“To be a true Albanian, you have to be Christian.” If there is anything the Balkans can quite do without it’s a statement like this. The comment was made by an ex-Muslim convert to Christianity who is active in the Movement of Return. The movement, initially called the Movement for the Abandonment of the Islamic Faith, a term dropped as too provocative, seeks to convert Kosovars to Roman Catholicism. Over 90 percent of Kosovars are ethnic Albanians.

Members of the movement hope to revive a pre-Islamic past that they consider to be important to their true European identity. They also believe it will help the country be accepted into the European Union as well as serving as a deterrent to religious extremism from the Middle East.

The Balkans are a tribal complex of ethnic groups and religions with Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Islam all having their ethnic attachments. Aided and abetted by long memories, the mix has fuelled bloodshed for centuries. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, the region has been subject to a series of ethnic conflicts, wars of independence and insurgencies resulting in a massive number of deaths and economic damage. The hostilities were notorious for genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, massacres and mass rape.

Kosovo wasn’t spared. Serbia has long viewed the territory as theirs and attempted to ethnically cleanse it of Muslims in a 1998-99 war. With the help of NATO, the Kosovars maintained their independence, which they declared officially in 2008. Just to complicate the religious picture, Serbia, which in the past has controlled Kosovo, is Orthodox Christian.

Islam and Roman Catholicism compete symbolically in the capital of Pristina. The centre of the city is dominated by a large Roman Catholic cathedral along with a statue honouring Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun and Nobel Peace Prize winner of Albanian descent. Turkey is currently funding the construction nearby of a giant new mosque that will be even bigger than the church. Mine, say the Turks, is bigger than yours.

Kosovo is currently 93 percent Muslim and less than two percent Roman Catholic. The proselytizers have a lot of converting to do to return the country to its Christian past. But a Christian past it did indeed have.

Until the Ottoman Empire conquered most of the Balkans in the 14th century, ethnic Albanians were primarily Catholics. The Ottomans imposed Islamic rule but did not make conversion obligatory. Nonetheless it had financial, social and political benefits, so most Albanians converted.

So is Catholicism the true and ancient faith of Kosovo? Well, it depends on how ancient you want to get. Christianity arrived in the 5th century. Prior to that the Kosovars practiced pagan beliefs, so isn’t paganism the true and ancient faith?

In any case, until the recent war, Islam and Christianity in Kosovo mostly coexisted peacefully. Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, who is ethnic Albanian, disputes the idea that to be a true Albanian you have to be Christian. Indeed, he plays down the importance of religion to Albanian identity.

If he is right, perhaps because religion is declining in importance in Kosovo as it is in most Western countries, the proselytizing may turn out to be harmless. Considering what religious feuding is doing in Gaza and elsewhere, the world hardly needs any more of it.