Answer to Question #149378 in History for Batan

Question

Why do Albanians and serbians hate each other? Also, are bosnian people albanian by DNA?

Answer 1

Since its inception, the idea of a Serbian state has always included expansion into territories inhabited by Albanians. To achieve this objective, Serb politicians always advocated that Albanians are not an ethnicity original to the Balkans, they are savage, uneducated and unable to govern themselves. During their expansion of the Serbian state, Serbian armies continuously have systematically ethnically cleansed and massacred the Albanian populations based on a well defined anti-Albanian ideology.

Even after the creation of the Albanian state, successive Serb governments have continuously harassed and undermined the independence and the territorial integrity of Albania.

They have also taught the Serbian people to hate Albanians and to antagonise them. In Yugoslavia the Albanians have always been treated as second class citizen.

The Albanians on the other hand do not have an ideology that postulates hatred against other ethnicities. Historically, Albanians either had to defend themselves from the Serb state and their local Serb collaborators or retaliate against the Serbs as a revenge against Serb attrocities (sometimes comitting attrocities themsleves).

Serbs have an ethnic ideology based on religion and religion fuels hatred against those who are different. Just like the Greeks and others in the Balkans. That’s why the Serbo-Croatian speaking Slavs are generally divided in religious communities. If you are a Serb than you are automatically Christian Orthodox. If you are a Bosniak, you are automatically a Muslim. If you are a Croat or a Montenegrin, you are automatically Catholic.

Albanian ethnicity, on the other hand, is based on language. If you are Albanian, you could be Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic, Bektashi, doesn't matter. Religion is a personal thing and is not interdependent with ethnicity.

Thus in the Albanian worldview, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins and Bosniaks are people of the same ethnicity, hating each other over religious differences. It just doesn't make sense to us.

Therefore, better stay away from these people who have a tendency towards hate rather than mutual understanding.