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Religion in Kosovo is separated from the state. [1] The Constitution establishes Kosovo [a] as a secular state that is neutral in matters of religious beliefs and where everyone is equal before the law and freedom to belief, conscience and religion is guaranteed.
According to the U.S. Department of State's 2007 International Religious Freedom Report, 'the last credible census was taken in the 1980s', and the religious demographics had to be estimated. [2] The Report found that Islam was the predominant faith in Kosovo, 'professed by most of the majority ethnic Albanian population, the Bosniak, Gorani, and Turkish communities, and some of the Roma/Ashkali/Egyptian community'. About 100,000–120,000 people were Serbs, and these were largely Serbian Orthodox. Approximately 3.4% of ethnic Albanians were Catholics, whereas Protestants comprised a minority of less than 1%, there were only two known families of Jewish origin and no reliable data for atheists. [2] It is also likely that there are some Orthodox Albanians in Kosovo. However, with current tension between Kosovars and Serbs, they may feel as if they do not want to identify as Eastern Orthodox, as they may be thought of as ‘Serbs’ because of their Eastern Orthodox status. Therefore, they are not represented in the census. Furthermore, the report claimed that religion was 'not a significant factor in public life. Religious rhetoric was largely absent from public discourse in Muslim communities, mosque attendance was low, and public displays of conservative Islamic dress and culture were minimal.' [2]
According to Pew Research Center's 2015 study, in 2010 Kosovo had 97.5% Muslims and 2.1% Christians; all other religious groups and the unaffiliated each had less than 1%. [3]
According to the European Social Survey in 2012, the population of Kosovo was 97.5% Muslim, 0.1% Catholic, 2.1% Eastern Orthodox and 0.3% irreligious. [4]
The 2011 Kosovo population census was largely boycotted by the Kosovo Serbs (who predominantly identify as Serbian Orthodox Christians), especially in North Kosovo, [5] leaving the Serb population underrepresented. [6] Other religious communities, including the Tarikats and Protestants, also contest the census data. Protestant leaders and those without a religious affiliation state some members of their communities were classified incorrectly as Muslims by census takers. [7]
The results of the 2011 census gave the following religious affiliations for the population included in the census: [8]
Almost all Muslims in Kosovo are Sunni Muslims. The majority of Roma Muslims belong to Sufi brotherhoods, a sizeable number of practising Albanian Muslims also. [9]
The Serb population is largely Serbian Orthodox, and primarily concentrated in North Kosovo, though a few enclaves exist elsewhere. The Catholic Albanian communities are mostly concentrated in Gjakova, Prizren, Klina and a few villages near Peja and Vitina (see laramans). Slavic-speaking Catholics usually call themselves Janjevci or Kosovan Croats. Slavic-speaking Muslims in the south of Kosovo are known as the Gorani people.
Christianity probably reached Kosovo in the 5th century as the Roman Empire gradually split into a Greek East and Latin West. Kosovo became part the former, known as the Byzantine Empire, and thus fell into the sphere of the Eastern Orthodox Church based in Constantinople. [10] During the High Middle Ages, as Byzantine rule in Kosovo gave way to the Serbian Empire in the early 13th century, there was an Orthodox Christian majority, but also a Catholic minority consisting of the Italo-Dalmatian merchant class from Ragusa, German immigrants from Hungary and Transylvania, and probably all of the native Albanian population. [10]
The presence of Serbian Orthodox bishops in Lipjan and Prizren was first recorded in the 10th century. [11] In 1219, the Serbian Orthodox Church split from the Greek Orthodox Church, and Greek bishops were expelled from Kosovo. [11] The See of the Serbian Orthodox Church was moved from Žiča in present-day Serbia to Peja in present-day Kosovo in 1252, thus making it the religious and cultural centre of Serbian Orthodoxy. In 1346, the archbishop of Peja assumed the title of patriarch. [11]
Kosovo was conquered by the Ottoman Empire along with the other remnants of the Serbian Empire in the period following the Battle of Kosovo (1389). Although the Ottomans did not force the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian population to convert to Islam, there was strong social pressure (such as not having to pay the jizya) as well as political expediency to do so, which ethnic Albanians did in far greater numbers (including the entire nobility) than Serbs, Greeks and others in the region. [12] Many Catholic Albanians converted to Islam in the 17th and 18th centuries, despite attempts by Catholic clergy to stop them. During the Concilium Albanicum, a meeting of Albanian bishops in 1703, a strict condemnation of conversion – especially for opportunistic reasons such as jizya evasion – was promulgated. Whilst many of these converts stayed crypto-Catholics to a certain extent, often helped by pragmatic lower clerics, the higher Catholic clergy ordered them to be denied the sacraments for their heresy. [13] Efforts to convert the Laraman community of Letnica back to Catholicism began in 1837, but the effort was violently suppressed – the local Ottoman governor put laramans in jail. [14] After the Ottoman Empire abolished the death penalty for apostasy from Islam by the Edict of Toleration 1844, several groups of crypto-Catholics in Prizren, Peja and Gjakova were recognised as Catholics by the Ottoman Grand Vizier in 1845. When the Laramans of Letnica asked the district governor and judge in Gjilan to recognise them as Catholics, they were refused however, and subsequently imprisoned, and then deported to Anatolia, [15] from where they returned in November 1848 following diplomatic intervention. [16] In 1856, a further Tanzimat reform improved the situation, and no further serious abuse was reported. [17] The greater part of converts of Laramans, almost exclusively new-borns, took place between 1872 and 1924. [18]
After victory at the Battle of Kosovo (1389), the Ottoman Empire imposed Islamic rule on the region. Conversion was not obligatory, but had several financial, social and political benefits. Until the sixteenth century the degree of Islamisation in Kosovo was minimal, and largely confined to urban centres. The pace of conversions to Islam only increased significantly in the second half of the sixteenth century, possibly because converts thus became exempt from the cizje , a tax levied only on non-Muslims. [19] By 1634, the majority of Kosovo Albanians had converted to Islam, although a minority remained Catholic. [20] Besides the ethnic Albanians, and the ruling Turks who settled in Kosovo, the Roma and some part of the Slavic-speaking population (later called the Bosniaks and/or Gorani, to distinguish them from the Orthodox Serbs) also became Muslims, by far most of them Sunni, many of which belong to Sufi brotherhoods, although small a minority of Shia Muslims [ dubious ] formed in the countryside. By the end of the 17th century, the Islamic population started to outnumber the Christians. [20]
In 2023, the country was scored 2 out of 4 for religious freedom. [21]
This article includes information on the demographic history of Kosovo.
The Gorani or Goranci, are a Slavic Muslim ethnic group inhabiting the Gora region—the triangle between Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia. They number an estimated 60,000 people, and speak a transitional South Slavic dialect, called Goranski. The vast majority of the Gorani people adhere to Sunni Islam.
Gjakova is the seventh largest city of Kosovo and seat of Gjakova Municipality and Gjakova District. The city has 40,827 inhabitants, while the municipality has 94,556 inhabitants.
Peja is the fourth most populous city in Kosovo and serves as the seat of the Peja Municipality and the District of Peja. It is located in the Rugova region on the eastern section of the Accursed Mountains along the Lumbardhi i Pejës River in the western part of Kosovo.
Prizren is the second most populous city and municipality of Kosovo and seat of the eponymous municipality and district. It is located on the banks of the Prizren River between the foothills of the Sharr Mountains in southern Kosovo. Prizren experiences an oceanic climate under the influence of the surrounding mountains.
The League of Prizren, officially the League for the Defense of the Rights of the Albanian Nation, was an Albanian political organization that was officially founded on June 10, 1878 in the old town of Prizren in the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. It was suppressed in April 1881.
The most common religion in Albania is Islam, with the second-most-common religion being Christianity. There are also a number of irreligious Albanians. There are no official statistics regarding the number of practicing religious people per each religious group.
The Vilayet of Kosovo was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Peninsula which included the modern-day territory of Kosovo and the north-western part of the Republic of North Macedonia. The areas today comprising Sandžak (Raška) region of Serbia and Montenegro, although de jure under Ottoman control, were de facto under Austro-Hungarian occupation from 1878 until 1909, as provided under Article 25 of the Treaty of Berlin. Üsküb (Skopje) functioned as the capital of the province and the midway point between Istanbul and its European provinces. Üsküb's population of 32,000 made it the largest city in the province, followed by Prizren, also numbering at 30,000.
Kosovo was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1455 to 1912, at first as part of the eyalet of Rumelia, and from 1864 as a separate Kosovo Vilayet.
Serbia has been traditionally a Christian country since the Christianization of Serbs by Clement of Ohrid and Saint Naum in the 9th century. The dominant confession is Eastern Orthodoxy in the fold of Serbian Orthodox Church.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity is largest religion in Montenegro, but there are also sizeable numbers of adherents of both Catholic Christianity and Islam.
Islam in Kosovo has a long-standing tradition dating back to the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. Before the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the entire Balkan region had been Christianized by both the Western and Eastern Roman Empire. From 1389 until 1912, Kosovo was officially governed by the Muslim Ottoman Empire and a high level of Islamization occurred among Catholic and Orthodox Albanians, mainly due to Sufi orders and socio-political opportunism. Both Christian and Muslim Albanians intermarried and some lived as "Laramans", also known as Crypto-Christians. During the time period after World War II, Kosovo was ruled by secular socialist authorities in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). During that period, Kosovars became increasingly secularized. After the end of Communist period religion had a revival in Kosovo. Today, 95.6% of Kosovo's population are Muslims, most of whom are ethnic Albanians. There are also non-Albanian speaking Muslims, who define themselves as Bosniaks, Gorani and Turks.
Eastern Orthodoxy arrived in the areas of Illyrii proprie dicti or Principality of Arbanon during the period of Byzantine Empire. Those areas fell under the Ottoman Empire during the late medieval times and Eastern Orthodoxy underwent deep sociopolitical difficulties that lasted until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Between 1913 and until the start of WWII under the newly recognized state of Albania, Eastern Orthodoxy saw a revival and in the 1937 the Autocephaly after a short Eastern Orthodoxy schism and contestation was recognized. Decades of persecution under the Communist state atheism, which started in 1967 and officially ended in December 1990, greatly weakened all religions and their practices especially Christians of Albania. The post-communist period and the lifting of legal and other government restrictions on religion allowed Orthodoxy to revive through institutions and enabled the development of new infrastructure, literature, educational facilities, international transnational links and other social activities.
The Catholic Church has a population in Kosovo of approximately 65,000 in a region of roughly 2 million people.
Christianity in Kosovo has a long-standing tradition dating to the Roman Empire. The entire Balkan region had been Christianized by the Roman, Byzantine, First Bulgarian Empire, Serbian Kingdom, Second Bulgarian Empire, and Serbian Empire till 13th century. After the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 until 1912, Kosovo was part of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and a high level of Islamization occurred. During the time period after World War II, Kosovo was ruled by secular socialist authorities in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). During that period, Kosovars became increasingly secularized. Today, 81.87% of Kosovo's population are from Muslim family backgrounds, most of whom are ethnic Albanians, but also including Slavic speakers and Turks.
Bosniaks in Kosovo are a South Slavic Muslim ethnic group living in Kosovo, numbering 27,553 according to the 2011 census. The vast majority of Bosniaks are adherents of Sunni Islam.
Kosovo does not have an official religion. Like the rest of the country, the majority of Pristina's population consider themselves to be Muslim. However, religious practices may tend to be liberal. Many do fast for Ramadan and praying is widely practiced.
The District of Peja is one of the biggest districts located in the northern hemisphere of Kosovo. Istog and Klina are the two biggest cities after Peja belonging to this particular district. During the course of history, numerous religions dominated in the aforementioned district starting from Illyrian ‘polytheist religions’, to Catholicism to Islam. Despite the numerous ethnic frictions in the region, its diverse religious groups have practiced their faiths openly and have largely lived in harmony.
The term Laraman in Albanian refers to crypto-Christians who adhered to Islam officially but continued to practice Christianity within the household during the Ottoman era. It was derived from the Albanian adjective i larmë, meaning "variegated, motley, two-faced", a metaphor of "two-faithed" (l'arë), a reference to the Laramans following both Christianity and Islam (nominally).
The Islamization of Albania occurred as a result of the Ottoman conquest of the region beginning in 1385. The Ottomans through their administration and military brought Islam to Albania through various policies and tax incentives, trade networks and transnational religious links. In the first few centuries of Ottoman rule, the spread of Islam in Albania was slow and mainly intensified during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries due in part to greater Ottoman societal and military integration, geo-political factors and collapse of church structures. It was one of the most significant developments in Albanian history as Albanians in Albania went from being a largely Christian population to one that is mainly Sunni Muslim, while retaining significant ethnic Albanian Christian minorities in certain regions. The resulting situation where Sunni Islam was the largest faith in the Albanian ethnolinguistic area, but other faiths were also present in a regional patchwork, played a major influence in shaping the political development of Albania in the late Ottoman period. Apart from religious changes, conversion to Islam also brought about other social and cultural transformations that have shaped and influenced Albanians and Albanian culture.
