Absence of religious class hierarchy made religion non-defining for Albanian nationhood

Evidence

There were some exceptions to the general rule of religiously based nationhood in the Balkans. The Albanians are the only major example of a Balkan nation for whom religion is not the determining factor. The most likely explanation is that Albanian nationalism originated with the Catholic population among Albanian speakers. And the Catholics were not legally and economically subordinate to Muslim landlords in the way that Orthodox peasants throughout the Balkans were subordinate to Muslim landlords. So there was not the same degree of class oppression tied into the religious divide between Catholics and Muslims among Albanian speakers as there was between Orthodox and Muslims among the Slavic-, Greekand Turkish-speaking peoples. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1049

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the class-based analysis of religious discrimination in the earlier chapters on this book’s treatment of how religious divides tracked economic subordination.