Religious Radicalism in Kosovo has resulted from imam schooling in Arab countries

The import of the most extreme religious ideologies or currents in Kosovo, according to theologians who studied in these countries many years ago, has occurred because of the financing of scholarships by suspicious organisations.

They say funding from these organisations has forced many young Kosovars who have studied in these countries to pursue wrong ways and flee traditional Islam that has been in Kosovo.

The professor at the Faculty of Islamic Sciences in Pristina, Musa Vila, who conducted studies in the Medina of Arabia before the 1990s, told Radio Free Europe, that many of the donors who finance these scholarships belong to extreme currents.

It depends on who they're contacting, what society and what people. Even today, we have many people on the extreme line who condition their scholarship (the new children) to all of it. Unfortunately, most stock donors are in the extreme line”, says Vila.

The same is Imam Bekim Jashar of Podujevo, who has conducted studies in Jordan.

Imam, who for a long time has also been chairman of the Islamic Community Council in this municipality, tells Radio Free Europe that stock financing is the main cause of radicalisation of new imams who have been educated in the Islamic world.

The “findings prior to the recent Kosovo war, which we studied abroad, the overwhelming majority we studied in Arab countries, our funding was from the family. I'm only taking this element because there are others. In the post-war period, I don't know anybody's gone, there may be few cases that were financed by their families. But what does that matter? It's important because family funding gives you huge opportunities to build your independent personality”, says imam Jashar.

Professor Musa Vila, says that even at the time he was a student, there had been dark ways or more extreme access to Islam, but the same have not been embraced by students of the time.

And we've also been in Medina, we've seen these things, but we didn't want to get into those turbulent waters, and we knew it wasn't in our country's interest, but it's not in the general interest to carry on extreme ideas and ideas which don't match the traditional Islam that we have, but it doesn't match the circumstances or our Albanian tradition, Vila says.

Meanwhile, Podujevo chief Bekim Jashar told Radio Free Europe that Jordan stands out many of the other countries and other Islamic schools.

He says the university he studied has not been very focused on making a connoisseur of classical religion, but he wanted me to give him broader knowledge.

Until other Arab countries that had a completely different system, Jordan had this. The educational system and educational program at the University of Jordan and at the other university, I'm talking about it at the time, has not been inciting hatred, division, sectarianism, factions”, says Jashari.

After the last war, many new names conducted studies in various Arab countries. Some of these imams have also been arrested for encouraging young people to go to foreign wars in Syria and Iraq.

In these wars in Syria and Iraq, over 300 people from Kosovo have gone to war, supporting the militant group Islamic State. Over 70 Kosovars have been killed there, and many still remain in the Middle East.