In Kosovo, the speech came as a shock. At a party rally before local elections last October, the forceful leader of the opposition Vetëvendosje party, Albin Kurti, swore on the Koran that victory would be theirs. Once in power, he told supporters, the party would work to end Islamophobia.
The Kosovo Security Force (KSF) should be upgraded into a full-standing army and integrated into NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP), which readies countries for full NATO membership.
Albanians have always been intensely pro-American. Kosovars deeply appreciate the US-led NATO intervention in 1999, which put Kosovo on the path to independence. They are grateful to the US for coordinating Kosovo's recognition by the international community. Given the strong affinity between Albanians and the United States, the recent rise of Islamism in Kosovo is deeply troubling.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/islamism-in-kosovo_b_8855128.html
The global Muslim community is suffering a deep crisis. The failure of the "Arab Spring" led, most prominently, to horrendous bloodletting in Syria. In this carnage, both the Damascus dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad, which is supported by the Iranian regime, and the ultra-Wahhabi "Islamic State" that opposes the civil resistance to Bashar, are guilty.
Jasmina Tesanovic
Feminist author and political activist
Crossing the border from Serbia to Kosovo is easy. Serbian citizens can get by with daily ID, as if they were EU citizen inside the EU Schengen fortress.
If you are, for example, a globetrotting American, it gets interesting. The Kosovo border officers admire your travel stamps and ask jolly questions, such as, "Why on Earth did an American go to Brazil?" Everybody wants to go to America, but we Kosovars are not allowed.
Stephen Schwartz
Executive Director, Center for Islamic Pluralism