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RE: Sworn Virgins

in #culture8 years ago

Forgive my ignorance, but Wikipedia claims that Islam is the number one religion in Albania, and Christianity number two. How does this kanun system of law fit in? Is it secular and completely separate from either religion?

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The Wikipedia information is correct; Islam is religion number one followed by Catholicism and then Orthodoxy in Albania. Kanun however was completely secular, and at the time it was drafted and started to be implemented, it sort of acted as a primitive constitution - a customary law - and stood above all faiths - also because the country in a way or another has never been really religious anyway.

So whose idea was the whole Sworn Virgins thing? Was that an already existing folk tradition, or the idiosyncratic brainchild of some particular ruler / bureaucrat?