The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement and the Reform of Albanian Islam in the Inter-War
Period
by Nathalie Clayer
In 1927, after seven
years of freshly acquired independence, Albania began to stabilise and undergo
political reform.[1] The ‘umbilical
cord’ that used to bind the Islamic Community of this small Balkan country[2]
with a Muslim majority to Istanbul was at that time once and for all severed.
On the one hand, the setting up of national religious structures in 1923,
on the other the abolition of the Caliphate and the suppression of the medrese’s
[Medrese is the Turkish form of the Arabic madrasah — Translator.]
in Turkey in 1924, as well as the closing of the tekke’s [Dervish lodges
(Turkish, from Arabic) — Translator.] the following year, brought to
an end the organic links that were in existence from a religious point of
view between this former province of the Ottoman Empire and the centre on
which it depended. It was at that point that the leaders of this Islamic Community
received a letter from the ‘Muslim Community of India’. The latter introduced
itself as having missions in England, Germany, America and Africa, as having
already converted “over a hundred English people” and “about a hundred Germans”
and having built mosques in England and Germany: an Islamic community which
seems, therefore, to display a missionary dynamism in the very heart of Europe.
In the following years,
a relationship would be established between the Albanian Islamic Community
and this ‘Muslim Community of India’, or more exactly of Lahore, in this case
the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at al-Islam (‘Ahmadiyya Association for
the Propagation of Islam).[3]
What form did these connections take and why this influence on the part of
an Indian missionary organisation among the Albanian Muslims in the Inter-War
Period? It is questions such as these that this article will attempt to address.
Picture
with caption: The first letter received from the Anjuman by the Albanian
Islamic Community, accompanied by a photograph of the Berlin mosque
From Lahore to Tirana: propagating an Islam for
the spiritual conquest of Europe
The only European country
with a Muslim majority, Albania could not do otherwise than be a target of
choice for a Muslim missionary organisation such as the Lahore branch of the
Ahmadi movement, active in Europe since 1912. In 1927, when the representatives
of the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at al-Islam made contact with the Albanian
Islamic Community, they had, indeed, already successfully established a mission
at Woking, south of London, some fifteen years previously. Moreover, they
had just established another mission in Berlin.[4]
It was on the strength of this infrastructure and of their publications in
English and German that the Assistant Secretary of the organisation, Muhammad
Manzur Ilahi, entered into correspondence with the leaders of Albanian Islam
and sent them some of the Lahori Ahmadi network’s productions.[5]
Part of the first exchanges of letters between Lahore and Tirana was published
in 1927 in the Albanian Muslim Community’s journal Zani i naltë (The
Supreme Voice). The two letters of Muhammad Manzur Ilahi thus published are
quite illuminating as to the way in which the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement tried
to attract the Albanian Muslim leaders and as to its intention in making this
approach.
The first letter is quite
short. Through its missionary activities in Europe, the Anjuman wishes
to demonstrate that it is the promoter of a progressive Islam that “is to
bring salvation from destruction by the forces of materialism”. It wishes
to encourage and assist the Albanian Muslims, “surrounded by enemies on all
sides”, to advance themselves spiritually in order to surpass these “enemies”.
It suggests, therefore, that they read Ahmadi literature and set the Albanian
people on “the sure path to progress”.[6]
In the second letter, the Assistant Secretary of the Anjuman more specifically
requests the leadership of the Albanian Islamic Community to translate the
English translation of the Koran,[7] of which he has sent a copy, and this for “the spiritual, moral
and material advancement of the Albanian people”. The argument put forward
by Muhammad Manzur Ilahi is that this translation lies behind a new spirit
in the Muslim world, particularly among young educated Muslims, likewise an
expansion of Islam in Europe. Indeed, the Islam offered to the Albanian Muslim
leaders has three main characteristics. It has made it possible to respond
to attacks from the enemies of Islam and above all from Christians. It can
win over Europe and the Christians thanks to its spiritual power, a power
that will put an end both to the political and to the economic confusions
of the Muslim world. Lastly, this is a reformist Islam, adapted to modernity,
which takes its stand on the Koran and seeks after the purity of the Prophet’s
day, setting aside the interpretations of the classical fakih (specialists
in Muslim law), which are too much a product of their own time. This Islam,
based on a comprehensible Koran, must be united, liberal and perfect.[8]
The last part of Muhammad
Manzur Ilahi’s letter reveals the manner in which the members of the Anjuman
intended to operate at that time in South-Eastern Europe. Since Albania was
a country with a Muslim majority and there was an Islamic Community there,
they were not thinking of sending a mission, but of using this organisation
as an intermediary, when asking its members to translate their works into
the local language. Specifically, it had to be a local intermediary not only
in relation to the Albanian Muslims but also in relation to “neighbouring
countries and Christians”. Two features show that, in 1927, the Lahori Ahmadis
were considering the Albanian Muslim Community almost as a future Balkan branch
of their missionary movement. Muhammad Manzur Ilahi, was, indeed, recommending
unrealistically to the Albanian Muslim leaders that they should follow their
system for raising money: a system for the voluntary payment of a portion
of their members’ income, with the members promising to “uphold religion in
the world” and to sacrifice their wealth and their time for Islam. Furthermore,
since the reform had to come about through the distribution of literature,
he was urging the Albanian Islamic Community to translate the Anjuman’s
books prepared in English and German, which he had sent to this end, and to
distribute them free of charge.[9]
What was the outcome of
this? In 1945, there was some talk of putting a young student of the Medrese
of Tirana, Ismail Muçej, in charge of an ‘agency’ which the Anjuman
was considering opening in Albania.[10]
The imposition of the communist regime did not allow it, and the Albanian
Islamic Community never became a branch of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement,
or its intermediary in the Balkans, in the proper sense of the term. And yet
it was ‘integrated’ — admittedly very loosely — into the Lahori network because
it regularly used to receive a variety of publications that came from Lahore
and from the organisation’s different missions (in England, Germany, Austria,
the United States, etc). It was likewise visited by certain members of the
network such as, in 1935, Baron Omar Rolf von Ehrenfels — an Austrian anthropologist
who converted to Islam[11]
— who published his impressions of the trip in the Lahore journal The Light.[12] Above all, up until the end
of the Second World War, some Albanian Muslims were very much influenced by
the Anjuman’s teachings.
From Tirana to Lahore: from translating texts to
sending students
The Ahmadiyya Anjuman’s
influence on the Albanian Islamic Community is chiefly detectable in two ways:
on the one hand by the translation into Albanian of numerous texts of Lahori
Ahmadi production and, on the other, by the fact that students were sent to
Lahore.
From 1927, the date of the
Lahoris’ first contacts with Albania, up until the annexation of the country
by fascist Italy in 1939, numerous articles appearing in the organ of the
Albanian Islamic Community were translations or adapted translations of texts
taken from Lahori Ahmadi periodicals and books. From 1927 to 1929, they were
as yet relatively few in number. But from 1930 onwards, nearly all the issues
of Zani i naltë included at least one contribution drawn, in the first
instance, from the journal The Light of Lahore, but also from other
Lahori Ahmadi periodicals: Moslemische Revue from Berlin, The Islamic
Review from Woking and Young Islam.[13] To these texts a number of others
are to be added, prepared on the basis of translations of passages from particular
Lahori Ahmadi works, such as the books by Khwaja Kamaluddin, founder of the
Woking Ahmadi mission (Table Talk, al-Islam or The Threshold
of Truth).[14]
Aside from these journal
articles, the Albanian Islamic Community also published during 1927–1939 the
translations of a booklet and a book by Muhammad Ali, the Anjuman’s
spiritual head, and of a booklet by Khwaja Kamaluddin.[15] Lastly, four issues of a small journal describing
itself as the Albanian-language supplement of the Lahore journal The Light
appeared in 1936, thereby offering the Albanian public still further access
— direct or indirect — to the Anjuman’s works.[16]
What was the subject matter
of these texts drawn from or inspired by the Lahori Ahmadi corpus? We can
distinguish four major categories. Many are concerned with the Muslim faith
in general, with the personality of the Prophet and with the Holy Book of
Islam, the Koran, from a reformist perspective. Others deal with the role
of Islam in modern society. On this topic, two themes crop up most frequently:
the condition of women and Islam’s freedom from incompatibility with science,
education and progress. Women do not have to be veiled. They should receive
schooling. Islam does not forbid photography, the Koran may be broadcast over
the radio, and Muslims need to be educated. A third group consists of texts
aiming to reassert the value of Islam in relation to the West and Christianity.
In these, an appeal is made to the greatness of the Muslim world during the
Middle Ages, to the superiority of Muslim Spain compared with a barbarous
West, or else to brotherhood in Islam. Positive appreciations of Islam by
Christians and other non-Muslims are adduced, and above all the conversion
of Europeans. Islam’s worldwide numerical strength is underscored by way of
statistical tables, and more precise facts are given about the Islamic communities
of Europe, Japan and America. To this group should be added texts that reassert
the value not only of Islam, but also of religion in general, in opposition
to materialism and atheism. Lastly, the fourth category is that of the texts
that more specifically concern the Ahmadiyya Movement, its missions and their
activities, with the emphasis on the expansion of Islam in Europe.
In order to gauge the Anjuman’s
influence, it is also interesting to enquire into the translators of these
texts. For that, it is necessary to draw a distinction between two periods.
Between 1927 and 1931, the Ahmadi texts are translated by two people in the
main: the Administrative Director and lecturer at the Medrese of Tirana, Junus
Bulej,[17] who generally translated
from German and, from 1929 onwards, the young Professor of Mathematics and
Chemistry at the American Technical College in Tirana, Omer (or Ymer) M. Sharra,[18]
who translated from English.[19]
No ulema were involved, therefore. One can assume that they had been more
or less appointed to translate the Ahmadi texts by members of the leadership
of the Islamic Community. But, being a teacher at the Medrese, Junus Bulej
seems to have had his imitators among the students, all the more so as it
became, in the 1930’s, part of the education of the religious authorities-to-be
trained in that establishment to use and to translate Ahmadi literature.
Following the 1929 Congress,
the Albanian Islamic Community and its institutions were indeed reformed,
particularly the Medrese of Tirana, which became the sole establishment for
Muslim religious education in the country, under the name ‘Medrese General’
(Medrese e përgjithshme). As for the journal Zani i naltë, after
two long interruptions of seven and nine months in 1929 and 1930–1931 due
to the reorganisation of the Community and a new law on the press, it also
took on a new appearance, with a new editor, Haki Sharofi, in charge. In addition,
it was decided to allow the Medrese’s students to express themselves through
it “in order to convey to public opinion some idea of the way in which future
Muslim religious professionals were being educated”.[20] Now the greater part of the
articles supplied from then on by the students were translations of texts
taken from Ahmadi periodicals. It should be stressed here that, in the Medrese
General’s new curriculum, English had replaced French, a western foreign language
taught at the Medrese of Tirana prior to 1929.[21]
This change is no coincidence. It was due to the desire on the part of the
Muslim Community’s leaders to give their future functionaries a chance to
have access to a body of work like that of the Anjuman.[22] In 1932, five students from the Medrese trained
in translation and in this way supplied the organ of the Islamic Community
with texts. By 1939 there were over fifteen of them,[23] amongst whom was Hasan Selami, who, after graduating in 1935,
ran the English classes at the Medrese for several years before leaving to
pursue his studies in Cairo.[24]
Following the annexation
of the country by Italy, Zani i naltë was replaced by the journal Kultura
islame (Islamic Culture). The Italian occupation seems to have led the
publishers of the new organ of the Islamic Community to discontinue making
direct references to Ahmadi journals or at any rate to discontinue offering
plain translations made by the students of the Medrese.[25] Yet the influence of the Anjuman
did not disappear, since, alongside the translations of the Egyptian modernist
authors who made their appearance at that time,[26]
translations of articles or extracts from Ahmadi books are still to be found
in Kultura islame, as well as references to Muhammad Ali and his disciples.
Besides, a letter from the Honorary Secretary of the Anjuman, Aziz
Bakhsh, is published in the issue for September–October 1940. The latter fact
definitely indicates that the correspondence that the Albanian Islamic Community
had maintained with the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement was still continuing.[27]
The Ahmadi corpus also becomes more in evidence again in 1943–1944, after
the Italian occupation had ended, when the ensuing German occupation seems
to have allowed more freedom to the leaders of Albanian Islam. Some students
of the Medrese, such as Ismail Muçej, also went back to publishing articles
based on material provided by the Anjuman.[28] In 1944, the Islamic Community even republished
a series of religious books, one of these being the translation of the booklet
by Muhammad Ali on the life of the Prophet.
The continuation of Ahmadi
influence in the Albanian Islamic Community’s publications is not surprising,
inasmuch as the managing editor of Kultura islame, Sadik Bega, was
a young graduate of the Medrese who, in his time, had himself translated articles
from Ahmadi journals. Above all, the journal’s editor, Sherif Putra, also
a graduate of the Medrese and author of a very large number of translations
of Ahmadi texts, was a former scholarship holder of the Anjuman in
Lahore.[29]
For the propagation of Islam
in its Lahori Ahmadiyya interpretation was not limited to passing on its literary
productions in the Albanian language. The attraction of the Anjuman
was strong enough also to prompt several young Albanian Muslims to go and
undertake advanced theological studies in India. According to the reports
of the Director of the Medrese, the Anjuman had offered scholarships
and young Albanians wanted to take advantage of them. This happened first
of all with two out of the ten first graduates of the Medrese, Sherif Putra
and Ejup Fazli Kraja, who had started working for the Islamic Community on
leaving the Medrese in October 1932. After many difficulties, due in particular
to having to meet their travel expenses, for which no provision had been made
either by the Anjuman or by the Albanian Islamic Community, they finally
got under way for the Indies at the end of the year 1934. They were joined
by Halil Junus Repishti, scion of a well-known family of traders and ulema
from Shkodra. It should be noted that the latter had not studied at the Medrese
of Tirana, but in the religious establishments of his native city. Ahmadi
influence had succeeded, then, in emerging to some degree from the context
of the Medrese e Përgjithshme.[30] Finally, three other graduates
of the Medrese left for the Indies in 1935. Yet it seems they never arrived.
Reaching Cairo, one stage on their long voyage, they would have been prevented
from carrying on.[31]
As a result, Lahore only
received, all told, three Albanian students. They took courses there notably
in Arabic, the history of Islam, hadith, English and Urdu. Ejup Kraja,
in particular, entered the University of the Punjab, [This is the University
of the Punjab, Lahore, now in Pakistan — Translator.] where, in 1937,
he took courses in the ‘Arts and Philosophy’ department. In 1936, all three
of them published the aforementioned Albanian-language supplement of the journal
The Light, which ceased publication after four issues for lack of resources.
Housed, fed and clothed by the Anjuman, which also used to provide
them with the books it published, Sherif Putra and his two friends seem, in
spite of everything, to have had a great deal of trouble getting hold of other
books and maintaining a decent standard of living in Lahore. In order to help
them, the Albanian Islamic Community made several appeals for funds.[32]
We do not know whether or not these difficult conditions underlay the return
of the three students to Albania after having spent three years in the Indies.
On the 1st of March 1939, Halil Repishti and Ejup Kraja were, indeed,
repatriated.[33] In fact,
both of them quickly set off again for Egypt, since in October 1939 they were
excluded from al-Azhar on account of their Ahmadi beliefs.[34] In 1940, when they were studying
at the American University in Cairo and were given a grant by the Albanian
Islamic Community, they published in an Egyptian newspaper a declaration in
which they acknowledged their mistake and the deviance of Ahmadi doctrines.[35] As for Sherif Putra, he also went back to Albania, at the latest
during 1939, since in September he became editor there of the Islamic Community’s
new publication.
Picture
with caption: Sherif Putra became editor of the Community’s journal
on his return from Lahore
The search for a ‘modern’, ‘European’ Islam and
its limitations
Why did the leaders of Albanian
Islam and the young executives whom they had begun to educate turn towards
Lahore and the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at al-Islam? Let us go back over
the Albanian situation in order to understand these links forged with an Indian
Islam. When, in 1927, the Anjuman made contact with the Albanian Islamic
Community, a debate over the reform of Islam and Islamic institutions was
getting underway in Albania. At the centre of this discussion, which covered
the pages of the Community’s publication, was Salih Vuçitern, Director General
of Vakfs (the Islamic Community’s properties in mortmain).[36] Very close to President Ahmed
Zogu, back in position again as Head of State since the end of the year 1924,
and true intermediary between the political authorities and the Islamic Community,
Salih Vuçitern made an appeal at that time directed towards the “need for
reform”. In it, he was suggesting a reorganisation of the vakfs, the closure
of unnecessary mosques, the suppression of the regional medrese’s and
their replacement by two boarding schools, at Shkodra and at Tirana, where
a modern religious education would be provided. He was motivated in this by
the fact that the Albanian Muslims were “surrounded on all sides by cultured
peoples” and that the only means of survival, under these conditions, was
to raise the standards of Albanian society.[37]
Of course, this move should be placed in the wider context of the politics
of the reforms carried out by Ahmed Zogu, all the more so as Salih Vuçitern,
an admirer, moreover, of Atatürk, was one of his close advisers. This policy
led notably to the introduction of the civil code in 1928, the reorganisation
of religious Communities in 1929, with the aim of state control, and the abolition
of wearing the veil in 1937.
The aid that the Anjuman
offered for the purpose of “the spiritual advancement of Albanian Muslims”,
of setting them on “the road to progress”, and of causing them to “surpass
their enemies” corresponded exactly, then, to the process that Salih Vuçitern
wanted to set in motion. Is it any wonder, then, that it was he who, in 1928,
only one year, therefore, after the first contacts with the Ahmadiyya Movement,
made an appeal for funds in each prefecture in order to publish a number of
books and distribute them free of charge, including Muhammed — Our Prophet
by Muhammad Ali, adopting, therefore, an approach close to the one suggested
by the Assistant Secretary of the Anjuman?[38]
Three years later, when the book by Muhammad Ali came out, a member of the
Islamic Community was confirming that this translation had been made on the
initiative of Salih Vuçitern, with his desire for reform, “in order to rescue
the Albanian Muslims from the swamps of age-old apathy in which they are immersed”,
in order to “advance them from the religious point of view and from the national
point of view by means of culture”. Isa Domni added, in a spirit probably
quite close to Salih Vuçitern’s: “To set up a medrese in every corner
of Albania, to build mosques everywhere achieves nothing and can be of no
use without culturally shaping the intellect and transforming the spirit of
Muslims by means of good advice, a good education, and with the help of high-quality
literature, written or translated according to need”.[39]
The Islam of the Ahmadiyya
Anjuman corresponded, then, to this Islam compatible with modernity, science
and rationality of which Salih Vuçitern and some of his colleagues were in
search. This was actually an Islam advocated by several reformist groups of
the Muslim world of the time.[40] What probably also attracted the Albanian Muslim
leaders in the Lahori Ahmadi arguments was, paradoxically, the European side
of this missionary movement — not its Indian side. One of the central ingredients
in Albanian nation building had been, since the final years of Ottoman rule,
the building of a ‘European’ Albanian Muslim identity, as opposed to an ‘Asian’
Turkish Muslim identity, in order to legitimise the wish of Albanian Muslims
not to emigrate to Anatolia in the event of the Empire’s demise. What is more,
as in the other Balkan countries, modernisation was synonymous with de-ottomanisation
and europeanisation. Since the country had a Muslim majority, Albanian reformers
like Salih Vuçitern accordingly wanted to create an Islam compatible with
Europe. Now, the Lahori Ahmadis were trying to propagate a European Islam
in Western Europe, drawing even western intellectuals into their ranks.[41]
Another aspect of the Anjuman’s
arguments must also have been right on target: the ‘arsenal’ that it had been
able to develop in response to Islam’s loss of prestige among educated Muslims
on the one hand and in response to the onslaughts of Christian propaganda
on the other. For Salih Vuçitern and the leaders of Albanian Islam were up
against these two problems. The most educated Muslims, under the influence
of scientism and Kemalism, tended to reject Islam as responsible for the backwardness
of the country and incompatible with progress. The Bektashi Muslims, being
affiliated with that brotherhood of the most heterodox and syncretistic kind,
were the first to denounce Sunni Islam as incapable of reforming itself and
as an impediment to progress and modernity.[42] As for the Christians, some
had even aimed to reconvert the Albanian Muslims to the “religion of their
ancestors”.[43]
In answer to the challenges
of modernity, science, reason and Europeanness, the Anjuman was offering
a body of work in western languages (English and German), readily translatable
into Albanian. Albanian literature — religious and non-religious — was as
yet only in its early stages. Knowledge of Arabic was relatively limited,
above all on the part of the most reform-minded, and Turkish Islam, to which
Albanian Islam had been tied, was in the throes of Mustafa Kemal’s reforms.
In the same way, for the advanced theological studies that the Islamic Community
was itself unable to set up, there was the problem of choosing where the graduates
of the Medrese should go. There was no longer any possibility of going to
Istanbul, the former educational centre of the Albanian ulema under the Ottoman
Empire. Since 1925, provision had been made for sending young people to al-Azhar.[44]
In 1940, they amounted to about twenty students in Cairo from Albania.[45] The contacts established with
the Ahmadiyya Movement offered an alternative to the Egyptian capital that
was credible enough, it appears, during the first half of the 1930’s, before
the second contingent of students was stopped at Cairo.
This latter incident and
the relatively insignificant number of students who did indeed pursue their
studies in Lahore should lead us to wonder about the actual influence of the
Anjuman in Albania. The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement exercised a direct
influence on three main circles: the leaders of Albanian Islam who, like Salih
Vuçitern, were part of the reformist current; all or some of the students
of the Medrese of Tirana, enthusiastic readers and translators of the literary
output of the Anjuman’s network; and lastly a few other Muslims, following
the example of the young Halil Repishti of Shkodra, who went off to study
in Lahore. We may also judge that it had an indirect influence on wider Muslim
circles, particularly among the readers of the Islamic Community’s publication.
Indeed, the use of texts from the Lahori Ahmadi corpus gave a very specific
profile to Albanian Islamic journals. As compared with the journal of the
Islamic Community of Yugoslavia, for example, Zani i naltë and Kultura
islame had a much more significant cultural dimension, allotting less
space to the religious sciences. Even so, one should not overestimate this
journalistic influence. The distribution of the Islamic Community’s journals
remained limited. In 1939, the number of subscribers to the journal Zani
i naltë amounted to a little over two hundred, and half of them lived
in the Albanian capital.[46]
In 1941 Kultura islame, run by a young duo consisting of Sadik Bega
and Sherif Putra, would have had 2,400 subscribers.[47] Proselytism of the Lahori Ahmadi variety, backed
up by written material, suited educated youth and intellectuals, but not the
masses, still very largely unlettered in Albania at this time and supervised
by a ‘clergy’ of a very poor standard.[48]
More fundamentally, if the
impact of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement remained limited, it is above all
because the reformist Muslim tendency using the Ahmadi ‘arsenal’ was, in fact,
very much a minority within the Albanian Muslim population and its élite.
At the time the journal Drita appeared, published by the three Albanian
students in Lahore, the publishers of Zani i naltë were announcing
“a new Islamic spirit”. But they foresaw that the publication was going to
be fought against on two fronts, by the ‘conservatives’ and by the ‘non-religious’,
since it was created for the nationalists who had understood that the progress
of the Albanian nation would only come about when the Muslim section of the
population had developed to an appropriate degree.[49] In fact, a significant section
of the Muslim élite, Bektashis and non-Bektashis, was more modernist than
reformist, in the sense that this term has in the history of Islam in the
19th–20th centuries, and had difficulty seeing how (Sunni)
Islam could be compatible with modernity, as we have seen.
But the reformist Muslim
tendency was also in conflict with conservative Muslim circles, including
a large section of the ulema and minor religious functionaries (imams, muezzins).
When Salih Vuçitern called for reform in 1927, reactions were not slow in
coming. The same thing happened when the regional medrese’s were suppressed
or when the abolition of wearing the veil was decreed in 1937. The most virulent
reactions came from Shkodra, the metropolis of northern Albania, bastion of
Muslim traditionalism.[50] Even so, it is likely that the reformist tendency
that monopolised the machinery of the Islamic Community was out of step not
only with the religious folk of Shkodra, but also with those of other parts
of the country. This opposition can be gauged by an announcement made by the
editors of Zani i naltë in 1933. According to them, the journal was
not the mouthpiece of the ulema, but of the Islamic Community, that is, the
organisation representing the Muslim sector of the population. They added
that there were no clergy in Islam and that the aim of the journal was not
to defend the hojas and form a parasitic clique living off the general public,
but to contribute to the nation’s cultural, social and economic development
according to the precepts of the Koran.[51]
Beyond this struggle for
legitimacy between reformists and traditionalist ulema, there could be the
problem of the Ahmadiyya Movement’s image in the Muslim world. Outside the
country, we have seen that it had been possible for the Albanian Muslims’
connections with the Anjuman to turn problematic. At Cairo, in 1935,
three students had been unable to continue their journey to Lahore. Four years
later, two others were expelled from al-Azhar and had to renounce their Ahmadi
beliefs. It should be noted that these incidents did not stop the Albanian
Islamic Community publishing another letter from the Anjuman in its
periodical publication in 1940. Yet this same publication, in 1936, had echoed
a reaction from the Albanian Muslim community itself. A reader was denouncing
the deviant views of Lahore’s young Albanian students, who, in their journal
Drita, had written that Joseph was the father of Jesus. And he concluded:
“this defamatory doctrine coming from the Islamic movement in Lahore has been
contradicted by all the competent scholars in the Muslim world. We want our
students to bring us culture and not a defamatory doctrine that is against
the Koran”.[52] Already in
1933, a doubt did exist in some minds since two young Muslims from Shkodra
appear to have taken the trouble to write to the Sheikh of al-Azhar to ask
him what view to take of the Ahmadiyya movement.[53] Should one also see in this critical approach
a reflection of the fact that the Albanian Islamic Community did not have
the translation of the Koran by Muhammad Ali translated into Albanian? Did
those ulema capable of carrying out such a translation refuse to make use
of this controversial text? The question remains open.[54]
The definitive obstacle seen
by the Albanian reformists to the propagation of Lahori Ahmadi Islam was the
imposition of the communist regime at the end of the Second World War. In
1945, the new authorities intercepted the last parcel of books sent by the
Anjuman to the young Ismail Muçej and advised, that is to say, enjoined
the latter — charged by the Indians with opening an agency in Albania — to
break off his correspondence with Lahore. Subsequently, Albanian Islam was
brought to heel, the country was practically closed off and, in 1967, all
forms of religion were forbidden there until 1991.
Yet Lahori Ahmadi influence
continued to make itself felt among some Albanian Muslims, not in Albania
itself, but in the United States. One of the main representatives of these
is Imam Vehbi Ismaili. The author of numerous translations of articles from
journals of the Lahori network when he was a student of the Medrese during
1936–1937, then a student at al-Azhar from 1938 onwards, Vehbi Ismaili (or
Vehbi Hoxha) is, indeed, behind numerous publications appearing in Albanian
from the 1950’s onwards on American soil, in which elements of Lahori Ahmadi
thought can be directly or indirectly detected.[55] And one could follow the continuing impact
of the Lahori missionary activity of the inter-war period down to our own
time, because, since the fall of communism in Albania, the publications of
Vehbi Ismaili have been distributed in the country. These include, for example,
the book ‘Islam and the Prayers’ (Islamizmi dhe lutjet), which the
author says he wrote under the particular inspiration of the books of Muhammad
Ali and Khwaja Kamaluddin.[56]
To return to the inter-war
period, Albanian-Indian contacts are far from having been marginal in the
transformations of Albanian Islam. They should be placed at the heart of a
process of political and religious reform driven from the top, whose promoters,
following the example of Salih Vuçitern, wanted to make Albania “a European
country and the most advanced Muslim state”.[57] One could see a paradox in the fact that this
reformist group looking for a western Islam turned towards the East. But that
would be to forget that, although Indian, the Anjuman was then at the
heart of Islam’s first phases of expansion in Western Europe.
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