As good as Greeks: Crypto-Muslims and under-cover Albanians. - Identity constructions among Albanians in relation to Greece and Europe

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In the interdisciplinary project CRYMUS I will explore the rare phenomenon of Albanians who hide their ethnic and/or religious background to outsiders, which is virtually unknown to others than Albanians themselves. More specifically, I want to study an a ssumingly big group of Albanians who have lived or worked in Greece where they have assumed a "Greek-Orthodox" identity in order to appear more "Greek" and "Western", involving name changes and often baptism, but not necessarily any personal re-orientatio n in terms of belief. There are probably hundreds of thousands crypto-Muslims or under-cover Albanians in Greece in order to increase their symbolic capital in the Greek society. However, it also happens in other European countries. For more than a cent ury, dominant Albanian nationalist ideology has taught that in order to become a civilised nation acceptable to Europe, religion, religious differences and particularly Islam must be de-emphasised. The crypto-Muslim phenomenon is frowned upon by some Alba nian Muslims who advocate a kind of Islamic-Albanian identity. The project also involves a study competing identity constructions, which criticise to the crypto-Muslim/-Albanian phenomenon and Greece as well as the pro-Christian image of the nation propag ated by Albanian politicians in connection with discourses on the nation's "European identity", EU integration and the Union's "Christian" legacy. The question of Albanians who conceal their ethnic or religious background represents a socio-religious phe nomenon so complex that it may prove fruitful in terms of theory building. This kind of identity engineering on the individual level, and the perception of it in Albania, would presumably be symptomatic of larger religious and socio-political processes in the region and in Europe. The study therefore taps into a series of issues related to religion, Muslim-Christian relations, nationalism, ethnicity, migration, and European integration.