Macedonians subject to religious tensions

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By Misko Taleski for Southeast European Times in Struga
03/02/12

The government and religious communities are attempting to calm the situation following the burning of two Macedonian Orthodox churches.

The situation in Struga is calming down, residents say, after Muslims held violent protests this week and last, causing a series of religious-based incidents.

Tensions flared between Christians and minority Muslims after a January 13th Vevcani carnival, in which Orthodox Christian men dressed as women in burkas and mocked the Quran. Protestors responded by taking down the Macedonian flag from the Struga local government building, chanting slogans and burning Macedonian Orthodox churches in Labunishta and in Mala Rechica.

“The Wahhabis [radical Islamists] have been present here for quite some time. They are increasingly getting to the poorer Albanians and Macedonians of Islamic faith,” analyst and former security studies professor at Security Faculty in Skopje Ivan Babanovski told SETimes.

The Islamic Religious Community (IVZ) expressed concern over the events and the potential rise of Islamophobia. “The government allocates every year 50,000 euro for the carnival from the money of all citizens, including the Muslims,” it said in a statement.

Some blame the government for the incidents, given that Merko and the local government leaders are members of the ruling Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (DUI).

“If you spike politics with false patriotism and nationalism, you can rule until you bring the state to collapse. Usually the state and citizens suffer but also the populists themselves,” political analyst and vice rector of the FON University in Skopje, Mersel Biljali, told SETimes.

But for residents in Struga what they experienced is nothing new.

“Orthodox Christian Macedonians and Muslims, regardless of ethnicity, never had misunderstandings.

When the Wahhabis infiltrated, things changed. They walk around Struga and in the villages with characteristic beards and short pants causing tensions. Whether somebody will do something we don’t know, and the uncertainty causes fear about co-existence,” pensioner Nikola Trajanoski told SETimes.

Babanovski said he is not surprised by the Muslims’ reaction in Struga, and argued it is part of establishing a larger pan-Islamist trend in the Balkans.

“The increasing pan-Islamic influence by the Middle Eastern countries — especially Saudi Arabia — in the Balkans additionally burden the situation, which explains the Wahhabi entrenchment in Struga and other spots in the region from which the fundamentalists want to act in Europe,” Babanovski said.

Biljali argues the incidents help Macedonian politicians to fill gaps that are created by their not showing results from their work with nationalist activities.

“The solution to such tension-filled situations is to immediately unblock the Euro-Atlantic agenda,” Biljali said.

The Macedonian police took steps in hopes of preventing a recurrence of the events.

“[The police] sent a letter to Facebook to disband the group,” internal affairs ministry spokesperson Ivo Kotevski told SETimes.

Macedonian World Congress President Todor Petrov told SETimes that the violence was politically motivated, intending to destabilize Macedonia given the census, the pressures to change its name and identity and to focus attention away from the recent ICJ case against Greece.

“Just like the 2001 conflict was not a war between Macedonians and Albanians, nor between Christians and Muslims, the latest incidents have no connection with faith and ethnicity. It is a simulated war for implementing global interests in the region by misusing the citizens’ religious feelings since the faithful reject violence,” Petrov said.

This content was commissioned for SETimes.com.

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