Islam and Democracy at the Fringes of Europe: The Role of Useful Historical Legacies

Abstract This article analyzes how the Muslim majority has engaged with, and contributed to parallel processes of democratization and European integration in post-Communist Albania. The assessment of Muslims' choices focuses on the Central organization, the Albanian Muslim Community, which is recognized by the state as the only authority in charge of all the administrative and spiritual issues pertinent to the community of Sunni believers, and serves as the main hub of respective religious activities in the country. The analysis of democratization, and Muslims' respective choices, are divided into two different periods, namely democratic transition (1990–1998) and democratic consolidation (1998–2013), each facing democratizing actors, including Muslim groups, with different challenges and issues. We argue that the existence of a useful pool of arguments from the past, the so-called Albanian tradition, has enabled Muslims to contravene controversial foreign influences and recast Islam in line with the democratic and European ideals of the Albanian post-communist polity. This set of historical legacies and arguments explain Muslims' similar positioning toward democracy throughout different stages marked by different institutional restrictions and state policies.


INTRODUCTION
Islamic movements seeking to create an Islamic state and using violent means have long captured the attention of world media and the burgeoning research on political Islam. A wide range of Muslims who prefer democracy and commit to play by the rules instead, have been downplayed by the preponderant focus of the field, which fetishes radicals spreading terror abroad and authoritarianism at home. Muslim communities in the Balkans, who after the fall of Communism have embraced democracy and European integration as the end goals of regime change, are particularly missing in scholarly research on political Islam. If we heard about them, it was usually in the context of ethnonational conflicts during the dissolution of Yugoslavia (Poulton and Taji-Farouki 1997) and the intrusion of foreign missionaries who came in to diffuse their own message of Islam (Deliso 2007). Yet, almost no research so far has been conducted on how, and indeed why, Muslims in the Balkans have engaged with the ongoing processes of post-Communist democratization, which in the regional context have been increasingly framed by the narrative of return to Europe and the concrete process of accession to the European Union (EU).
This article analyzes how the Muslim community has engaged with, and has contributed to, parallel processes of democratization and European accession in post-Communist Albania. The country is a crucial case for the purpose of analyzing Muslims' choices for democracy because of several reasons. First, it is the only Muslim-majority country that emerged in Europe after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 1 and has since, perhaps more than any other country in the Balkans, been under continuous pressure to confirm its European credentials (Clayer 2009a). Second, it is one of the few Muslim-majority polities, which has univocally embraced democracy as the end goal of regime change and has embarked upon a steady process of democratic transformation since the fall of Communism in the early 1990s (Elbasani 2013). Last but not least, with the collapse of Communist regime the country has become subject to different, and sometimes controversial, incoming foreign ideas and agendas on the role of Islam in the postcommunist polity (Lakshman-Lepain 2002). This particular experience of democratization thus enables us to investigate how the Muslim majority has positioned itself on crucial challenges of post-Communist democratization; why it has selected some foreign influences and neutralized others among the options willing to come to its "rescue"; and what explains Muslims' recasting of religion in line with the broad democratic and European aspirations of the Albanian polity.
The analysis of democratization, and Muslims' respective choices, are divided into two different periods, namely democratic transition (1990-1998 and democratic consolidation (1998-2013) The analysis suggests that institutional restrictions on religious activity have contributed to co-opting the Muslim community into the political goals of the state as defined at different stages of transition. However, it is the existence of a useful pool of arguments from the past, particularly reformist solutions reached during the creation of the Albanian post-Ottoman modern nation-state, the so-called Albanian tradition, that enabled Muslims to contravene foreign influences and recast Islam in line with the new democratic and European ideals of the Albanian polity throughout different stages marked by different institutional restrictions and state policies. The empirical analysis provided here sheds light on the unexplored relationship between Islam and politics of democratization in the case of Albania. Additionally, it contributes to the broader fields of religion and politics, the history of religion, and Islamic studies, particularly vis-à-vis long-debated questions such as "religion and democracy", "Islam and human rights", "Islam and pluralism" and "Islam and modernity" elsewhere in the Muslim world.

DEMOCRACY
Current research on the moderation of Muslims' political claims and their preferences for democracy, revolve around two major alternative approaches, one focusing on the rationality of religious behaviour and the other on the ideological confines of religious behaviour. In the first approach, Muslims are considered as strategic power seekers who calculate their political choices according to the structure of opportunities and constraints embedded in the broad institutional framework and changes thereto (Bellin 2008).
Indeed, changes of institutional setting, and in particular, democratic openings that permit formerly excluded groups to compete for market shares "induce" Muslim organizations to reshuffle their positions and adapt to the gives and takes of democratic rules (Kalywas 2000).
In the second alternative Muslims' primary commitments are to their doctrine, and their behaviour hinges on the role of democratic ideas in core religious teachings and interpretations thereof (Philpott 2007 Religious groups, leaders and authorities must, therefore, possess valid intellectual sources to legitimize new political interpretations in order to be able to convince the rank and file of the believers (Tezcur 2010). Strategic-or ideational-driven change in itself may count for little, and could in fact be easily dismissed as lip service, if it is not followed by clearly discernible group behaviour that goes beyond leaders' advocacy of democratic rules. Legacies of the past provide a pool of familiar argumentsinstitutional and ideological solutionswhich Muslim leaders may use successfully in the process of adaptation and recasting of Islam. As Belin puts it, past legacies "provide varying institutional and ideological sources that Muslims may engage, and define the parameters of debate, ambition and strategies for political action" (2008, p. 335).The bargains struck between state and religious structures during the founding moment of the modern nation states establish particularly enduring deals, which persist over time and influence subsequent political choices (Kuru 2007).

AND LEGACIES
The post-Communist democratization and the related liberalization of state regulations of religious activity have inspired a certain resurgence of the Muslim majority in Albania.
However, the recovery of Muslim organizations, regulatory frameworks and relevant ideas after decades-long interruption under the atheist Communist regime, has been neither easy nor smooth. The pre-Communist past has provided useful legacies for the emerging Islamic groups to tap into, but the post-Communist transition has provided a challenging, though more permissive, political milieu for religious actors to recuperate their organizational infrastructure and ideas.

The Secular Model: Religious Rights, State Neutrality and Institutional Supervision
The post-Communist Albanian polity has gradually developed the necessary legal citizens seem to embrace religion more as an aspect of ethnic and social identity rather than a belief in the doctrines of a particular organized spiritual community. This is reflected in the gap between the great number of Albanians who choose to identify with religion and the few who attend religious services and serve religious commandments: 98% of Albanians respond that they belong to one of the religious communities; but only 5.5% attend weekly religious services and 50% only celebrate religious ceremonies during poignant moments in life such as birth, marriage and death (University of Oslo 2013). Additionally, post-Communist Albanians appear strongly committed to institutional arrangements that confine religion strictly within the private sphere -away from state institutions, schools, the arts and the public sphere more generally (ibid). Such secular attitudes show that post-Communist citizens are in general little receptive to concepts of religion as a coherent corpus of beliefs and dogmas collectively managed by a body of legitimate holders of knowledge, and even less receptive to rigid orthodox prescriptions thereof. As Vickers and Pettifer put it, "after so many decades under a rigid, stifling dictatorship…, the last thing most Albanians want is to be told what they are allowed and not allowed to do, let alone see Sharia law…introduced" (2000,117).

Re-born Muslim Organizations: Centralized Hierarchies and Foreign Networks
The granting of religious freedoms, starting with the lifting of the ban on religious practice in November 1990, has permitted the revival of Muslim organizations and the necessary institutional infrastructure to serve their believers. The first organizations were created by religious authorities who had survived Communist purges, and were modeled after the pre-Communist precedents of nation-wide central organizations, claiming authority on all administrative and spiritual affairs pertinent to their respective community of believers. The Sunni majority founded their nation-wide association, the Albanian Muslim Community (AMC) once they were allowed to hold the first Friday prayer on 16 November 1990, and later developed its regular statutes and organigram during the first national congress held in the capital Tirana in February 1991 (Jazexhi 2011a).
Once created, the AMC presented itself as a successor to the institutions established during the foundation of the post-Ottoman independent state, when the modernizing state authorities asked all religious communities to restructure according to the necessities and principles of country's new "European life", to which Albania now belonged (Della Rocca 1994, 129;Clayer 2009b). The millet system, which previously divided the country into four communities -Sunni, Bektashi, Catholic Christian and Orthodox Christianeach governed by their own principles and spiritual hierarchies, was accordingly re-organized into nationally based, state-controlled central organizations, which cut most links with extra-territorial authorities and undertook to collaborate with the state to enforce its political vision of a modern European nation-state.
Yet, the vacuum left by the destruction of the former atheist regime ) proved very difficult to refill. Communists' attacks on the religious establishment, the progressive elimination of politically independent clergy, the gradual prohibition of religious institutions and practices, and later in 1976 the constitutional ban on religion, had left religious hierarchies in a totally inept situation (Prifti 1978, 153). After decades of fierce atheist policies, few clergy and knowledge of theology had survived, books and teaching material were rare, money was scarce, the confiscated property was not returned, and even the ritual practices that nourish religious traditions were largely lost.
Given the lack of internal sources of recovery -religious authorities, knowledge and ideas the revival of religious organizations was almost entirely dependent upon foreign associations and funds willing to come to their rescue. Substantial foreign aid, which initially poured in through cash-rich Arab NGOs, was instrumental for the regeneration The old leaders of the AMC considered it a sacred "duty" to carry on "the national traditions inherited from their ancestors" (Dizdari and Luli 2003, 5). The notion of Albanian tradition is usually articulated in contrast to the "foreign", "intolerant", and "radical" imports from Middle Eastern organizations and Albanian graduates of theology abroad (Sinani 2010, 8). The main ideological pillars of tradition, however, are rooted in the institutional solutions and ideas that characterised the founding of the Albanian independent state in the early 20 th century (Clayer 2009a, 406-423). Back then, selected Islamic authorities, operating under pressure of the state, became active in accommodating Islamic principles to the overarching discourse of European modernization and progress, even when related reforms such as state-led secularization, the creation of centralized religious hierarchies, and the establishment of close state controls were in contrast with the established Islamic theology (Popovic 2006, 42). Those pre-Communist structures, or at least a good part of them, collaborated with the state in advocating for a "true" and reformist Albanian Islam in tune with the principles of "European civilization" and "scientific progress" (Clayer 2009b

POST-COMMUNIST DEMOCRATIZATION: PHASES AND CHALLENGES
Since the fall of Communism Albania has gone through different waves of democratization and de-democratization, featuring institutional progress, but also significant periods of stagnation coupled with recurrent crises of order and legitimacy.
The advances and challenges of country's difficult transition can be analytically separated into two major stages, namely democratic transition (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998), and democratic consolidation (1998-to present), each presenting potential democratizing actors, including the revived Muslim majority, with different issues and problems to face in the course of the difficult and prolonged democratization.
The gradual collapse of the one party-state dictatorship in the early 1990s saw the complex "opening up" of one of the most rigid totalitarian constructs ever built in the Communist world (Prifti 1999). On the eve of transition, the country was widely seen as an outlier amongst other Communist countries, to the extent it lacked both agency-and structurally-related conditions that could facilitate regime change (Elbasani 2007). Communists

Organized Support for the Anti-Communist Political Alternative
During the initial democratic openings, oppressed Muslims, like all the other religious communities, shared dissidents' urge for the expansion of human rights and freedoms negated by the Communist dictatorship. Thus, they found a close partner in the emerging anti-Communist movements that gradually challenged the regime.  (Clayer 2003, 17).
Senior DP officials' creation of an additional semi-formal Islamic organization, Kultura Islame, tied up the existing institutional links between the Democrats and the Sunni community (Lakshmain-Lepain 2002). The Democratic government also capitalized upon the "Islamic majority" to gain political and economic capital on the international Islamic scene (Vickers and Pettifer 2000, 102). Soon after the 1992 elections, a delegation from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) was invited to the country to arrange its membership in the bank, a deal which was negotiated together with generous funding for Islamic education and scholarships for Albanian students to study in Islamic countries.
By the end of 1992, DP's leader and new elected president of the country, Berisha, decreed the country's membership in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The decision was followed by a unilateral abolition of visa requirements for all OIC citizens.
The government also appealed to private Saudi investors for multi-million dollar credits to sponsor the collapsing economy. 2 Open policies towards Muslims allowed the intrusion of diverse radical external organizations who, besides cash brought also controversial ideas, individuals and networks into the country. To paraphrase a study of that period, "when the Communist law was swept aside, … Albania was invaded once again: by business prospectors, 'advisors' of all kinds, observers and religious groups who came to recruit for their faiths" (Young 1997: 5). Competition for the "hearts and minds" of post-atheist Albanians was particularly fierce in the context of the country's location in Europe and its mixed religious composition, which made the Muslim population a crucial target for global Islamists to diffuse their message inside of Europe.
Indeed, the country soon came to face the danger of "Islamic fundamentalism", as foreign networks used formal and informal political links to engage in illicit profit-making activities and expand operational bases related to terrorist networks elsewhere in Europe (Vickers and Pettifer 2000: 106-107).
The AMC, for its part, capitalized on increasing political opportunities and generous foreign assistance to regenerate the role of Islam in the country. As the Chief Mufti noted back in 1993, "the democratic victory of 1990 has created new chances to connect with the world, develop new thinking, renew attempts to strengthen faith and discover religious morality" (Dizdari and Luli 2003, p. 9). At the same time, however, the centralized AMC structures made extensive use of the reformist arguments inherited from the past to contravene radical foreign influences. The response of one the high-level AMC leaders, Faik Hoxha, to the Saudi Minister of Vakifs is symptomatic of AMC's approach and defence of the traditional line: "We do not need others to teach us faith because we have had ours for 500 years. We need your economic assistance for the regeneration of our own faith" (quoted in Sytari 2011, p. 46).
The theme of religious tolerance and moderation, carried from the pre-Communist reformist tradition, continued to be a persistent thread within the regenerated post-Communist religious discourses. Particularly arguments of "national unity", "patriotism", and "religious tolerance", which were envisaged and de facto worked, to glue the multiconfessional Albanian polity together during the creation of the independent state, resurfaced as critical tenets of AMC's revived interpretations of Islam in the post-Communist era. As Endresen observed on the basis of interviews with a wide range of religious leaders in the country, "all clerics were eager to underline their community's promotion of tolerance and explained it either in terms of theological underpinnings or with reference to Albanian traditions" (2010, 112). Inherited arguments on national unity and tolerance were especially helpful during the armed protests that ravaged the state, following the socio-political turmoil in 1997. At the time, the AMC joined forces with the Christian communities to remind believers on country's "tradition" of religious tolerance and national unity as a way to assuage the rising social conflict. If there were any clashes involving religion, the official representatives of the main communities were careful to publically condemn the incidents and march together in demonstration of religious tolerance and unity (Demetja, 2010). The prevailing discourse on Albanians' historical peaceful cohabitation and tolerance has, thus, provided Muslim leaders with valid sources and arguments to neutralize confrontational ideas and restrain the faithful.

Muslims' Commitment to the New Turn of Democratization and EU Integration
The return of Socialist governments (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) This was particularly the case given that in the Albanian post-communist context, the overarching goal of EU membership is commonly framed as a dilemma between Europe and Islam. In the main stream discourse, Islam is commonly portrayed as an outsider to Europe and an obstacle to the realization of country's European future (Sulstarova 2006b, 265 in Albania is neither a residential religion, nor a faith spread originally…. As a rule, it is a shallow religion." (2005). Furthermore, Islamic-related symbols are commonly used as a political tool to denigrate opponents and present them as "anti-European" forces. As a result, Albanian Muslims find themselves "in the situation of numerical majority but intellectual, social and political minority situation" indeed, a kind of "surviving majority" (Clayer 2003, 19 nations ruled by liberty, justice and service to people" (Shekulli, 2005).
groups that participate into the broader international scene and autonomous civil society spaces. Graduates from Islamic universities abroad have returned to the country to reclaim religious authority and challenge what they perceive as the "spiritual poverty" and "administrative weakness" of the AMC (Vickers 2008, 8 advocating a more "theological" interpretation of Islamic doctrine, which official structures typically label as "radicals", stress that "Muslims of Albania remain loyal and devoted citizens to the principles of democracy and human rights in which our United Europe believes today" while adding that "the Muslims of Albania have a great need for the democracy and the human rights that our common continent has constructed in years" (MFA 2008b, 5).