
What Albania can teach us about trust - hwayern
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160909-what-can-albania-teach-us-about-trust
======
ardit33
Albanian here. What the article omits, or misses is that most refugees during
the Kosovo war were Albanians as well. Same language, same culture.

We had a large house and my parents hosted 7 people (two families), during
that time. One of the families were actually long/distant cousins.

Now, this is not the same as hosting Syrians refugees. I think very few
Albanian families are willing to host them in their own homes. Albania itself
is a very tolerant country (religious wise, as most people are not religious
themselves or are atheists), and we think of having a large amount of people
coming from arab countries as a regress in the freedom and quality of life.
They are a lot more conservative, and coming from a completely different
culture which will not be compatible with a tolerant one like Albania's.

I think few Albanians would want to put up with that. Very limited numbers
yes, massive 100k+ numbers, no way.

~~~
macns
_Albania itself is a very tolerant country (religious wise ... we think of
having a large amount of people coming from arab countries as a regress in the
freedom and quality of life. ... which will not be compatible with a tolerant
one like Albania 's._

An atheist or otherwise "religion tolerant" mentality implies compatibility
with anyone.

It looks like you're "tolerant" only with atheists or somewhat less religious
people. More importantly those people ran away from war risking their lives,
religion and culture is of no importance to them when looking for shelter and
food.

~~~
duaneb
> An atheist or otherwise "religion tolerant" mentality implies compatibility
> with anyone.

You're referring to ethical relativism. Do you really expect me to be chill
with female genital mutilation because I believe there is not a god? This
makes no sense.

> It looks like you're "tolerant" only with atheists or somewhat less
> religious people.

Tolerance always has boundaries, and one's beliefs are irrelevant to judging
others' actions. Are you really that surprised to find someone isn't literally
endlessly tolerant?

~~~
macns
I expect anyone to be compatible with war refugees, you paraphrased my words
by taking them out of the original context to that of gender discrimination.
Does it make sense to deny food or shelter to a family because of their
country or religion?

~~~
duaneb
If I took your phrase out of context, I apologize. I didn't see any context
that would add to the phrase and I most likely misunderstood.

Being an atheist implies a religious belief. It does not imply anything about
how you view or judge other people, especially not about how you view or judge
their actions.

I did not interpret the top-level commenter as saying that Albanians were not
compatible with the refugees because of their religion, I interpreted it to
mean that at the sheer volume of refugees coming through, tolerance will be
strained _in spite_ of a normally tolerant culture. In particular, I
interpreted that to be a _cultural_ issue. While culture includes religious
culture, there are many other aspects you may not be comfortable with (such as
female genital mutilation, which I provide as an obviously controversial, but
culturally grounded, example of western intolerance).

> Does it make sense to deny food or shelter to a family because of their
> country or religion?

Of course not, but I don't see that happening here, or even generally argued
for in this HN discussion. Xenophobia is a powerful force we're all familiar
with on some level, and reducing it to a matter of country or religion isn't
helping to understand the problems and fix them.

~~~
macns
Agreed on most things you said, but: _Being an atheist implies a religious
belief._

If I get this right, you're saying that's how religious people perceive
atheists; on terms of believing, they just don't. Which is wrong, e.g I as an
atheist refuse to _believe_ , I solely rely on facts and proof.

Back on topic: _Being an atheist implies a religious belief. It does not imply
anything about how you view or judge other people, especially not about how
you view or judge their actions._

Let's agree for a moment that it does not imply anything about how you view or
judge other people, but as I said in another comment it should be easier for
an atheist to _not_ judge a refugee by his religion; his mind is free of all
that.

------
Twirrim
I spent some time in Albania back maybe 15 years ago. It's an amazingly
beautiful country, especially as you get away from Tirana. The people were
open and welcoming, even in areas that are poor and desperate, whether that
had anything to do with being seen as a rich westerner or not, I've no idea.

We were warned about besa before we went there, from the perspective of "You
have to be _very_ careful what you say", for example if you're a guest and you
compliment the rug, there's a good chance they'll offer it to you and you'll
have to take it or cause offense. I really dislike coffee, but offering
"Albanian coffee" to guests (not too dissimilar to Turkish coffee) was a
staple part of the culture. So I dutifully practised schooling my expression
and drinking coffee, so that if the situation came up I could drink it without
grimacing and even be appropriately positive.

~~~
contingencies
A classic in those situations is "My doctor said I'm not able to ..." and then
drink water.

------
SRSposter
There is a pretty big difference between taking in the people of the same kin
and people from another culture far far away. How many Serbian Kosovars did
the Albanians give hospitality?

~~~
sologoub
This! Kosovo (and all of Balkan conflicts) are an ongoing tragedy, drawn
around ethnic and religious lines.

The article doesn't appear to clearly state that the refugees were largely
ethnic Albanians and of mostly Muslim faith, same as the host population.

That's very different from taking in large numbers of culturally dissimilar
refugees and successfully integrating them into your society.

~~~
tpllaha
Religion is one of those things that doesn't really play a role in Albania.
Granted, the majority of the population are officially muslim. However very
few are religious. This is probably the result of one of the toughest
communist regimes in Europe, which fought religion very aggressively, but also
because Albanians have been forced to change their religion by the Ottoman
empire, eventually reducing the extent to which people identified themselves
with a religious group and giving birth to the phrase "albanians' religion is
albanianism".

While it is true that most refugees that were hosted during the Kosovo war
were ethnic albanians, and that nationalism is still present (expressed mostly
as a disliking of neighbouring countries), the article does mention the case
of jewish immigrants during WW2, who came from a quite different culture and
religion.

Hospitality in Albania is one of those few older values that is still
obviously present. As I already mentioned, nationalism still exists, but that
is a whole different discussion.

~~~
sologoub
But did they equally take in Serbs with the same hospitality?

I'm sure a handful of examples can be found, but I doubt it's quite as open as
the article makes it sound.

As for religion, whether we want it or not, religion of our ancestors has a
strong influence on our secular customs and norms. In this case, while being a
practicing Muslim was not a requirement, shared identity and religious past
definitely helped.

Regarding shielding Jewish refugees in WW2, most countries have examples of
heroism, as well as atrocities by the local polulations.

~~~
tpllaha
I don't think they took in serbs (maybe a few, but definitely no number that
is comparable to the kosovo albanians). I don't even know if any serb would
seek shelter in Albania. I agree, the noble thing to do would have been for
people from both countries to try and feel some empathy for each-other. But I
think a better question to ask would be whether albanians from northern Kosovo
protected serbs who lived there from ethnic albanian nationalists (which I do
not know). Albania doesn't share a border with Serbia.

Regarding jewish immingrants in WW2, I don't think there are reports of any
attrocities in Albania. The number of Jews before the war was 200. After the
war it was 2000.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Alban...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Albania#World_War_II)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Albania](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Albania)

Anyways, the article probably does make it sound a bit bigger than it is, and
even somewhat emotional. I just think that it must speak at least some truth
regarding hospitality as a value among the population.

~~~
sologoub
From the wikipedia article linked above:

"In 1944, an Albanian Waffen-SS division was formed, which arrested and handed
over to the Germans a further 281 Jews from Kosovo who were subsequently
deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where many were killed."

WW2 was a deplorable part of Europe's history and I honestly don't think there
is a place not mired in some kind of tragedy from that period...

~~~
tpllaha
If you read the paragraph before that sentence, you'll se that this part
refers to Kosovo albanians (so in Kosovo, not Albania). Though the culture and
heritage between the two countries is similar, there are actually no cases of
Jews that were given up in Albania, a fact which I find interesting, because
no other country in Europe has such clear statistics. The way most people
helped Jews in Albania was by not only offering them a home, but also giving
them albanian names and teaching them albanian customs and the language, so
they would blend in . Additionally, there have also been many reports of
locals sending anonymous threatening letters to officials who were looking for
the refugees.

------
aleyan
> Hundreds of Iranian refugees are currently residing within the country,
> having been displaced from their war-torn homes.

I find this sentence weird for 2 reasons. Firstly "hundreds" is multiple
orders of magnitude fewer than the number of refugees in Europe now or the
number of ethnic and religious kin taken in by Albania in the 90s. Secondly,
what Iranians are being displaced from their "war-torn homes"? There is no war
in Iran. For me this calls the rest of the article into question.

What can BBC teach us about trust?

~~~
smnrchrds
Yeah. The last war in Iran was with Saddam and ended in 1988. Although Iran
has a military presence in Syria and an uneasy relationship with many of the
countries in the region, there has not been any fights within Iranian borders
since the Iran-Iraq war ended [1].

Maybe the author was thinking about Iraq.

[1] Well, there is the war on drugs and some separatist movements, but nothing
enough to warrant calling any region war-torn.

------
bobthechef
Either the author of this article is extraordinarily mendacious or
horrifically uneducated (neither would surprise me given the shape of
journalism and the media, nor are these two mutually exclusive). First of all,
Kosovars _are_ Albanians. Many people in Albania have/had family in Kosovo.
The comparison with the migrant crisis is completely off base. Furthermore,
the majority of Albanians are Muslims. This would make them culturally closer
to migrants. However, as we know, most migrants aren't interested in settling
in poor countries. Second, many migrants (per statistics) are not refugees
from Syria. Many are merely taking advantage of the cluster fuck that is EU
policy and exploiting the Syrian refugee crises to get into Europe. The
Kosovars were exclusively refugees. Third, Jews were also killed by Albanian
collaborationist forces, but the Jewish population was negligible in Albania
before the war (between 24-300). In other words, they were largely unfamiliar
with Jews, making antisemitism difficult. After the war, when communist leader
Hoxha came to power, religious oppression caused many Jews to leave and move
to Israel. Worth noting is that Kosovar Albanians were not as kind to Slavs,
Jews, and Gypsies as Albanians in Albania, declaring jihad against them. All
in all, somewhere around 600 Jews were killed in "Greater Albania". Give
credit where credit is due, but let's not exaggerate. (Look at Poland for
comparison: largest population of Jews in the world before WWII, no
collaboration with Germans in general populace and certainly not at the
official or state level, largest number of recognitions among Righteous among
Nations, only country occupying Germans made harboring or aiding Jews
punishable by death for entire household, etc, etc).

So perhaps the author shouldn't use Albania as some kind of fabled Shangri-La
for shaming everyone else. The false comparisons and false characterizations
are really in poor taste. If the author is so hospitable and open, then why
doesn't he open his house to some migrants? This isn't a joke. Perhaps a
posturing member of the white upper middle class divorced from the
consequences of his politics has the luxury of moralizing irresponsibly, but
for anyone with a clue, this migrant crisis was a complex and disastrous
failure in EU policy and governance. Warm feelings about some simplistic straw
man refugee won't fly.

------
cossatot
Does anyone know how much 'besa' is related to (or derived from) the Islamic
tradition of warm hospitality towards travelers?

~~~
gkya
That's cultural rather than religious. Probably the religion's tradition
derives from the customs of the near east and eastern mediterranian.

~~~
acdha
“That's cultural rather than religious” is a rather sweeping claim to simply
assert without support. The interplay between religions and culture is
incredibly complex and deserves more than a facile dismissal.

~~~
gkya
I've made no dismissal, just a comment. The interplay between religions and
culture is that the religions don't come from gods, but they are formed in the
cultures within which they emerge. They are not a collection of some madman's
dreams and aphorisms, but a fruit of their communities, they are
doctrinizations of the customs and beliefs that form their culture.
Christianity and islam are the only examples of truly international and
intercultural religions, up until christianity every people had their
religion. But even then, christianity and islam are not monolithic things,
every culture they touched formed their own subreligions. The islam of an
aegean anatolian is different from the islam of a yemenite arab, the
christianity of an armenian is dissimilar to that of an irlandese. Culture
forms religion, and if albanians weren't already inclined to be welcoming and
guest-loving, their religion (i.e. their version of islam) would reflect that.
We look at islam and christianity as if they were big monolithic things, but
every people live them their way.

------
jkot
> _Hundreds of Iranian refugees are currently residing within the country_

It is not very good example. Greece took 600K refugees, Hungary similar
numbers, etc...

Problem is that those countries do not offer any social benefits. Refugee
needs at least 600 euro/month to feel welcomed. Albania is actually very
unfriendly towards refugees.

~~~
coldtea
> _Refugee needs at least 600 euro /month to feel welcomed._

There are tons of locals (in Greece and Hungary and Albania that would be like
20-30%) that make less than that. Like full 8-hour jobs for €400/month...

~~~
V-2
20-30%? Lucky Hungarians (although I believe your numbers are off). Median net
salary in Poland is about 415 euro. More than half the population doesn't feel
"welcomed" by these standards...

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, was mostly extrapolating from Greece -- and only including employed
people too. For Greece I should factor in that 60% of young people and 25%+ of
general working population are unemployed, so they make 0 euros (if they're
lucky, they get some welfare money for a year or so).

~~~
tdkl
And the EU officials wonder why they aren't happy about thousands more mouths
to be fed paid by taxpayers, spreading BS about racism.

It's not racism, it's economy.

~~~
coldtea
Yes, but economy is a dirty word these days when it comes to the people's
economic needs and demands.

It's all about what big corporations, banks etc need.

------
f_allwein
Doesn't open for UK readers: "We're sorry but this site is not accessible from
the UK as it is part of our international service" yadda yadda. Pity.

~~~
pmontra
Hopefully this works
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ItGP5H...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ItGP5Hl34sJ:http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160909-what-
can-albania-teach-us-about-
trust%2BWhat+can+Albania+teach+us+about+trust?&gbv=1&hl=it&ct=clnk)

~~~
f_allwein
works indeed - thanks.

