Albania has been a secular state since its founding in 1912, despite various changes in political systems. During the 20th century after Independence (1912) the democratic, monarchic and later the totalitarian communist regimes followed a systematic secularisation of the nation and the national culture. Albanians have historically been a particular case and a unique symbol of religious harmony and tolerance in the Balkans. Muslims, Catholic and Orthodox Christians have always lived in harmony and coexisted without divisive religious confrontations. p.236.
The understanding of secularism in the Republic of Albania has strong influences from the French laïcité. Currently Albania is a secular parliamentary republic, in which the state guarantees freedom of belief. The constitution recognizes the equality of religious communities and the state is neutral in the questions of faith.
History The Albanian traditional customary law has held a sacred – although secular – longstanding, unwavering and unchallenged authority with a cross-religious effectiveness over the Albanians, which is attributed to an earlier pagan code common to all the Albanian tribes. p. 11.
According to some historical sources, the government of the Roman and Byzantine empire had to recognize autonomous customary laws to the various local communities for their self-administration. In this context, during different periods, Albanian customary laws were implemented in parallel with Roman, Byzantine, Ecclesiastic, and subsequently Sharia and Ottoman laws. pp. 137–140. This helped the Albanian mountain tribes to preserve their way of life, identity, and neutrality in the face of external centralizing administration. p. 205.
Ottoman era During Ottoman era, Albanians were divided by religion in the Millet system in which the Muslims should use Sharia while the Christians would use Canon Law. However the Albanian traditional customary law remained implemented alongside those religious laws, and in the mountainous areas it has continued to direct all the aspects of the Albanian tribal society.
Ali Pasha, the Albanian ruler of the increasingly independent Pashalik of Yanina, enforced his own laws in addition to the Sharia for Muslims and Canon for Christians, allowing only in rare cases the usage of local Albanian tribal customary laws. After annexing Suli and Himara into his semi-independent state in 1798, he tried to organize the judiciary in every city and province according to the principle of social equality, enforcing his laws for the entire population of his domains, Muslims and Christians.
Albanian nationalism as it emerged wanted to overcome the religious divisions among Albanians between members of the local Sunni Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Bektashi Muslim and Roman Catholic Christian communities since the Ottomans would use religion to divide them. Albanian nationalists argued that divisive sectarian religious fanaticism was alien to Albanian culture, and propagated what some historians refer to as a "'civic religion' of Albanianism".Duijzings, Ger. "Religion and the Politics of 'Albanianism. In Schwandler-Stevens and Jurgen, Albanian Identities: Myth and History. Pages 61-62. Page 62: "nationalist rhetoric declared it [religion/millet] to be unimportant (and that religious fanaticism to be alien to the Albanian soul)", page 61:"From the beginning, national ideologists propagated a kind of 'civil religion' of Albanianism, which was epitomized in Pashko Vasa's famous and influential nationalist poem O moj Shqipni ("O poor Albania"): "Awaken, Albanians, wake from your slumber. Let us all be brothers, swear an oath not to mind church or mosque. The faith of the Albanian is Albanianism! Pashko Vasa's famous poem O moj Shqypni told Albanians to "swear an oath not to mind [lit. "look to"] church or mosque" because "the faith of the Albanian is Albanianism" ( or in ).
Sami Frashëri in his 1899 work, "Shqipëria ç'ka qenë, ç'është dhe ç'do të bëhet", envisioned an Albania that would have no official religion and where education would be secular.
Independence After Albania became Independent in 1912, the government decided that the old Ottoman laws would still be in use until the government would pass new laws. But it was decided that Kadis would only handle cases related to religion, while the civil cases would proceed but by state courts. The Albanian Constitution of 1920 had no official religion and the separation of between the state and the religious communities was in the framework of the freedom of religion. The 1922 Constitution first established the main contours of the model of secularism, tailored to country's troublesome religious plurality: the state had no official religion; all religions were free; but they were excluded from any role in the system of legal jurisdiction or politics. In particular, the state's claim to neutrality targeted the privileges that the Muslim majority enjoyed during the outgoing Empire.
Zogist era
Modernization reforms took on new impulses once Ahmet Zogu came into power, first as president, from 1924 to 1928, and later as self-proclaimed king of Albania, from 1928 to 1939. During his reign, Zog embraced the renaissance ideals of unity, areligiosity and European modernity, and turned them into the very ideology of the state. He further added authoritarian might to enforce an Albanian version of laïcité, namely: 1) state neutrality; 2) a plethora of religious rights; and 3) co-optation of religious communities to state's goals.
The 1925 Constitution arranged for stricter state controls on the activity of religious groups and expanded the competences of Zog in ‘tutoring’ religious authorities and ‘preventing’ them from infringing national ‘unity’. Zog's increased powers as king of the country after 1928 allowed him more authority to pressure religious communities into following the state's vision of a ‘true European state’. Specifically, the 1928 Statute of the Kingdom tightened state supervision over religious communities and religious education was placed under the control of the Ministry of Education. A 1929 decree on the administration of religious communities put them under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, and banned the clergy from pursuing political goals. The king himself took on exceptional powers to replace the chairs of religious communities whenever needed. He also took it upon himself to remind the communities of their national-patriotic tasks: ‘Do not forget that while fulfilling the holy duty… the fatherland must be above everything.’ Intellectuals in general gave their backing to the state's top-down modernist approach, and argued that Muslims had no other choice but to reform according to ‘principles of present European life’.
In 1924 the government led by Ahmet Zogolli (later King Zog) passed a decree in which the religious communities of Albania would be granted a special status that gave the state the right to monitor the ban of religious political activities. They would also have no jurisdiction in the Albanian state, no subsidies or relations with outside organisations or persons.
In 1928, a new constitution was put in force which proclaimed King Zog and abolished Islamic law, Canon Law and the Albanian customary law, adopting in their place a civil code based on the Swiss one, as Atatürk's Turkey had done in the same decade. The new constitution declared:
In a 1929 congress, the Muslim community, under pressure from the government, adopted the template of Albanianism, including its twist towards European modernity and civilizational progress. In line with state-demanded reforms, the Sunnis’ 1929 congress, which was de facto organized by the state, adopted highly controversial reforms, including the use of Albanian as the official language for sermons, the unification of all local madrassas into a single institution, and the closure of the mosques. The Muslim community's reshuffled statutes required its head ‘to be faithful to the King, to the fatherland and to respect the Constitution with national consciousness”. The 1929 Civil Code abolished also remaining competences of the Islamic courts by stripping the Muslim hierarchy of any forms of political and legal authority.
In 1930 the Albanian Ministry of Education passed a decree which forces religious communities to finance their own religious schools and lessons. The law hit the Muslim community hard because they could not finance them, and as a result of it in 1938 there were only 2-3 madrasas left in all of Albania.
From 1933 until 1936 all private schools were banned, which in practice meant that Catholic schools could not operate in Albania. The government of Zog was forced to backtrack after Italian and international pressure.
Italian and German occupation The relations with the state and the religious communities improved after the 1939 occupation, since both the Italians and the Germans wanted to have good relations with the religious communities of Albania. During the occupation a limited number of religious lessons were maintained.
+ Religious state financing during the Zog and Italian eras (in French francs ) Last Zog budget First Italian budget Evolution from the Zog to the Italian era Sunni Muslims 50,000 francs 375,000 francs + 750% Albanian Orthodox Church 35,000 francs 187,500 francs + 535% Catholic Church in Albania - 156,000 francs - Bektashi Order in Albania - - -
Communist era During the communist era, Albania transitioned from a simple secular state to, in 1967, an entity upholding state atheism by which all public practice of religion was banned, although some private practice survived. Enver Hoxha exploited Pashko Vasa's O moj Shqypni and implemented its stanza "the faith of the Albanians is Albanianism" literally as state policy. The communist regime proclaimed that the only religion of the Albanians was Albanianism.
1946-1967 The Agrarian Reform Law of August 1946 nationalized most property of religious institutions, including the estates of monasteries, orders, and dioceses. Many clergy and believers were tried, tortured, and executed, and all foreign Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were expelled. Religious communities or branches that had their headquarters outside the country, such as the Jesuit and Franciscan orders, were henceforth ordered to terminate their activities in Albania.
Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with the education of the young, because that had been made the exclusive province of the state. All religious communities were prohibited from owning real estate and from operating philanthropic and welfare institutions and hospitals. Although there were tactical variations in First Secretary of the Communist Party Enver Hoxha's approach to each of the major denominations, his overarching objective was the eventual destruction of all organized religion in Albania. Between 1945 and 1953, the number of priests was reduced drastically and the number of Roman Catholic churches was decreased from 253 to 100, and all Catholics were stigmatized as fascists.
Total ban on religion beginning in 1967