Jacob Mikanowski: belief

Transcript context

…Is it Bektashi Muslims or some other reason? There is a very moderate Sufi strain to Islam there. Although there’s some proselytizing by Salafis. It’s not just that anymore. There’s also two kinds of Christian: the Orthodox south, and actually the Catholic north was where all the tribal violence is. Those are the great Catholic hill tribes — were the really violent ones that do blood feud. The take on this in Albania is that — I think one of their main poets said that the religion of Albanians is Albanianism — is that they’re all Albanian. They’re all Albanian-speaking. It kind of dilutes those differences. There’s a lot of intermarriage. The Islam is very mild. And the conflicts run in all different directions. Historically, they’re clan-based: clan-on-clan, not religion-on-religion. The temperature: beyond just being this very mild Sufi Islam, the years of official atheism also cooled the temperature on religion a lot. The religion is . . . all three — Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam — are kind of muted, culturally, and Albanian national unity is more prominent psychologically. Hungary: What is your read on the current political situation? This has become a political football of sorts amongst the American Right. How bad is it — how far is it straying from, either, whether it’s democracy or rule of law (that is itself debated)? How should I think about politics in Hungary?…

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