Kosovo Touts 'Islam Lite'

Kastriot Sadiku has a confession: Like a good Muslim, he was near a mosque when Kosovo declared independence. But like a good Kosovar, he was just around the corner, sipping suds at his favorite pub.
"Our Islam is 'lite'—like Coke Lite or Marlboro Light cigarettes," said Ilmi Krasniqi, an imam at one of five mosques in the eastern town of Gnjilane. "This is not Baghdad, and what goes on in Saudi Arabia cannot happen here."
That is not to suggest that radical Islam has not impacted Kosovo's Muslim ethnic Albanians.
Last October, Agron Abdullahu—a 25-year-old Kosovo native living in the U.S.—pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to provide weapons to five other Muslims who allegedly plotted an attack on the U.S. Army's Fort Dix military base in New Jersey.
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Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, a Washington-based think tank, contends Kosovo will become a model of religious pluralism in Europe.
"Albanians, although Muslim in their majority, are fanatics only about their appreciation for America. Albanian Islam is moderate, and constitutes a bulwark against radicalization of European Muslims."