Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama speaks on the United Nations Basic Meeting in the course of the Future Summit, Sept. 22, 2024, on the U.N. headquarters. | Picture credit score: AP
Albania plans to determine a sovereign Muslim microstate inside its borders run by a Sufi sect recognized for selling “non secular concord and dialogue,” Prime Minister Edi Rama introduced.
The tiny Vatican-like enclave inside Albania’s capital Tirana will function the political residence of Bektashi Muslims, Albania’s fourth-largest non secular group after Sunni Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Catholics.
The order was based within the thirteenth century within the Ottoman Empire and is taken into account a tolerant and mystical department of Islam open to different religions and philosophies.
A few of its most essential leaders moved to Albania after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of contemporary Turkey, banned them from Türkiye within the early twentieth century.
“Our inspiration is to assist the transformation of the Bektashi World Centre in Tirana right into a sovereign state, a brand new centre of moderation, tolerance and peaceable coexistence,” Rama stated Sunday on the United Nations in New York.
The Bektashi are estimated to make up 10% of the nation’s Muslim inhabitants, in accordance with Albania’s 2023 census.
The Bektashi Order of Tirana praised the choice.
“The sovereignty of the Bektashi Order is a vital step in strengthening the values of inclusion, non secular concord and dialogue in an more and more divided world,” he stated in a press release.
Citizenship of the brand new state of about 10 hectares (25 acres) can be restricted to members of the clergy and other people coping with state administration.
His authorities can be headed by the Bektashi chief and a council that will oversee its non secular and administrative functioning, the assertion added.
Printed – September 24, 2024 02:35 am IST
