From day laborers to Xhaka, Shaqiri and the rest: an outline for a dynamic community, sometimes disoriented between the fatherland, religion and identity.
In the early 1970s, the Swiss ambassador to Belgrade would inform the Government in Bern that, luckily, the Albanian workers from Yugoslavia are not thinking of bringing their families to Switzerland. If that occurred, the diplomat said alarmingly, Switzerland would be exposed to many difficulties. How easy it was back then. Switzerland would exploit Yugoslavia (especially its poorer regions – Kosovo, Albanian-inhabited Macedonia and the Preševo valley) as a reservoir for recruiting laborers. Yugoslavia would also benefit from it: it got rid of thousands of unemployed people and thus alleviated some social problems.
Owing to Switzerland, Germany and Austria, Kosovar villages made their first steps into civilization. The temporarily employed workers in the outside world, as the communist Yugoslav propaganda used to call people who earned their bread outside of the country, came back to their fatherland once or twice a year like Santa Claus. They would bring TVs, radios or tape recorders and spend whole days getting small cameras or camcorders through customs.
Life with a tape recorder
The scenes at the train stations in Zurich, Sargans and Buchs are etched on my memory: the workers would argue about which tape recorder has the highest volume and is more stentorian; others would take pride in tape recorders that had two slots. For today’s perspective, this can seem slightly absurd, in the end, the tape recorder has been reduced to a smartphone, a device that is used least as a phone: in the 2011 comedy Carnage, Nancy is upset because Alan, her husband, is constantly on the phone; she suddenly takes his phone in the middle of a conversation and flings it into a vase. “Are you crazy?” Alan cries: “My whole life was in there. During the ‘70s, almost the whole of the lives of Albanian immigrants revolved around the tape recorder.
Swiss Albanians have come a long way since then: from daily laborers to football players like Granit Xhaka, Xherdan Shaqiri and many others who defend the colors of Switzerland with great enthusiasm, more or less. Last Thursday was one of these days that showed how much the situation of the Albanian community in Switzerland has changed: at a Nike store inside the Jelmoi mall in Zurich, Shaqiri showcased the new Nike collection. Nevertheless, the present journalists only cared about two issues: will Shaqiri play for the Kosovar football team in the future (there is no clear answer yet, but he says that he is focused the European Championship that is to be held soon in France), and how he feels about Lichtsteiner being appointed captain of the Swiss national football team instead of him. (Shaqiri: “I am disappointed.”)
Who is Nöldi Müller?
In the same time media from Eastern Switzerland are running after Granit Xhaka and his German team with that awfully long name, who are touring Switzerland. In a shopping mall, people were lined up to get an autograph or snap a selfie with Xhaka, local newspaper “St. Galler Tagblatt” wrote in Friday’s edition. Other newspapers were writing about boxer Arnold Gjergjaj, who on Saturday would climb up into the ring to win victory over former-World champion David Haye. “Blick” daily, the self-proclaimed guardian of “Swiss traditions,” asks why Gjergjaj doesn’t change his name to Nöldi Müller? Many other boxers have done this for marketing reasons: Adnan Ćatić is called Felix Sturm, Muamer Huki has turned into Marco Huck, Awetik Abrahamjan is called Arthur Abraham and Christian Ciocan is known as Christian Hammer. Gjergjaj has an explanation: he says that he wouldn’t feel okay with another name and that he has respect for his family. “Blick” seems to not share that respect: the cousin of the boxer, Bekim, is introduced as Beqim! Naturally this is an aspect of Albanians’ integration in Switzerland, but since we’re on the eve of big sports events it is evident that in public opinion the sportsmen mainly are present. There are, unfortunately, negative developments as well. A murder a few days ago in St. Gallen hasn’t been clarified yet, while media here are reporting about a funeral in Gjilan.
The perseverance of dangerous imams
A newspaper is investigating the “Albanian mosques” in Switzerland, which aren’t the house of God always, and the imams who are anything but imams, when you hear the sermons that they share on Youtube. The mentality and the views they have about women belong to Medieval times, they often act as psychologists or psychiatrists, they act like mental and spiritual healers, patience-inspiring that belong to the circus. In many mosques the freedom of religion which is guaranteed in Switzerland and in many other Western countries is misused. The fact that the suspected imams are finding “clients” in Switzerland shows that a part of the community is still confused about their identity orientation. Because the Islamic Union in Kosovo, Macedonia and the Presheva Valley aren’t up to par, the imams who wind up in Switzerland are mainly scoundrels. Often the imams from western Macedonia and Bujanovac and Presheva dominate: not the best ones, but the most aggressive ones.
Their travels to Schengen Europe is facilitated by the freedom of movement for citizens of Serbia and Macedonia. This category of imams appears to like more the Serbian and Macedonian passport rather than the Quran, which ensured their pilgrimages in Europe. Knowing how famous the footballers are, it’s not surprising that a Prishtina imam is trying to use Xherdan Shaqiri for his propaganda goals, an easy task when you know that Shaqiri thinks of the world in a superficial way, very flat – basically like a football field. What is striking in Kosovo’s case: it’s harder for journalists to get a visa than for these imams. Some of the most damaging figures of the Islamic world in Kosovo come to Switzerland for many years now to hold open lectures, where they preach a nihilist islam that is in no way compatible with the western societies. The Albanian community with over 200,000 souls doesn’t need these kind of imams. Switzerland is one of the wealthiest and the most developed countries in the world. Nowhere in the world do Albanians have higher wages than in Switzerland. Nowhere else do they have a better life than in this country. The perseverance of imams thirsty for money and fake fame is a bad medicine.