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THE Muslim Forum of Albania

Press Release

14 / 06 / 2005

The Muslim Forum of Albania gives the following clarifications, with regards to the press reporting on June 14th, 2005:

-          On June 14th, 2005, in the “Gazeta Shqiptare” newspaper’s piece on our organization entitled “Muslims, a parallel organization is born”, an insinuation is made that our organization, “Muslim Forum of Albania” was created in order to rival the Muslim Community of Albania. In this piece, it is also insinuated that the Muslim Forum of Albania was created after repeated efforts of trying to change law 2, point 6 of the statute of the Muslim Community

 With regards to what is stated above, the Muslim Forum of Albania declares the following:

1.      The application for the creation of the Muslim Forum of Albania was submitted in March of 2005, in the Tirana Circuit Court, quite some time before the meeting of the Muslim Community of Albania.

2.      The decision of the founding members for the creation of the Muslim Forum of Albania was made back in January 2005

3.      The founding members of the Albanian Muslim Forum are suni and bektashi Muslims, who by profession are engineers, economists, lawyers etc., and  have never been part of the Muslim Community of Albania and are not related in any way to this organization.

4. The Muslim Forum of Albania is a civil society organization, the intentions of which are:

a)  To welcome into its ranks Albanian Muslims (suni, bektashi or others) in order to fight racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia in Albania.

b)  The Muslim Forum of Albania does not intend to rival the Muslim Community of Albania, the Bektashi World Head Council or other Islamic organizations operating in Albania, in their proceedings and religious practices.

c)  The Muslim Forum of Albania is an organization which considers itself as part of the Civil Society, with its main aim as the protection of human and religious rights conforming to all international conventions of which the Republic of Albania is a member.

Regarding the declaration of Mr. Ilir Kulla, Head of the State Committee on Religious Cults, published in the “Gazeta Shqiptare” newspaper, we clarify the following:

a)   We are not a religious organization which falls under the jurisdiction of Mr. Kulla’s institution. We are a civic organization and as such we have no relationship to the Government or Mr. Kulla’s Office.

b)    We would like to remind Mr. Kulla that we, as a Non Governmental, Non Profit Organization, see his interference and attacks directed at our organization as illegal.

c)     We appeal to the Albanian Institutions to stop the unjust media attacks that Mr. Kulla is orchestrating against the civil society in this country and our organization

d)     We appeal to the Albanian media to carefully weigh the use of terms such as “the Albanian Muslims are divided” etc., as this does not correspond to the truth.