medaura18586:

I don't think your judgments are necessarily infallible either.

Quite so.

At least he has been on the terrain, spoken to the locals, and interviewed various subjects before reaching his conclusions. When has Gorin, the "expert on the Balkans", Andrew Bostom, or even you yourself ever been to the region?

I don't have any idea whether or when Gorin or Bostom have been to the Balkans, and I don't care. With all due respect to Totten, travelers can be as deceived as easily as anyone else can. Would you have credited Walter Duranty's denial of genocide in the Ukraine because he had been there over those who had not but published reliable reports about it? It is very easy to be misled, even if one is right on-site, and it is easy to be misled whether one has traveled to a particular place or not. One may be on-site and have no idea of the significance, or lack thereof, of what one is seeing.

The information I have given and the judgments I have made do not depend on whether I have been to the Balkans, or whether Gorin has, or whether Bostom has. The material about Islamic doctrine is true regardless of how many stamps are on anyone's passport. One might take issue with the evidence Gorin adduced of KLA connections to Al-Qaeda, but that evidence doesn't depend on her having traveled there either.

Christianity was often practiced alongside Islam, and Kosovo's underlying cultural identity is Christian to this day, their greatest hero being Skanderbeg, which is why even Muslim Albanians in Albania proper often consider themselves as "Muslims, but not really".

It has often nothing to do with what they think "true pure Muslims" are about, and very much to do with the history and motivation behind their ancestors' conversion to Islam.

There is no denying that these are moderate, secular, nominal Muslims. I am not denying that, and never have. The question is what we are to make of that fact and how much we can depend upon it. I have already explained why I am skeptical of too much being made of it, and am loathe to repeat myself.