The Albanians - ferociously suppressed by the
Serbs and (justly) succoured by the West - are industrious and
shrewd people. But - fervent protestations to the contrary aside -
they do seem to be intent on dismantling and recombining both
Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Macedonia, perhaps at a terrible cost to all
involved. Together with the Turks, the Serbs and the Bulgarians, the
Albanians are the undisputed crime lords of the Balkan (and beyond -
witness their incarceration rates in Switzerland).
This is the Balkan - a florilegium of contradictions within
contraventions, the mawkish and the jaded, the charitable and the
deleterious, the feckless and the bumptious, evanescent and exotic,
a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
In this article, I will attempt to study two axes of friction: Islam
versus Christianity and fascism and nationalism versus liberalism.
It is hard to do justice to these topics in the Procrustean bed of
weekly columns - I, therefore, beg the forgiveness of scholars and
the understanding of frustrated readers.
A First Encounter
"In accordance with this [right to act], whenever some one of the
infidel parents or some other should oppose the giving up of his son
for the Janiccaries, he is immediately hanged from his doorsill, his
blood being deemed unworthy.
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