LETTER FROM THE BALKANS
It is barely 10 in the morning on Thursday, October 31, but after serving coffee, the young dervish in the white robe inevitably asks: “Don’t you want some raki too?” ». The bektachis of Tirana may claim to be Islamic, but they conform to the Balkan tradition of offering guests this traditional plum or grape brandy.
Since the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, announced, to everyone’s surprise, on September 21 in the New York Times and at the UN platform the next day, which was intended to grant sovereign state status to the world headquarters of this Sufi movement so that it would be “a center of moderation, tolerance and peaceful coexistence”Albanians are wondering if their head of government, known for making people talk about him, is really serious.
Located in the hills of Tirana, the world headquarters of the Bektachis has until now been a rather discreet place. A great temple crossed by light, called “The Odeón”, It is surrounded by a few hectares of vegetation that make the place an island of calm compared to the bustle of the Albanian capital. The dominion is supposed to become an independent state with all its attributes, that is, a headquarters in the United Nations and a leader, in this case Baba Mondi, the current spiritual leader of the Bektachis.
“It is better to exist globally”
“Who else do you want it to be?” »Cowardly, raising his arms to the sky, this round 65-year-old man receives in one of his rooms decorated with large mystical and colorful paintings. Edmond Brahimaj, his real name, wears a hat, sports a thick beard and wears the white and green tunic that designates the “kryegjysh”the spiritual guides of this brotherhood that was established in Albania in the 1920s after being expelled from Türkiye by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938).
like in the chest of the vast majority Sufi movements, vindicates its mysticism and its values of “pacifism, tolerance and coexistence”. Women certainly cannot be part of the clergy but they do not wear the veil. Alcohol consumption is tolerated. And in the small museum built under the large prayer hall, we like to show the passing French the photograph of Baba Mondi and all the Albanian religious representatives united behind their prime minister during a visit to Paris to pay tribute to the victims of the attack against Charlie Hebdo in 2015.
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