Wednesday, December 24th 2025
In the recent televised debates on Islam, more than panels, we have seen laboratories of refined prejudice, where journalists equipped with Europianist rhetoric, but poor in religious, legal and sociological knowledge, produce moral panic dressed as analysis.
The last interview was not a public debate; it was a performance of state insecurity looking for symbolic culprits. And the invited imam, unfortunately, found himself in the role of an unwilling witness, who not only had to face the questions I found offensive, but also the dangerous presuppositions hidden under them.
The journalist’s biggest philosophical error was his camouflaged, yet obvious claim that he had the authority to tell how Muslim children should be brought up: a serious violation of parental autonomy, which political philosophy considers the foundation of private freedom. According to John Stuart Mill, the state and the public cannot interfere in the internal sphere of moral education of the family without violating individual freedom. According to Durkheim, the family is the first institution of socialization, and any intervention in it requires a legitimacy that journalism never has. The claim that a parent is “indoctrinating” simply because he takes his child to the mosque is sociologically absurd, philosophically illegitimate and politically authoritarian.
In this minefield, the journalist started the interview with an apparently cordial tone, to gradually move into heavy and structured insinuations. He sought to assure the public that he was asking questions “on behalf of society”, but in fact, he was using what Michel Foucault calls “disciplinary discourse”: a way to place himself in the position of moral arbiter and the other in the position of defense.
Instead of analyzing reality, the journalist built the narrative that national security problems stem from mosques, as if cult objects were paramilitary structures, and not spaces of spirit and prayer. This type of reasoning is sociologically lame, based on the phenomenon of “moral panic”, a well-documented theory by Stanley Cohen that shows that societies often create “moral devils” to maintain the illusion of stability.
In this atmosphere of symbolic tension, the invited imam seemed tired of trying to keep calm. He was not there to argue as a philosopher or jurist, but to survive as a public figure. Therefore, instead of taking a clear stand to restore the boundaries of respect, he chose to avoid conflict, hoping that peace would be interpreted as wisdom. But wisdom is not imposed calmness. Wisdom, as Islamic ethics understands it, is mature courage. She does not choose silence, but the right word.
His frustration was seen in the way he tried to give every question a conciliatory answer, as if the public’s tranquility was his personal responsibility. In a climactic moment, he even said: “I am from Kavaja Street”, letting the moderator understand that he does not know what happens in other mosques.
But this sentence reveals to us a much deeper sociological dimension: the pressure of a public stigma that has been gestating for years, especially after the “literary-political” rhetoric, where the “Imam of Kavaja Street” was mythologized as a figure of darkness by a writer who, in the name of fame and personal gain, he gives value to his rampant metaphor, declaring it not only art, but “the best of all” – as if any public stigmatization was a competition for aesthetic excellence.
This phenomenon is called “labeling internalization”: when a person begins to accept the other’s frame for himself, and this is one of the most dangerous forms of symbolic violence. How painful.
The invited Hoxha, unfortunately, found himself in the role of a man who seeks to save his face, not the dignity of the community he represents. Instead of articulating the basic principle that: Azan is a religious act, not a noise. And it is not negotiated, because religious freedom is not negotiated, he issued a promise that fell like a slap in the face of institutional self-confidence: “I will talk to the mufti, we will solve it.”
Why should a constitutional right be “solved”?
How can it be calmly written that the call to prayer is “problematic” when the same city is buzzing day and night from bars, concerts and party gatherings?
The promise Hoxha’s was dangerous. Not because it is untrue—but because it is out of place in the moral nature of the clergy. Hoxha is not called upon to negotiate the identity of believers for the convenience of a journalist, neither his own nor anyone else’s urbanistic tastes. He is called to defend the principle. And at this point, it failed.
This interview clearly showed that secularism in Albania is often interpreted as a request for religion to be silent. But secularism has never been, in any modern theory, an imposition of neutrality on the citizen; only on the state. Rawls makes it clear that the state must be neutral, not individuals.
Taylor explains that pluralism requires the visible coexistence of differences, not their disappearance. Habermas emphasizes that religion is a legitimate actor in the public space. In the modern theory of pluralism (Habermas, Taylor, Rawls), religion is: a contributor to the formation of public space, not an obstacle to be neutralized. The dimension of religious freedom is not negotiable. It is an obligation of the state. And everyone is united in one voice conceptually: religion is not an urban deviance, but a healthy component of civic life. Therefore, calling the call to prayer “acoustic noise” is a philosophically primitive, sociologically inaccurate and politically discriminatory act.
By treating the call to prayer as a problem, while other urban noises – bar music, electoral campaigns, rallies – are treated as “city life”, the media is producing a double standard. This standard is a violation of the moral equality of citizens, which according to modern political philosophy is the foundation of the pluralistic state. A society that tolerates any noise, but not the call of religion, is not a secular society; it is a society allergic to the presence of God in the public space. And politically, in a pluralistic state: religion is not a folklore appendage, but a legal category, and the constitution of this state does not treat religion as an “aesthetic issue”, but as a fundamental human right. Which means:
Believers should not be invisible,
Cult objects are not “landscape blight”,
Religious practices are not “urban nuisances”,
The call to prayer is part of the public expression of religion.
To illustrate the absurdity: imagine if we asked the Autocephalous Church to ban hourly bells, or pastors to prevent children from attending their gatherings – would seem unbelievable and unacceptable. Thus, any negotiation on the call to prayer is outside the moral and religious legality.
Repeated attacks on Islam are a sign of a democratic regression
Whenever Albania goes through a political, economic or cultural crisis, instead of analyzing the real causes, the public turns to easy targets:
This phenomenon is called “scapegoating”, and it is a socio-political mechanism of insecure societies.
And the fact that it repeats time and time again time shows that: Albanian democracy has not yet acquired the culture of religious pluralism. We have not yet normalized the idea that citizenship and faith can coexist without conflict. And imagine that a journalist does this: in the name of national security, he attacks the dignity and identity of half the nation.
When the journalist dared to speak as an educator of Muslim children, his intervention went from opinion to moral paternalism. By trying to tell the imam how to educate a child, he positioned himself as an authority over the parent’s conscience, which political philosophy considers a dangerous form of moral authoritarianism. There is no democratic theory that gives a journalist the right to dictate the educational norms of an entire community. This is his gravest error: to pretend to be the arbiter of the education of the children of believers is to violate the sacred boundary of family freedom.
In this climate, the imam’s promise that “I will talk to the mufti, we will sort it out” was not just a public communication error; it was the result of a pressure that seeks to square the religious right to appease the “conscience” of a moderator. But religious rights are not decided, not negotiated, not balanced according to the nerves of a television panel. They are immutable democratic guarantees. In any functioning democracy, no one dares to tell a believer that his religion is an urban planning problem. This is precisely the reason why this event is a symptom of a much greater democratic deficit than a televised debate.
The political appeal is clear: The presence of religion in the public space is not a provocation and the believer is not a figure that should apologize for existing.
It is time for Albanian politics to intervene with conceptual clarity and institutional integrity:
Religion is not a decoration and religious freedom is not an issue. aesthetic.
The call to prayer is not acoustic pollution, it is not noise.
The believer is not a decorative object of democracy.
Dignity is not a negotiation, and Islam is not a marginalized segment of society. He is an integral part of the Albanian body politic. Every attack against him is not an incident, it is a symptom.
And the symptoms must be dealt with politically and institutionally, not allowed to circulate on television screens packaged as “public debate”.
And finally: Albania does not become European by suppressing the presence of Islam
Europeanization is not a process of emptying the public space of religion, but of strengthening the guarantee of freedoms. Islam is not Albania’s problem, it is part of its cultural DNA. The rights of believers are not a controversial domain. They are an inalienable democratic obligation.
Albania does not become more modern by asking the believer to become invisible.
It does not become safer by turning the mosque into a subject of doubt.
A society that is frightened by the sound of the call to prayer is a society that has not been able to come to terms with its identity. And yet this society deserves to read and hear that Islam is not a problem of this country. The way it is talked about is a problem. And as long as the media will look for symbolic culprits, and as long as the imam will be forced to speak as the accused, and as long as the journalist will dare to tell the Muslim parent how he should raise his child, then our public debate is not just wrong: it is morally dangerous.
If we want a just Albania, then it must be a Republic for everyone, not only for those who have the luxury of not having religion.
Kaynak: prizrenpost
