Kosovo to address religious intolerance

Kosovo to address religious intolerance

The president seeks greater institutional co-operation to reduce religious hate speech and vandalism.

Kosovo authorities are trying to undermine a trend of religious intolerance that has affected religious harmony and also the work of the dominant Islamic Community (BIK), experts said.

Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga held a joint meeting in with the outgoing prime minister, Hashim Thaci, and the heads of government agencies. Jahjaga said all institutions need to co-ordinate their actions and vowed Kosovo will never become a shelter for those that promote such views.

"[The institutions] need to disable the activities, organisation and whatever radical and extremist activity threatens citizens," the office of the president told SETimes in a statement.

A 2014 US State Department report on the religious freedoms detailed a number of problems in Kosovo. "Observers noted an increase in openly anti-Semitic rhetoric and greater public attention to factions within the Islamic community that promoted less-tolerant views not congruent with the country's historically moderate and tolerant past," the report said.

Hate speech has spilled over from mosques into the social networks and the online media, Alma Lama, MP from the Democratic League of Kosovo, said.

"There is an increase in the identification with religion, more than with the nation," Lama told SETimes. Lama said the institutions need to particularly direct their efforts at the poor and uneducated, which remain primary targets of hate ideologues as means to attack Kosovo's religious harmony.

Experts said Kosovo needs to deal with the problems in the Islamic Community that recently included the ousting of...