Prime Minister Edi Rama says he wants to give members of the Bektashi, a Shiite Sufi order, their own Vatican-style enclave as a way of promoting religious tolerance.
By Andrew Higgins
Reporting from Tirana and Kruje, Albania
Sept. 21, 2024
The Muslim cleric preparing to lead what, if everything goes as planned, will become the world’s smallest state, has laid-back plans for the tiny new country.
His hoped-for Muslim state in Tirana, Albania’s capital, will be a Vatican-style sovereign enclave controlling territory about the size of five New York City blocks, and it will allow alcohol, let women wear what they want and impose no lifestyle rules.
“God does not forbid anything; that is why he gave us minds,” said the cleric, Edmond Brahimaj, known to followers as Baba Mondi, explaining how he intends to rule over a 27-acre patch of land that Albania wants to turn into a sovereign state with its own administration, passports and borders. The Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, says he will announce plans for the entity, to be called the Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order, in the near future.
The map locates the Albanian capital of Tirana, and Kruje, a city north of Tirana. By The New York Times
“All decisions will be made with love and kindness,” said Baba Mondi, 65, a former Albanian Army officer who is revered by millions around the world by his official title, His Holiness Haji Dede Baba. He is the paramount leader of the Bektashi, a Shiite Sufi order founded in the 13th century in Turkey but now based in Albania.
Edmond Brahimaj, known to followers as Baba Mondi, center, meeting with workers to discuss the museum on the grounds of the Bektashi compound.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
The sovereign enclave of the Bektashi order would be the size of about five New York City blocks. Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
In an interview, Mr. Rama, the prime minister, said the aim of the new state was to promote a tolerant version of Islam on which Albania prides itself. “We should take care of this treasure, which is religious tolerance and which we should never take for granted,” he said.
An avowedly moderate Islamic microstate, the prime minister said, would send a message: “Do not let the stigma of Muslims define who Muslims are.”
The territory of the proposed new Islamic state is a compound in a low-rent residential district of eastern Tirana. It is just a quarter of the size of Vatican City, currently the world’s smallest country, governed by the pope, an absolute monarch.
Baba Mondi said that “size doesn’t matter,” adding, “I don’t need to be a dictator,” though he conceded that the only significant constraint on his authority will be God. After toasting visitors with raki, a fiery drink distilled from grapes, he noted that he made no claim to infallibility.
“Only God,” he said, “doesn’t make mistakes “.
A view of the compound and the surrounding area. The Bektashi state would be just a quarter of the size of Vatican City, currently the world’s smallest country.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
The territory of the proposed new Islamic state is in a low-rent residential district of Tirana. Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
The Bektashi domain features a domed meeting and prayer hall, a museum showcasing the order’s history, a clinic, an archive and the administrative offices of Baba Mondi, a cheery man with a white beard and waspish disdain for rigid dogma. Muslim extremists who set off bombs and use violence to spread their version of the faith, he said, “are just cowboys.”
Combining a loose interpretation of the Quran with mysticism, elements of Turkey’s pre-Islamic faiths and devotion to their deceased wise men, known as dervishes, the Bektashis moved their headquarters to Tirana from Turkey nearly a century ago after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic, shut down their operations.
Viewed as heretics by many conservative Shiites and Sunnis, and subjected to centuries of persecution in Muslim lands, the Bektashis have been a force in Albania and neighboring countries such as Kosovo and Macedonia since the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of the Balkans in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Members of the sect played a prominent role in Albania’s nationalist awakening against Turkish rule, promoting a relaxed version of Islam that helped rally the country’s large Muslim and Christian communities behind the secular cause of independence.
Though one of Europe’s poorest countries, Albania has a long history of helping people in need, sheltering Jews during World War II and Afghans fleeing the Taliban in 2021. Its international airport is named after Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian nun who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her charity work in India.
In downtown Tirana. Members of the Bektashi sect played a prominent role in Albania’s nationalist awakening against Turkish rule.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Tourists in Tirana. There is a widespread view of the Bektashi sect, even among some Christians, as Albania’s national religion.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
A team of legal experts, including international lawyers, is drafting legislation defining the new state’s sovereign status inside Albania. That will need to be endorsed by Parliament, controlled by Mr. Rama’s governing Socialist Party. It is unclear which, if any, countries will agree to recognize the Bektashis’ sovereignty.
So far, Mr. Rama, a nonpracticing Roman Catholic, said, only a few of his closest aides know about the plan and NATO allies like the United States have not been consulted.
One country that is highly unlikely to recognize it is Iran, which has many mostly underground followers of Sufi Islam, including some Bektashis, but views itself as the guardian of Shiite Islam against heterodox readings of the faith.
Prime Minster Edi Rama of Albania. He said that an avowedly moderate Islamic microstate would send a strong message.
Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
“The Iranians are frankly my last thought,” Mr. Rama said, noting that Albania broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 2022 after linking it to a cyberattack on Albanian government and banking networks.
Baba Mondi has long campaigned against extremism. After Islamist militants killed 12 people in a 2015 attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the Bektashi leader traveled to Paris along with Mr. Rama, the prime minister, to join a march against terrorism.
He said the new Bektashi state might need a small intelligence service “because we have enemies too” but won’t have an army, border guards or courts. Details such as who will be eligible for passports still have to be worked out, he added, but the passport color has been decided: green, an important color in Islam. Albania allows dual nationality.
Committed to soothing rather than stoking tensions, the new state has already sworn off the curse of many nations — that of territorial ambition. Baba Mondi vowed not to make any attempt to expand his territory by grabbing back land his order once held in the Albanian capital.
Baba Mondi addressing visitors at the Historical Museum of the Bektashi in Tirana. Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Baba Mondi, in a white robe, attending a funeral this month.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
The Tirana compound, which originally covered nearly 90 acres, has shrunk by two-thirds since Albania’s former communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, outlawed all religion in 1967 and his government began building warehouses on Bektashi territory in the capital. After the collapse of communism in 1991, the Bektashis lost yet more land when private developers built homes on the edge of the compound without permission.
Mr. Rama said the borders of the proposed Bektashi state would be defined by what the sect has: “What was seized is not part of that,” he said. Squabbles over property ownership, he said, would only undermine the state’s purpose as a “model of coexistence.”
“This is not a property issue but a spiritual issue,” he said.
Baba Mondi, for his part, declared the statehood plan “a miracle” and expressed hope that the United States and other Western powers would recognize his state’s sovereignty if Parliament endorses the prime minister’s plan.
“We deserve a state,” he said, “We are the only ones in the world who tell the truth about Islam” and “don’t mix it up with politics.”
How many Bektashi believers there are in the world is unclear, and even their number in Albania is subject to wildly different estimates, ranging from just a few percent of the country’s population of less than three million to many times that.
Baba Mondi said that around half the total population was Bektashi, the rest being Sunnis, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and evangelical Christians. That is almost certainly an exaggeration, but it reflected a widespread view of the sect, even among some Christians, as Albania’s national religion.
In Kruje, a town north of the capital that is the site of a castle used in the 15th century by Skanderbeg, Albania’s national hero, Ismet Kaciu, a retired Bektashi teacher, said that he had not heard of Mr. Rama’s plans to give his sect Vatican-style sovereignty over the Tirana site.
Kruje, a town north of Tirana that is the site of a castle used in the 15th century by Skanderbeg, Albania’s national hero.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Candles at a Bektashi shrine in Kruje.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
But, he said during a visit to a Bektashi shrine near Skanderbeg’s castle, he would be overjoyed if that happened. It would, he said, help to keep younger Albanians, including his own four children, who work in Italy, from drifting away from their faith and their country.
Nuri Ceni, a 79-year-old Bektashi historian, hailed the offer of statehood as “a hugely important gift” that would not only strengthen tolerant Islam inside Albania but also help spread “our message of peaceful coexistence regardless of religion or race.”
“We are against all the forms of extremism that are today so dangerous,” he added
Mr. Rama acknowledged that creating a sovereign Islamic state in Tirana would take time. “Maybe everyone will say: ‘This guy is crazy,’” he said. But, he added: “They have said that many times before. I don’t care. The important thing, crazy or not, is to fight for good.”
Baba Mondi in Tirana. “We deserve a state,” he said, “We are the only ones in the world who tell the truth about Islam” and “don’t mix it up with politics.”Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Andrew Higgins is the East and Central Europe bureau chief for The Times based in Warsaw. He covers a region that stretches from the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Kosovo, Serbia and other parts of former Yugoslavia.