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THE MUSLIM FORUM OF ALBANIA Press Release 12/11/2005
A Public Response to the President of Albania
“If you dig just a little inside every Albanian, you will uncover his core”, which we cannot know how it would be. The Muslim Forum of Albania, Shkodra branch, declares before the media its indignation, caused by the presidential statement at the Oxford Forum entitled “Inter-religious tolerance in the tradition of the Albanian people”. We are deeply indignated by the fact that in this forum on tolerance, the president who presents not the wish of the people of Albania, but the consensus of the two major parties in our parliament, has appeared before us as an irreplaceable inquisitor when it comes to religious matters. Among others, he has declared (in order of serving his underlying agenda) that: “If you dig just a little inside every Albanian, you will uncover his Christian core” (“Korrieri” 12.11.2005). Our party-consensused president, while exposing his religious and political bias, in the worst way possible declared that: “… in every Albanian Muslim you will find 15 centuries of Christianity… and … it is not true that in our country there is a Muslim majority”! And “From the point of view of a religious timeline, Albanians are all Christian”. These statements lead us to believe that all sorts of politicians and presidents with medieval inquisitory mentality should have participated in the Oxford Forum and for our unelected president, given his old age, this is unacceptable. Such statements diminish this forum’s values. We wish these were only mistakes of the presidential advisors, but noting the presence of our president in every activity of the Greek Archbishop Janullatos in Albania, we believe that his anti-muslim statements may be true. Hence, we call on the president who does not represent the people of Albania, to administer better the competencies granted by law to a man in his position and to avoid being the cause of hate inciter in Albania. Our president might be just the way he seems to be, totally ignorant of the Albanian Muslims’ numbers and their spiritual status, even though they fill the streets and squares outside their religious institutions on every religious holiday. But in case he is not aware, we remind him that in our country around 2.5 million Muslim Albanians live out of a total of 3 million people. This should be enough, to straighten his thoughts and to make him retract the incorrect statements made in his speech. The Muslim Forum of Albania, Shkodra branch, considers the above mentioned statements as incorrect and inappropriate. Such statements that compromise the role of the president as a representative of the people’s conscience are surely out of place, especially since we are nearing the end of this president’s term in office.
The Muslim Forum of
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