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

PUBLIC TALKS AND GUEST LECTURES Political Islam. Lecture at the Senior University, Drøbak. 8.5.2015. Political Islam. Public lecture at the House of Litterature, Oslo, in the series Political ideologies. 18.10.2014. OTHER PUBLICATIONS AND OUTREACH ACTIVITIES «Fra fez til flosshatt». Klassekampen, 25.7. 2015. «Makedonia på bristepunktet?». Minerva, 15.5.2015. Co-author: Sylo Taraku. www.minervanett.no/makedonia-pa-bristepunktet/ Articles on Balkan countries, demography, culture, politics, history etc. in the online encyclopedia Store norske leksikon, 2010-2014. Editor of sections on Kosovo and Albania. «Religion og fornuft i Europa». Aftenposten, 21.1.2015. MEDIA INTERVIEWS Interview in M. Byrkjedal: "Statens advokat: Asylfamilie har mulighet til å bestikke sykehus i Albania". VG, 25.1.2016. Interview in N. Pantel: «Balancieren in Tirana». Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2.1.2015 Interview in M. Byrkjedal and K. Lien: «Kreftsyke Alkeo (8) kastes ut av Norge». VG, 10.7.2015. Interview in A. Hagen and C. Ekehaug: «Ekspert om Makedonia-volden: Kan være provokasjon fra myndighetene». VG, 11.5.2015. Debate on Islam and religious beliefs in Europe. Dagsnytt atten, NRK2/P2, 23.1.2015. CONSULTANCY, BRIEFING AND COMMISSIONED RESEARCH Consultant on two film and TV projects by Pouneh Attarinejad. Commenting on Balkan affairs, the refugee crisis, political development, elections etc. and briefing journalists, 2014-2015: NRK, NTB, VG. Briefing Norwegian lawyer Bjørn Erik Serkland on Albanian politics and society, July 2015. Briefing personnel from the Southeast European section at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Resource Bank for Democracy and Human Rights, 11.5.2015: Albanian politics. Briefing Statkraft in Albania, 2014, 2015: Albanian issues.

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.