{"id":25005,"date":"2026-09-19T12:35:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amfora.al\/?p=25005"},"modified":"2026-09-19T12:35:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:35:45","slug":"remove-mother-teresa-a-divisive-narrative-built-around-naim-frasheri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amfora.al\/en\/remove-mother-teresa-a-divisive-narrative-built-around-naim-frasheri\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cRemove Mother Teresa\u201d: a divisive narrative built around Naim Frash\u00ebri"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cRepeal the Mother Teresa Order. Remove the public holiday dedicated to Mother Teresa,\u201d read a 6 September\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0on the Facebook\u00a0account<\/a>\u00a0of the private school \u201cUdha e Shkronjave\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post announced the publication of an official\u00a0request<\/a>\u00a0bearing the name of the school\u2019s director, Artur Shkurti. As justification for removing the honour dedicated to Mother Teresa, he cited the omission of the \u201cNaim Frash\u00ebri\u201d Order from the new system of state decorations, which he portrayed as a decision that \u201cstrikes at the status of National Poet\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The request concerned both the state honour bearing Mother Teresa\u2019s name and the public holiday on 5 September, designated by law as the \u201cDay of the Canonisation of Saint Teresa\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRemoving Mother Teresa after the shameful removal of Naim Frash\u00ebri is a matter of educational consistency,\u201d the request stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artur Shkurti is the founder, director and owner of the nine-year \u201cUdha e Shkronjave\u201d school in Tirana, which, according to its\u00a0website<\/a>, he has run since 1997. In addition to managing the school, Shkurti publishes articles concerning education, national education and the figure of Naim Frash\u00ebri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to him, the request was sent by email to 330 official addresses, including those of 140 MPs, schools in Tirana, historians and educational institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the previous law, the official designation was the \u201cNaim Frash\u00ebri\u201d Title, a state honour awarded to individuals for their contributions to science, art, culture and education. \u201cNational Poet\u201d, meanwhile, is the designation by which Naim Frash\u00ebri is known for his role in literature and the Albanian National Renaissance. One recipient of this title was the singer Rita Ora, who is\u00a0listed<\/a>\u00a0in the President\u2019s archive as having received it in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claims about Naim Frash\u00ebri brought Mother Teresa back into the debate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The request published on 6 September was not the starting point of this narrative, as months earlier a claim had emerged that Naim Frash\u00ebri was being \u201charmed\u201d because of his work\u2019s links to Persian culture and Iran. This idea was later used as an argument for calls to remove the honours dedicated to Mother Teresa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 22 March, Dritan Mardodaj, a visual artist and songwriter, published on his\u00a0profile<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0text<\/a>\u00a0presented as an article by Artur Shkurti, titled \u201cWhat Do Iranians Know About the National Poet Naim Frash\u00ebri?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is clearly an Israeli-Greek and Serbian interest, for various reasons, aimed at replacing Albanians and weakening them through cultural degradation and disintegration,\u201d the text stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Shkurti\u2019s text, shared by Mardodaj, provided no evidence of these states\u2019 involvement in changes to Albanian law. Naim Frash\u00ebri also wrote in Persian, and the influence<\/a> of Persian literature on his work is documented, but this literary connection does not prove that foreign states influenced changes to Albania\u2019s system of state decorations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 29 July, this narrative expanded to include Mother Teresa. In a\u00a0post<\/a>, the\u00a0account<\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cUdha e Shkronjave\u201d school argued that, because the \u201cNaim Frash\u00ebri\u201d Order had not been included in the new system of state decorations, the \u201cMother Teresa\u201d state honour and the public holiday dedicated to her should also be removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shkurti expanded the same argument to include the Catholic Church. In an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0dated 20 August, he asked whether the Church was \u201cbehind the harming of Naim Frash\u00ebri and the Bektashi State initiative\u201d and wrote that \u201cthe Catholic Church benefits from the harming of Naim Frash\u00ebri\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The text,\u00a0republished<\/a>\u00a0on 28 August by \u201cRadi & Radi\u201d \u2014 a website with a cultural, historical and commentary focus \u2014 placed Naim Frash\u00ebri alongside claims concerning state honours for Mother Teresa, but provided no evidence of the Church\u2019s involvement. On 6 September, Shkurti developed this argument further in the public\u00a0request<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shkurti\u2019s request then moved from the school\u2019s website to online media and other Facebook accounts. On 6 September, it was\u00a0republished<\/a>\u00a0by Gazeta Impakt in its \u201cOpinion\u201d section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cNaim Frash\u00ebri\u201d honour was presented as the poet\u2019s title<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate that later came to include Mother Teresa began with the way a change to the system of state decorations was interpreted. The 2022 Law<\/a> on decorations, which entered into force in March 2024, introduced a new system consisting of three orders and eight categories of medals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cNaim Frash\u00ebri\u201d Title, provided for under the previous law, was not included in the new list. Although the new law changed the list of state honours, it did not change Naim Frash\u00ebri\u2019s designation as \u201cNational Poet\u201d. Decorations awarded before the law entered into force continue to be recognised and held under the conditions in which they were granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same confusion also appears in the name used for the honour dedicated to Mother Teresa. According to the\u00a0Chancellery<\/a>\u00a0of Orders and Medals, it was established as an order in 1991 and continues today as the \u201cMother Teresa\u201d Medal, with three grades: gold, silver and bronze. The school called for the removal of the \u201cMother Teresa Order\u201d, although the law currently in force provides for a medal bearing this name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The public holiday on 5 September is linked to Mother Teresa\u2019s canonisation. It is established by the law on public holidays and commemorative days, not by the law on state decorations. A 2017 legislative\u00a0amendment<\/a>\u00a0replaced 19 October, the Day of Mother Teresa\u2019s Beatification, with 5 September, the Day of the Canonisation of Saint Teresa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The school\u2019s request therefore combined two separate issues: the state honour bearing Mother Teresa\u2019s name and the public holiday established to mark her canonisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his request, Artur Shkurti explained that the school had consistently promoted the figure of Gonxhe Bojaxhiu and that the initiative was not being undertaken \u201cwith any great pleasure\u201d. He added that he did not expect Parliament actually to remove the \u201cMother Teresa\u201d honour, but wanted the document to stand as an \u201cofficial note\u201d in response to what he described as the disregard shown towards Naim Frash\u00ebri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amfora asked the school for comment on the request to remove the state honour and public holiday dedicated to Mother Teresa. \u201cUdha e Shkronjave\u201d provided no further explanation and referred Amfora to the full\u00a0arti<\/a>c<\/a>le<\/a>\u00a0published on its website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A state honour bearing Naim Frash\u00ebri\u2019s name was thus presented as the title \u201cNational Poet\u201d held by the poet himself. On the basis of this equivalence, the removal of the \u201cMother Teresa\u201d Medal and the public holiday on 5 September was requested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mother Teresa, born Anjez\u00eb Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, was an Albanian Catholic nun known for her humanitarian work in India, a recipient of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize and canonised in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figures of Mother Teresa and Skanderbeg are occasionally used in religious and identity-based narratives, often detached from their historical context. Through this instrumentalisation, these figures of national and unifying character are turned into tools for polarisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite misleading narratives, according to a 2022\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0by Amfora, the surveyed audience tended to view Skanderbeg and Mother Teresa primarily as national figures, rather than as symbols of a particular religious affiliation. Around 70% of respondents\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that they did not associate Skanderbeg with religious belief, while 53% reported having encountered misleading coverage about him. Part of the audience perceived the identification of these figures solely with Catholicism as being motivated by malicious or fundamentalist aims, or by a misinterpretation of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The private school \u201cUdha e Shkronjave\u201d called for the removal of the state honour and public holiday dedicated to Mother Teresa after the \u201cNaim Frash\u00ebri\u201d honour was excluded from the new system of state decorations, a change presented as the removal of his designation as \u201cNational Poet\u201d. The claim brought Saint Teresa back to the centre of a disinformation discourse that set her against Naim Frash\u00ebri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":25008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3895],"tags":[4511,11257,11255,11260,11267,11266,11263,10993,11265,11261,10882,10883,11253,11259,11254,10987,11264,11262,10746,11256,11258],"class_list":["post-25005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis-en","tag-albania-3","tag-albanian-decorations-system","tag-anjeze-gonxhe-bojaxhiu","tag-artur-shkurti","tag-bektashism","tag-catholic-church","tag-disinformation-narratives","tag-facebook","tag-iran","tag-law-no-93-2022","tag-media","tag-mediaamfora","tag-mother-teresa","tag-naim-frasheri","tag-national-poet","tag-online-narratives","tag-persian-culture","tag-public-holidays","tag-social-media","tag-state-honours","tag-udha-e-shkronjave"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t