Islam in Kosovo has a long-standing tradition dating back to the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. Before the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the entire Balkan region had been Christianized by both the Western and Eastern Roman Empire. From 1389 until 1912, Kosovo was officially governed by the Muslim Ottoman Empire and a high level of Islamization occurred among Catholic and Orthodox Albanians, mainly due to taxes levied only on non-Muslims and socio-political opportunism but also Ottoman retaliations and forced conversions. Despite these events, both Christian and Muslim Albanians intermarried and some lived as "Laramans", also known as Crypto-Christians. During the time period after World War II, Kosovo was ruled by secular socialist authorities in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). During that period, Kosovars became increasingly secularized. After the end of Communist period religion had a revival in Kosovo. Today, 95.6% of Kosovo's population are Muslims, most of whom are ethnic Albanians. There are also Slavic speaking Muslims, who define themselves as Bosniaks and Gorani, and Turks. History Until the sixteenth century the degree of Islamisation in Kosovo was minimal, and largely confined to urban centres. The pace of conversions to Islam only increased significantly in the second half of the sixteenth century, possibly because high taxes, Ottoman retaliations and forced conversions. Prior to the Ottomans, both Catholic and Orthodox Churches had waged a ruthless war over the hearts, minds and souls of the Albanians, and this situation was exploited by the Ottomans. Both the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Sultan viewed the conversion of Albanians to Islam as something positive as it weakened Balkan Catholic nucleus, and the Sultan received new subjects. Converts also became exempt from the cizje, a protective tax levied only on non-Muslim males. But that was certainly not the only cause of the people turning to Islam. the tax burden tended to go up as Ottoman power relative to foreign Christian powers came under challenge. So far as Catholic Albanians were concerned, the Catholic church was less powerful and privileged within the Ottoman Empire than the Serbian Orthodox Church (and less well staffed); the Bektashi Order of dervishes carried out a conversion campaign which stressed the similarities between their version of Islam and Christianity (the Bektashis drank wine and had a quasi-Trinitarian doctrine). A phenomenon of "crypto-Catholicism" developed in Kosovo Albanian society, where large numbers of people would convert officially to Islam but