Islam in Bulgaria
The Muslim population of Bulgaria, including Turks, Muslim Bulgarians, Pomaks, Roma, and Crimean Tatars, lives mainly in northeastern Bulgaria and in the Rhodope Mountains. According to the 2001 Census, the total number of Muslims in the country stood at 966,978, corresponding to 12.2% of the population. According to the criterion of ethnic group they were divided into the following groups:
- Turks - 713,000;
- Bulgarians - 131,000;
- Roma - 103,000;
- Others - 20,000;
Most of the Bulgarian Muslims are Sunni Muslims as Sunni Islam was the form of Islam promoted by the Ottoman Turks during their five-century rule of Bulgaria (see History of Bulgaria). Shi'a sects such as the Alians, Kizilbashi and the Bektashi also are present, however. About 80,000 Shi'a Muslims live mainly in the Razgrad, Sliven and Tutrakan (northeast of Rousse) regions. They are mainly descendants of Bulgarians who converted to Islam to avoid Ottoman persecution but chose a Shi'a sect because of its greater tolerance toward different national and religious customs. For example, Kuzulbashi Bulgarians could maintain the Orthodox customs of communion, confession, and honoring saints. This integration of Orthodox customs into Islam gave rise to a type of syncretism found only in Bulgaria.
As of 1987, Muslims in Bulgaria had 1,267 mosques served by 533 khodzhai, or religious community leaders. The Muslim hierarchy was headed by one chief mufti and eight regional muftis, interpreters of Muslim law, all of whom served five-year terms. The largest mosque in Bulgaria was the Tumbul Mosque in Shumen, built in 1744.
Bulgarian Muslims were subject to particular persecution in the later years of the Todor Zhivkov regime. This was partly because the Orthodox Church traditionally considered them foreigners, even if they were ethnically Bulgarian. The Bulgarian communist regimes declared traditional Muslim beliefs to be diametrically opposed to communist and Bulgarian beliefs. This justified repression of Muslim beliefs and consolidation of Muslim into the larger society as part of the class and ideological struggle.
Like the practitioners of the other faiths, Muslims in Bulgaria enjoyed greater religious freedom after the fall of the Zhivkov regime (1989). New mosques were built in many cities and villages; one village built a new church and a new mosque side by side. Some villages organized Qur'an study courses for young people (study of the Qur'an had been completely forbidden under Zhivkov). Muslims also began publishing their own newspaper, Musulmani, in both Bulgarian and Turkish.
Traditional attitude of the Christians in Bulgaria to Islam
As a result of the fact that the Bulgarian lands were 5 centuries a part of the Ottoman empire - a theocratic islamic state, since the end of the 19 century the attitude of the Bulgarian Christians to Islam has been strongly negative. The standard stereotype about the Islamic religion is dog's belief , which reflected to many proverbs in the Bulgarian literature, and to the classic Bulgarian belles lettres [1], [2], [3]:
- Dog's belief - About the turks
- The turks are dog's belief
- Mara (Maria) became a Muslim not to wear pig's sandals, so she put on dog's [1].
The phrase dog's belief also describes apostasy and adopting a foreign belief. In this meaning it is used by Dobri Voynikov in "The Phoney Civilization"[2].
Islam is understood as paganism, where from the insulting therm for the muslims - pogantsi (pogans) derives. The following passage from the Bulgarian best-seller Vreme Razdelno is a good example for the descent of this stereotype:[3]
And Manol said to him:
- Do you know why do we call the Turks "pogans"?
- I don't know - said Mircho.
- There are some frightful hairy people, with an eye on the middle of their foreheads. They are called pogans. Fortunately, God releases them only two weeks on the Earth - one before and one afret Christmas. They eat human meat. They devour everyone that they meet. But there is something more frightful. Sometimes if they catch somebody, they make him taste human meat with them. And he becomes like the pogans. You can watch him from every side, he is like the other people. He has a wife and children, houses and fields, he ploughs and reaps. He can't rise sheep, who touches sheep, must be a real human - holy king David was a shepherd, he protects us from the pogans. And the angels firstly said to the shepherds, that Jesus was born. And besides that, we defend ourselves with herbs and knives. So, when the appointed week comes, that kind of a person turns into a pogan and eat people. He can eat his father and his children.
See also
References
- ^ P.R.Slaveykov. Bulgarian parables or proverbs and typical words.
- ^ Dobri Voynikov. The Phoney Civilization. Published in slovo.bg
- ^ Anton Donchev. Vreme Razdelno. Published in Literary clib
This image is available from the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID {{{id}}}
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for more information.
