A Catholic priest stood at the altar of a hilltop church for a mass baptism, immersing dozens of heads in water and tracing a cross with his finger on each forehead.
He then rejoiced in the Christian recovery of souls in a country where the majority of people were Muslims – as were the men, women and children who stood before him.
The festival was one of many in recent months in Kosovo, a former Serbian territory inhabited by mostly Albanians who declared independence in 2008. In last spring’s census, 93 percent of the population said they were Muslim and only 1.75 percent Roman Catholic. .
A number of Albanian Christian activists, all converts to Islam, are urging their ethnic relatives to look to the church as a way to express their identity. They call it a “move back,” a push to revive the pre-Islamic era they see as an anchor for Kosovo’s place in Europe and a barrier to religious extremism spilling over into the Middle East.
Until the Ottoman Empire conquered what is now Kosovo and other parts of the Balkans in the 14th century, along with Islam, Albanians were primarily Catholic. Under Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1912, the majority of Kosovo’s population changed religions.
By reversing that process, said Father Fran Kolaj, a priest who was baptizing people outside the village of Llapushnik, Albanians could once again know who they were.
Albanians, descended from ancient people called Illyrians, live mainly in Albania, a country on the Adriatic Sea. But they also make up the majority of the population of neighboring Kosovo and a quarter of the population of North Macedonia.
In the church where the baptism was held, symbols of nationalism and religious symbols collide. The Albanian double-headed eagle symbol adorns the tower and the veil behind the altar.
“It is time for us to return to our place – with Christ,” Father Kolaj said in an interview.
In many Muslim countries, renouncing Islam can bring severe punishment, sometimes even death. So far, the baptism ceremonies performed in Kosovo have not caused violent opposition, although there have been angry criticisms on the Internet. (It is not known how many changes have occurred so far.)
But historians, who admit that Christianity existed in Kosovo long before the Ottoman Empire brought Islam, question the thinking of this organization.
“From a historical point of view what they say is true,” said Durim Abdullahu, a historian at the University of Pristina. But, he added, “their common sense means that we must all be pagans” because the people who lived in the area of present-day Kosovo before the arrival of Christianity and later Islam did not believe.
Like many other Kosovars, Mr Abdullahu said he believed that Serbia, with its large Orthodox population, helped block the return as a way to sow discord in Kosovo. Although Serbia has long been accused of undermining Kosovo’s stability, there is no evidence that it was advocating for change.
Archaeologists in 2022 found the remains of a sixth-century Roman church near Pristina, and in 2023 they found a carving that showed that the ancient Albanians, or at least people they might be related to, were Christians.
However, Christophe Goddard, a French archaeologist working in the area, said that it is wrong to impose modern ideas of nationalism and ethnicity on ancient people. “This is not history but modern politics,” he said.
Traces of Kosovo’s pre-Islamic past also survived in a small number of families who clung to Catholicism despite the risk of being ostracized by their Muslim neighbors.
Marin Sopi, 67, a retired Albanian language teacher who was baptized 16 years ago, said his family had been “Catholic” for generations. As a child, he recalled, he and his family observed Ramadan with Muslim friends but secretly celebrated Christmas at home.
“We were Muslims during the day and Christians at night,” he said. Since coming out as a Christian, he said, 36 members of his family have officially left Islam.
Islam and Christianity in Kosovo lived in peace – until Orthodox militias and paramilitary Serbian nationalist groups began burning mosques and evicting Muslims from homes in the 1990s.
Christian missionaries from other countries have distanced themselves from the campaign to convert the people of Kosovo. But some Albanians living in Western Europe have offered support, seeing a return to Catholicism as Kosovo’s best hope to one day join the European Union, a major Christian club.
Arber Gashi, an Albanian born in Switzerland, went to Kosovo to attend a baptism ceremony at a church in Llapushnik, which overlooks the site of a major war in 1998 between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
He and other activists worry that funding for mosques and other projects from Turkey and Middle Eastern countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with their conservative ways, threatens Kosovo’s traditionally backward approach. Most of this money went into non-religious economic development programs.
Pristina’s center has a statue in honor of Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun and Nobel Peace Prize laureate of Albanian descent, and is dominated by a large Roman Catholic church built after the war with Serbia. But Turkey is currently financing the construction next to a new grand mosque that will be even bigger.
Mr. Gashi also said he feared the return of Islamic extremism that emerged in Kosovo’s tumultuous first decade of independence. According to some statistics, Kosovo has provided more recruits to the Islamic State in Syria than any other European country.
On the other hand, Christianity will pave the way to Europe, he said.
The crackdown by the authorities in recent years has silenced extremism and strengthened Kosovo’s free will in the fight against Islam. The streets of Pristina are full of bars that serve a variety of alcohol. Featured women are very rare.
Gezim Gjin Hajrullahu, 57, a teacher who was among those recently baptized in Llapushnik, said he had joined the Catholic church “not because of the religion itself” but “because of who we are” as Albanians. His wife also repented.
The prime minister of Albania, Albin Kurti, in an interview in Pristina, downplayed the importance of religion for the Albanian people. “For us, religions came and went but we are still here,” he said. For Albanians, when it comes to who they are, religion was not important at all.”
That sets them apart from other people in the vanished, multi-ethnic nation of Yugoslavia, which was torn apart during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s. The main warring parties in the early stages of the conflict spoke the same language and looked the same but were clearly divided from each other by religion – Serbs by Orthodox Christianity, Croats by Roman Catholicism and Bosniaks by Islam.
Activists of the return movement believe that Albanians also need to strengthen their nationality in the Roman Catholic religion.
Boik Breca, a former Muslim who was active in the movement, emphasized that the Catholic church is not an influx of immigrants but a true expression of Albanian identity and proof that Kosovo belongs to Europe.
He said his interest in Christianity began when Kosovo, along with Serbia, was still part of Yugoslavia. He was imprisoned on the Croatian coast as a political prisoner. He remembered that many of his fellow prisoners were Catholics, and they helped awaken what he now sees as his true faith and the belief that “our ancestors were all Catholics.”
He said: “To be a real Albanian you must be a Christian.”
This idea is strongly opposed, including by Mr. Kurti, the prime minister.
“I don’t buy that,” he said.
The current crackdown against Islam began with a meeting in October 2023 in Decani, a bastion of nationalist sentiment near the border of Kosovo and Albania. The meeting, attended by national intellectuals and former fighters of the Kosovo War of Independence, discussed ways to develop “Albanian nationalism” and decided that Christianity would help.
“We are not Muslims like today,” said those present, adopting the slogan: “We must be only Albanians.”
This meeting led to the formation of what was originally called the Movement for the Abandonment of the Islamic Faith, an evocative name that has since largely been lost in favor of the “Movement of Return.”
From his office in Pristina, decorated in the model of Mecca, Kosovo’s grand mufti, Naim Ternava, watched the movement return with concern and dismay. He said the intention for Muslims to convert to Christianity, risks disrupting religious harmony and was being used by “foreign agents to spread hatred against Islam.”
“Our job,” he added, “is to keep people in our religion.” I tell people to stay in Islam.”
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