th-centuries. With the Eastern Crisis of the 1870s and its geopolitical implications of partition for Albanians, the emerging National Awakening became a focal point of reflection and questioned the relationship between Muslim Albanians, Islam and the Ottoman Empire. These events and other changing social dynamics revolving around Islam would come to influence how Albanians viewed the Muslim faith and their relationship to it. Those experiences and views carried on in the 20th century had profound implications on shaping Islam in Albania that surfaced during the communist era.
Background
At the beginning of 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 Austrian 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 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. While 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. While 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. Between 1839 and 1876, the Ottoman Empire initiated modernising government reforms during the Tanzimat period and the Albanian Ottoman elite opposed them, in particular of having Ottoman officials from other parts of the empire sent to govern Ottoman Albanian areas and the introduction of a new centralised military recruitment system..
National Awakening and Islam The Russo-Ottoman war of 1878 and the threat of partition of Ottoman Albanian inhabited areas amongst neighbouring Balkan states at the Congress of Berlin led to the emergence of the League of Prizren (1878–81) to prevent those aims. The league began as an organisation advocating Islamic solidarity and restoration of the status quo (pre-1878).. In time it also included Albanian national demands such as the creation of a large Albanian vilayet or province which led to its demise by the Ottoman Empire.. The Ottoman Empire viewed Muslim Albanians as a bulwark to further encroachment by Christian Balkan states to its territory. It therefore opposed emerging Albanian national sentiments and Albanian language education amongst its Muslim component that would sever Muslim Albanians from the Ottoman Empire. During this time the Ottoman Empire appealed to pan-Islamic identity and attempted to console Muslim Albanians for example by employing mainly them in the Imperial Palace Guard and offering their elite socio-political and other privileges.. Of the Muslim Albanian elite of the time, though there were reservations regarding Ottoman central government control they remained dependent on state civil, military and other employment. For that elite, remaining within the empire meant that Albanians were a dynamic and influential group in the Balkans, while within an independent Albania connoted being surrounded by hostile Christian neighbours and open to the dictates of other European powers.."Άσχετα από τις επιφυλάξεις που διατηρούσε απέναντι στην κεντρική εξουσία, η ηγετική μερίδα των Τουρκαλβανών παρέμενε εξαρτημένη από τους κρατικούς «λουφέδες» που αποκόμιζαν οι εκπρόσωποι της στελεχώνοντας τις πολιτικές και στρατιωτικές θέσεις της Αυτοκρατορίας• γνώριζε άλλωστε καλά ότι το αλβανικό στοιχείο θα έπαιζε πολύ σημαντικότερο ρόλο στα Βαλκάνια στα πλαίσια μιας ενιαίας Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας, παρά ως πυρήνας ενός κράτους χωριστού, τριγυρισμένου από εχθρικά χριστιανικά βασίλεια και εκτεθειμένου στις μηχανορραφίες των ευρωπαϊκών δυνάμεων." "[Regardless of the reservations maintained against the central power, the leading portion of Muslim Albanians remained dependent on the state "lufedes" realized by being the representatives recruited in the civil and military posts of the Empire, they also knew well that the Albanian element would play a very important role in the Balkans in a single Ottoman Empire, rather than in a core of a separate state, surrounded by hostile Christian kingdoms and exposed to the machinations of the European powers]." 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 while 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." During this time small numbers of Slavic Muslims, Bosniaks from the Herzegovina Mostar area migrated due to the Herzegovina Uprising (1875) and Slavic Muslims expelled (1878) by Montenegrin forces from Podgorica both settled in a few settlements in north-western Albania.. "Das Dorf Borakaj (Borak/Borake), zwischen Durrës und Tirana in der Nähe der Kleinstadt Shijak gelegen, wird fast vollständig von Bosniaken bewohnt. Zu dieser Gruppe gehören auch die Bosniaken im Nachbarort Koxhas."; p. 137. "Die Bosniaken sind wahrschlich nach 1875 aus der Umgebung von Mostar, und zwar aus Dörfern zwischen Mostar und Čapljina, nach Albanien gekommen... Einzelne bosnische Familien wohnen in verschiedenen Städten, vie in Shijak, Durrës. Die 1924 nach Libofsha in der Nähe von Fier eingewanderte Gruppe ist inzwischen sprachlich fast vollständig assimiliert, SHEHU-DIZDARI-DUKA (2001: 33) bezeichnet sie ehenfalls als bosniakisch.". "Migration to Shkodra was mostly from the villages to the south-east of the city and from the cities of Podgorica and Ulcinj in Montenegro. This was connected to the independence of Montenegro from the Ottoman Empire in the year 1878 and the acquisition of additional territories, e.g. Ulcinj in 1881 (Ippen, 1907, p. 3).". "Am östlichen Ufer des Shkodrasees gibt es heute auf dem Gebiet von Vraka vier Dörfer, in denen ein Teil der Bewohner eine montenegrinische Mundart spricht. Es handelt sich dabei um die Ortschaften Boriçi i Madh (Borić Veli), Boriçi i Vogël (Borić Mali/Borić Stari/Borić Vezirov), Gril (Grilj) und Omaraj (Omara), die verwaltungstechnisch Teil der Gemeinde Gruemira in der Region Malësia e Madhe sind. Ferner zählen zu dieser Gruppe noch die Dörfer Shtoji i Ri und Shtoji i Vjetër in der Gemeinde Rrethinat und weiter nordwestlich von Koplik das Dorf Kamica (Kamenica), das zur Gemeinde Qendër in der Region Malësia e Madhe gehört. Desgleichen wohnen vereinzelt in der Stadt sowie im Kreis Shkodra weitere Sprecher der montenegrinischen Mundart. Nach ihrer Konfession unterscheidet man zwei Gruppen, d.h. orthodoxe mid muslimische Slavophone. Die erste, kleinere Gruppe wohnt in Boriçi i Vogël, Gril, Omaraj und Kamica, die zweite, größere Gruppe in Boriçi i Madh und in Shtoj. Unter den in Shkodra wohnenden Slavophonen sind beide Konfessionen vertreten... Die Muslime bezeichnen sich gemeinhin als Podgoričani ‘Zuwanderer aus Podgorica’ und kommen aus Zeta, Podgorica, Tuzi usw."; p. 19. "Ohne genaue Quellenangabe bringt ŠĆEPANOVIĆ (1991: 716–717) folgende ,,aktuelle" Zahlen:... Veliki (Mladi) Borić 112 Familien, davon 86 podgoričanski, 6 crnogorski und 20 albanische Familien. STOPPEL (2012: 28) sagt Folgendes über die Montenegriner in Albanien: ,,hierbei handelt es sich um (nach Erhebungen des Helsinki-Komitees von 1999 geschätzt,, etwa 1800–2000 serbisch-sprachige Personen in Raum des Shkodra-Sees und im nördlichen Berggrenzland zu Montenegro, die 1989 eher symbolisch mit ca. 100 Personen angegeben und nach 1991 zunächst überwiegend nach Jugoslawien übergewechselt waren". p. 20. "Außer in Boriçi i Madh und auch in Shtoj, wo die Slavophonen eine kompakte Gruppe innerhalb des jeweiligen Ortes bilden, sind sie in anderen Dorfern zahlenmäßig bedeutunglos geworden."; p. 131. "In Shtoj i Vjetër leben heute ungefähr 30 und in Shtoj i Ri 17 muslimische Familien, d.h Podgoričaner."