Muslims in Bulgaria are one of the communities whose experience is very useful for many Muslims living in non-Muslim countries. They not only overcame lots of difficulties, namely resettlement and persecution; in the end, however, they gained recognition and now they have their representatives in the Government.
History of Islam in Bulgaria is several ages long, so Bulgarian Muslims can by all means be referred to as “ethnic Muslims”. Slavonic Bulgarians, as many other nations, converted to Islam gradually.
The fact that these territories were compromised by the Ottoman Empire, of course, had a big impact on this process. This led to many shill Historians telling about forced islamization. Most scientists, however, think that spiritual reasons rather than material prevailed in the process of islamization in Bulgaria and the Balkans (where most Serbians in Bosnia and Sanjak, as well as part of Chernogorians and Macedonians are Muslims as well).
Pavlikian Christian sect in the Balkans is named the main of those spiritual reasons. Oppressed by the official clergy, they were forced to defend their rights, including armed resistance. No wonder they became close with the Turks, who defended them from the official Church.
However, this wasn’t the only factor, taking into account strick views of such sects. All the more so, due to the teaching of Islam, other religious groups, especially “People of the Book” (i.e. Christians and Jews) are free to practice their religious beliefs, and this is what we see in the contemporary non-Muslim communities in Syria, Egypt, Iran and other countries.
Thus, there must have been a really good reason invoking Bulgarians to convert to Islam. And such reason is - non-canonical Gospel according to one of Jesus Christ’s (peace be upon him) students.
This Gospel according to Varnava, which remained until today, arrival of the new Prophet named Ahmad is predicted. It became obvious to the people who knew their Holy Book well, that Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him (Ahmad was one of his names), was the Prophet predicted by Jesus (peace be upon him).
Of course this could not happen at one single moment; it is notable, however, that this sect almost vanished from the Balkans till the end of XIX, and at the same time the number of local Muslims got sizeable (in Bulgaria, for instance, every third inhabitant was Muslim before World War I).
Non-slavonic origin of Balkan Muslims is another popular myth. The fact that most of Muslims there are of a former Christian origin, however, has multiple proofs.
The main of these proofs is - all local Muslims have common language with other representatives of their ethnic groups. Moreover, Bulgarian Muslims speak even more archaic Bulgarian than the rest of their compatriots, and difference between dialects among Muslim communities is stronger than between them and the neighbouring Christian communities.
We can find another proof that Muslims in Bulgaria are ethnic Bulgarians in the Ottoman List of Jizyah taxpayers (special taxes for Christians and Jews for protection and for social needs), that shortened from year to year. Whole villages disappeared from those lists at a time. If you accuse the converts of cowardice - you accuse tens and even hundreds of people, noble and not, which is absurd.
Some historians assume Jizyah dispensation as the main reason for converting. They fail to mention, however, that the new Muslims weren’t free from taxation. If you look at the list of regular Muslim taxpayers, you see that a lot of names with “son of Abdullah” instead of father’s name suddenly appeared in the lists. Such “father’s name” was common to be written for every new Muslim at that time.
Due to above stated facts, it’s obvious that most of the Bulgarian Muslims, as well as Muslims of other Balkan states, are descendants of ancient indigenous population of the country. It’s worth mentioning, however, that there are other ethnic Muslim communities in Bulgaria, Turks, for instance, who acknowledge their roots while living in this country.
After the Ottoman Empire experienced several serious defeats and had to leave most of the Balkanians behind, many Muslims followed the army and resettled to Empire’s remaining territories, both Turks and Bulgarians. This was, on the one hand, caused for the security reasons, and on the other hand, by various problems arising after the non-Muslim authorities came to power.
First Muslim resettlement was caused by fear of the Russian army; this fear was in many cases forced by the community and religious leaders. This was made, likely, to lay hands on the refugees’ remaining property. This is confirmed by the fact that when some of the Bulgarian Muslims decided to return to their native land, they found their houses plundered.
Second wave of emigration started after the local administration reform in 1892, when the local population was deprived of the right of choosing their representatives, while those were appointed instead. This stroke the traditional practice of governing that lasted for ages; it’s interesting that the Ottoman authorities kept this system during their rule in the region.
The new government was glad to see the Muslims leave the country, but after the new provinces where Bulgarian Muslims were the majority were annexed, the government started questioning their loyalty. Their idea, however, wasn’t about granting some freedoms for the local Muslims; it was about re-baptizing the “lost sheep”.
Under the soldiers convoy, Muslim communities went through forced baptizing, which caused quick response. Mass fled of Muslims started; sometimes the whole settlements pulled up roots. The scale of resettlement was so enormous that even the London peace conference held after the Balkanian war was over considered the matter, and the new Bulgarian authorities had to cancel the acts of forced baptizing.
Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t much better in Turkey, which had been through multiple crisis by that time. The nationalist ideology gained more and more power, and the ethnic Bulgarian Muslims weren’t feeling safe any more. This motivated them to return to their Fatherland, where they faced a strong threat of forced baptizing from the State and Church.
This caused new emigration waves in 1930ies.
The status of Muslim communities changed after Georgi Dimitrov regime came to power. The communists, based on the views of internationalism, saw no difference between Muslims and Christians, as they wished, as the famous motto reads, to unite “the workers all over the world”.
Due to this, ethnic discrimination of Bulgarian Muslims decreased little by little, and nobody forcefully changed Muslim names any more. The atheist propaganda, however, strengthened, which led to erosion of ethnic and religious identity.
In mid-fifties, the Bulgarian nationalism policy against all the ethnic minorities was in force again, reviving violence and compulsion.
The propaganda started with changing parts of national clothing that symbolised Islamhood. They name this “a cultural revolution”, though only the second part of this name was true, as things were forcefully changed - as the ages-long traditions of local inhabitants were violated.
In several years the government had to cancel this “cultural revolution” because of its smashup. They reached no results, but didn’t abandon the policy, reviving the safe and proven method, that is forcefully changing Muslim names.
This pressure remained until the mid-seventies, however, by the Grace of God it not only failed to give the expected results, but also stopped the process assimilation of Bulgarian Muslims among Bulgarian Christians which began at some point.
The Government forbade some Muslim cults and fests, causing another resettlement of long-suffering Bulgarian Muslims. This time, however, they didn't move to Turkey itself, rather to the places of compact accommodation of the Bulgarian Turks. In order to preserve their religion, they started calling themselves Turks and learning Turkish, which didn’t save them from the new wave of persecution.
In mid-eighties (though the Medieval had to be long forgotten) the Government launched another campaigh on forceful changing Muslim names, this time not only among Bulgarian Muslims, but among the ethnic Turks as well. This, once again, gave the converse effect and lead to more close contact between the Bulgarian Muslims and the Turks who distanced from one another earlier.
Reformers came to power in mid-eightieth, and they departed from the policy of oppressing the minorities as they realised the danger it could cause. Moreover, there had been a recent crisis led by mass protests against forced assimilation and resettlement to Turkey bothe by the Bulgarians and the Turks.
By the way, it was the protests that brought the reformers to power, as the resettlers, mostly from the rural areas, started leaving the country in the high of the harvesting season, debiting all their savings from their bank accounts, which complicated Bulgarian economy.
The history of Muslims in this Slavonic country doesn’t end here, but, besides persecution and humiliation, it’s worth telling about something positive, too, as for the first time in several ages Bulgarian Muslims gained recognition from the authorities of their own country, which is indeed very positive.
While the Constitution forbade forming political parties based on ethnicity or religion, Movement For Rights And Freedoms Of Turks And Muslims Of Bulgaria was launched in early nineties, and later got the status of a political party. They gained the third place during the 1990 Parliamentary Elections, becoming one of the most powerful parties in the Parliament - despite the party represented mostly Turks.
Therefore, the Muslim united forces (including not only ethnic Bulgarians and Turks, but also other ethnic minorities, and the remarkable fact is they represented non-Muslim minorities as well) gained a great progress. For the first time in the history of independent Bulgaria Muslims were appointed to the Government, getting several Ministerial posts.
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Bulgarian Muslims’ dramatic history shows us, first of all, that Islam was the free choice of a sizable part of Slavonic Bulgarian population. They made this religion the most important in their lives, - what else can explain the extreme measures they took to preserve their religious identity?
Second, all the attempts of oppressing Muslims, on the contrary, led to their cohesion with their brothers in faith.
And third, the experience of Bulgarian Muslims is priceless for all the ethnic minorities in different parts of the world, not only the followers of Islam, as it shows a great example of righteous and armless struggle for their abused rights.
Source: islam.ru
