The Role of Religious Institutions and Their Leadership.

 

The role of religious institutions has been one of the most important and influential in cultivating and keeping the interreligious coexistence in Albania. There is high respect and a credibility shown by society to religious institutions and their leadership. During a speech in 1995, the leader of MCA was declaring, “somebody was asking me how many Muslims live in Albania? In addition, my answer was: It does not matter. We are not going to fight with each other”. This situation is more critical of all the messages delivered by religious institutions. By analyzing the preaches, sermons, and other activities, you can easily find too many examples of when they have been promoting common values and mutual respect. The language used by all religious leaders and other representatives, predominantly, has been that of love and tolerance. The impact of religious communities on society can be considered to be at a high level and, in many cases, they have been very active in finding solutions to various problems in society. There is also another assumption regarding the influence of the religious representatives in Albanian society saying that they are not so credible — but one thing for certain is that if any religious group or community, even if it is small, causes a very turmoil situation, they behave contrary to the social peace principles. The main reason for this interreligious coexistence in Albania can be encountered to be the moderate teaching approach of the religions followed by their respective representative institutions. So, it is very important to have religious communities, their leaders, and representatives preach their religion by promoting, first and foremost, love and mutual respect, and especially working to keep their communities away from harmful behaviors and violence. Although Albania has historically been considered a good environment, interreligious relationships should not be taken for granted. For these reasons, with the encouragement of the respective religious institutions, the three theological schools of higher education —which are supposed to prepare the future needed religious human resources— are organizing together in a continuous manner joint program, conferences, symposium, workshops, etc., to get to know each other better and to prevent any potential misunderstandings that might spoil the respectful and lovely atmosphere of society.