Pastor Paulin Vilajeti says that most people who become radicalized do not have an alternative to compare it to.

He raised his concerns during an interview on Euronews Albania’s ‘NOW with Erla Mehilli’, on how in the suburbs of Tirana there are illiterate boys and men who, in the absence of education and alternatives, the only thing they face is radicalism.

According to him, the only way to counter radicalism is through education.

“Most of these people seem like they don’t have a job or something to do. They are radicalized from childhood. Today, in the surroundings of Tirana, you can have 38-year-old adults who are illiterate. They might have come here at a young age in the 1990s, they went to areas without schools and the only thing they encountered is radicalization, which can also be Christian. We should not deal with only one religion, because that way we do the worst thing we can. We need to confront these people with education, not to tell them they are wrong, but to confront them with something else that is different, so that they see something radically different from what they have been receiving and perceiving all their lives’, said the pastor.