5 The Muslims: ”Adat Islam” and “Salafi Islam”

The religious practices and interpretations of Islam among the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims in the Western Rhodopes are changing, a development often noted and commented on by local Christians and Muslims. Young and middle-aged Muslims are moving away from the Islam of the earlier generation, favoring instead a Wahhabi-influenced model. In describing this transition, I refer to those two representations/ native models of Islam²⁵⁰ as “Adat Islam” and “Salafi Islam”, respectively.

As a concept, “Salafi Islam” (from Arabic salaf, meaning “that which is past” but also “ancestors” or “predecessors”), a class of fundamentalist religious movements rooted in orthodox Islam and seeking to remain faithful to mainstream Islamic thought and tradition. Such movements identify themselves with 7th-century Islam, which they seek to reconstruct for the modern times²⁵¹ (Ahmed 2007, p. 35–36).

This model of Islam finds value in a blend of faith and reason, and takes a negative view of the Western world (Ahmed 2007, p. 40), which it believes is morally bankrupt and inferior to the Muslim world. Consequently, its attitude towards the Western world is defensive, though not necessarily predicated on the use of violent force (Ahmed 2007, p. 41).

The views of Muslims representing this model of Islam are reminiscent of the teachings of Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), an Islamic jurist and theologian and a member of the school of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who was the first to seek a return to the traditional Islam from the times of Muhammad and the first caliphs (cf. Danecki 1997, p. 91). He coined the concept of the salaf in reference to the early generations of Muslims whom he treated as models of religious life, and he rejected what he viewed as later deviations (Danecki 2001, p. 340). The ideas of Ibn Taymiyyah remain influential in the modern Wahhabi movement. The emphasis which some Muslims tend to place on the “purity” of their Islam²⁵² suggests many analogies with the ideas of Ibn Taymiyyah, and I believe “Salafi Islam” is the most fitting term to describe their perspective.

The term “Salafi Islam” (like “Islamic fundmanetalism” or “Wahhabi Islam” before it) is increasingly gathering negative connotations, especially in the media or popular culture contexts, and gets wrongly identified with the most extremist trends in modern Islam. I would like to emphasize that I use this term in the sense of a broader vision of Islamic renewal or return to the sources rooted in the Arabic-Muslim culture, but sometimes imposed or implemented in non-Arabic contexts. According to Mark Durie, “Salafism is not so much an organization, as a worldview and a way of deciding religious questions. Salafi Muslims may identify with one or another of the schools of Islamic law, but their preference is not to stray from the practices of the first generations. They delight in rejecting ‘innovations’ (bid‘ah) introduced by later generations of Muslims (Durie 2013, http://www.meforum.org/3541/salafis-muslim-brotherhood). I treat “Salafi Islam” as a worldview and “a reform movement in the sense that it aims to bring Muslims back to the purity of Islam’s origins. It is overtly anti-Western to its bootstraps because it opposes everything which is not based upon the ‘best example’ of Muhammad, and it explicitly rejects appeal to intellectual concepts associated with western thought, whether from economics, education, ethics or politics” (Durie 2013, http://www.meforum.org/3541/salafis-muslim-brotherhood). I am not alone in noting the emergence of this worldview among Muslims living in Bulgaria. Antonina Zhelyazkova, one of the most respected experts on the problem, points out that “[w]hen young Muslims who have studied abroad return to Bulgaria as imams, they import into their communities Salafi influences, and often preach that the traditional local rituals should be abandoned as they deviate from the sources of Islam (Zhelyazkova 2014, p. 594). I discuss this problem in more detail in Section 5.2.1.

I also agree with Michał Moch, a Polish Arabic Studies scholar, that it is difficult to make a clear distinction (especially in 19th- and 20th-century Islam) between “fundamentalism”, modernism or even a kind of “Westernization”. All those movements and thinkers are involved in the process of Islamic renewal, and they often also fight for a renewal and renaissance of Arabic-Muslim culture. Some of the Salafis might be part of this tradition of renewal, and others might be Saudi Wahhabis with very different ideological roots” (part of an email correspondence, 12 November 2014).

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Although this chapter distinguishes between two different perspectives on Islamic belief and practice, it should be noted that all of my respondents believed their particular interpretation or practice of Islam conformed with the Qur’an and the Sunnah, meaning that “the religion practiced is the right one or that it can be corrected to be so” (Varisco 2005, p. 148); they do not view it as a possible option among many.

Accordingly, the models I propose here are a matter of convention and, in common with all models, they reify the reality they describe, a situation which always involves a degree of symbolic violence inherent in reading things into people’s worldviews. To counteract this tendency, I made efforts to validate my interpretations of the quoted passages by relating them to the entirety of my material in order to narrow down the spectrum of possible interpretations. By carefully analyzing my material already at the field research stage I hoped to arrive at accurate and fair conclusions; this said, people whose worldviews we try to express by mapping it onto our categories tend to resist such treatment. However, attempts to work out models of analysis in tandem with research participants are doomed to fail as the priorities of religious elites differ from those of social scientists. The former are wary of “dividing Islam” into subtypes and categories; in fact, they were trying to dissuade me from learning about Islam from the older people in order to marginalize “Adat Islam”. Conversely, my intention was to describe the complex interplay of mutual relationships between the two models of Islam and their attitudes about Christianity. Notably, all respondents, regardless of their differences, tended to insist strenuously that Islam was a united thing, even though they were aware of the gaps between official doctrine and daily practice, as influenced by cultural factors.

For all their limitations, artificial categories are the only tool for describing social change and processes without falling into fictional writing. Also, categories developed on the basis of field observations and actual interactions with people tend to be less dangerous than preconceived, off-the-shelf academic models which often run the risk of mistaking spurious, superficial analogies for deeper connections.

The differences I seek to identify by relying on categories such as “Adat Islam” or “Salafi Islam” are locally expressed by juxtaposing the teachings of old hodzhas and young hodzhas:

I.: We might say that the difference between the older hodzhas and the younger ones is that the new ones are trying to make sure things are done properly. To make sure everything is as it should be. Whereas the older ones, they have this… how shall I put it, it’s a bit like the dervishes of the past. He goes into a village, lives the Islamic way, sees their traditions and starts to cultivate them, make them part of Islam, and talk to people about Islam. (M, M, Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009)

“Salafi Islam” is currently the most dynamic model of Islam in the Western Rhodopes; one particularly influential group within this model includes hodzhas educated in various places who have a reformist approach to “Adat Islam”, seeking to purify it of its local traditions. This group seems to have dominated the most important institutions which Clifford Geertz believed were involved in transmitting Islam, referred to as the “mosque-market-school complex” (Geertz 2012, p. 175). Accordingly, it plays a leading role in the process of shaping symbolic meanings.

5.1  “Adat Islam”

The first native model of Islam, which I refer to as “Adat Islam”, is represented by older people (senior citizens and people approaching retirement), and it is related to the local traditional religious culture of the longue durée (in Braudel’s sense). The term adat/adet means ‘custom’ and ‘tradition’. The term is familiar to, and actually used by, the local-Bulgarian speaking Muslim community. For this reason, I prefer it to its loose synonym, “folk religion”, an outmoded category which I believe obscures social reality by shoehorning it into a stereotype and, unlike the idea of adat religion, cannot be regarded as an emic category²⁵³.

“Adat Islam” is for me a synonym for Post-Otttoman Islam, an amalgam shaped in the Ottoman Empire, mainly under the cultural influence of the Arabic Near East (particularly Egipt and Syria), Iran and Turkey, and local Balkan traditions (Heppel, Norris 2001, p. 6). Turkish folklore, also a major influence, is not significantly original according to Hasluck given the formative role of Persian, Semitic and even North African infuences in its emergence²⁵⁴ (Hasluck 2005, p. 121). This kind of religiosity could develop within the Hanafi school, characteristic of the Ottoman Empire and tolerant of local traditions.

Although Muslims associated with “Adat Islam” are officially practitioners of Sunni Islam, their particular variety is different in that it places a lot of importance on the oral tradition and the world of Muslim beliefs not found in the limited textual corpus of the Sunnah. The oral tradition of “Adat Islam” supplements, and occasionally provides an alternative to, the Sunnah, and to a degree was also shaped by Shi‘ite influence. The narratives of Bulgarian Muslims occasionally contain motifs which are parallel to Shi‘ite written sources popular in the Ottoman Empire, such as the lives of prophets by al-Tha‘labi, an 11th-century Iranian exegete writing in Arabic (Badalanova Geller 2008b, p. 95, 99).

“Adat Islam” is reminiscent the Balkan form Islam as described by Harry Norris²⁵⁵, consisting in a certain way of life and identity choices rather than a coherent dogmatic system (Heppel, Norris 2001, p. 6), and whose distinctive features as defined by its practitioners are understood primarily in terms of moral imperatives such as hospitality, purity or generosity (Heppel, Norris 2001, p. 8). This lifestyle could be described as premodern in that it places major importance on oral tradition and authority of elders, and is dominated by direct face-to-face interactions. Those Muslims who were practitioners of “Adat Islam” tended to live their lives within a rather narrow orbis interior (they tend not to travel except for, in some cases, making the Hajj to Mecca), and they do not use the Internet.

Practitioners of “Adat Islam” hold onto memorized religious narratives transmitted orally across generations, a chain of tradition which in some families remained unbroken despite the difficulties involved in teaching and practising religion under Bulgaria’s Communist regime. This tradition was generally perpetuated by particularly religious individuals, especially hodzhas who taught Islam to their relatives and closest associates. Particularly important in this group are hodzha 4 (born in 1926), hodzha 2 (born in 1925), and bula (born in 1933) of Ribnovo. In his private library, hodzha 2 preserves religious books in Old Turkish. He received his religious education from a number of hodzhas, notably an Istanbul-trained hodzha of Ribnovo who is no longer alive.

Compared to “Salafi Islam” (discussed below), “Adat Islam” attaches much importance to religious symbolism, often expressed through semantically dense sacred narratives. I understand this symbolism to be “vehicles for the expression and articulation of changing values in varying contexts” (Abdul Hamid El-Zein, cited in: Varisco 2005, p. 147). In functional and symbolic terms, such narratives are not unlike Christian and Jewish apocrypha²⁵⁶ and they used to explain the meaning of various Islamic religious practices such as the kurban²⁵⁷, ritual ablutions/abdest (Turkish: abdest, Arabic: wudu or tawaddu), the five prayers of the day/namaz (Turkish: namaz²⁵⁸, Arabic: salat), circumcision/syunnet, the covering of the body by women, voluntary and compulsory almsgiving, known respectively as sadaqah (local Muslim variant/Turkish: sadaka, Arabic: sadaqah) and zakat (local Muslim variant: zekyat/ zakat, Turkish: zekât, Arabic: zakat), and moral obligations such as hospitality. The people I spoke with trace those practices back, mostly, to a prelapsarian existence in paradise or the life of the prophet Muhammad. Another group comprises narratives explaining the meaning of a religious or moral practice through didactic and moralistic exempla (usually taken from the life of the prophet Muhammad). Such statements vividly suggest that the religious symbols continue to be a “living” presence²⁵⁹ for my respondents, immune to modern disenchantment and indicative of what Paul Ricoeur describes as a “primitive naïveté” and directness of faith (Ricoeur 1985, p. 69).

Irrespective of the type of Islam practised by my respondents, their central religious holiday is Kurban Bayram, celebrated on the third day of the Hajj to commemorate Ibrahim’s sacrifice. On that day all the Muslims, including those not currently making the Hajj, sacrifice a lamb as a kurban. Compared to the followers of the Deoband model, practitioners of “Adat Islam” have a richer narrative tradition associated with the origins of this holiday, derived from the sacrifice of Ibrahim. In those narratives, Ibrahim is not always identified by name. “Adat-oriented” Muslims often referred to him as “a certain man who was childless” and adapt the narrative to their own orbis interior, claiming that the sacrifice itself took place “over there on the hill” that “there was a man of your faith here” (cf. Badalanova Geller 2008b, p. 69, 70).

In those narratives Ibrahim actually goes ahead with the sacrificial rite: he strikes his own son with a knife three times, but the son always remains unhurt. Incensed, Ibrahim strikes a rock with his knife, and the rock splits into two. At this point, an angel comes down from heaven with a sacrificial ram. Before his sacrifice of Isma‘il²⁶⁰, Ibrahim had sacrificed not one but one hundred rams in his stead. However, in this narrative the ram only became acceptable as a sacrificial offering when Ibrahim put all his trust in God (Interview 3, Ribnovo 2005) to find fulfilment of God’s promise (cf. also Badalanova Geller 2008b, p. 72).

In contrast to the official Sunni doctrine, some practitioners of “Adat Islam” treat the kurban sacrificed on Kurban Bayram as not just a repetition of Ibrahim’s gesture, but also as a way of ensuring salvation in the next world. In this narrative, the sacrificial lamb will safely guide the deceased across a bridge, thin as a hair, suspended over the pits of hell:

Bula: A kurban is a different thing. Once you kill the kurban, when you find yourself crossing the bridge, sirat²⁶¹, there is a bridge there. Those who are good, for them the bridge will be wide, and they will come through to the other side. But for those who did nothing on earth, [for those – M.L.] it will be thin as a hair, sharp as a razor, like a knife. You’re walking and you’re cutting yourself, right? Blood streaming down your legs… (W, M, Interview 13, Ribnovo 2005)

Other soteriological beliefs are similarly communicated by means of pictorial imagery. The angel ‘Izra’il (local Muslim variant: Azrail), who comes to collect the souls of the deceased, manifests himself to good people as a figure with an agreeable face, and offers them a fruit “whiter than snow, sweeter than honey, softer than foam” (Interview 13), to which the soul clings in order to enter Paradise:

Bula: He brings him a fruit. What kind of fruit is that? Whiter than snow, sweeter than honey, softer than foam. Do you know foam? Like in the sea. You eat it, and it’s melting. Such is that fruit from Paradise. And [that person] is ready to lie down on his bed and die, and he is calm. No groaning, no panting. He’s calm in his bed. And he takes out this fruit, and shows it to him, and written on its right side is the name of Allah. And when he sees that name of Allah, his soul leaves [the body] without a care in the world, and clings to this fruit. And he is not punished by this angel, Azrail²⁶² …, he pulls out souls. But not his soul. His soul now clings to the fruit, and he carries it to Paradise, to dzhennet. (W, M, Interview 13, Ribnovo 2005)

To the sinners, the angel ‘Izra’il shows a horrible face before pulling their souls out with iron hooks (Interview 13, Ribnovo 2005). Christians shared analogous narratives, except here it was Archangel Michael handling the sinful souls rather than ‘Izra’il.

In “Adat Islam”, beliefs relating to the torments of hell are connected with penitentiary theology and their resemblance to the Christian medieval concept that heaven and hell are actual locations rather than spritual states. In Islam, the prophet Muhammad intercedes for the souls of the deceased, a role similar to that played by the Virgin Mary in Christianity²⁶³ (cf. Lubanska 2005, p. 55–66), and both figures get to witness the suffering of the dammed:

Bula: So, Muhammad, aleyhi salyam, sits down and begins to cry. His daughter comes in, and Ali, his son-in-law, a very learned man and close to him: “Why are you crying, baba[father – M.L.], you are a peygamber, a prophet?!” “When I was taken up to heaven I saw many, very many women suffering punishment in hell, dzhehendem”. He actually saw all the prophets, [saw] the things that happened to people. “What is it that you saw that made you cry so much?”. I saw women hanging upside down, tied by the hair, hanging like that.” “How so?” “Because they wouldn’t cover their hair [when they walked – M.L.] in the world, while they were in this dyunata [world, Turkish: dünya, Arabic: dunya – M.L.]. There was fire burning underneath. For every hair there is a snake climbing through the head and devouring those women. (W, M, Interview 14, Ribnovo 2005)

Characteristically, “Adat Islam” interprets the sphere of religious praxis in terms of symbolic and physical impurity, and frequently goes far beyond the precepts of Sunni Islam. In order to be saved one must preserve the purity of the heart, but also of all the senses and, above all, of all the body orifices. The heart is the most important, explained one hodzha, because Muhammad himself taught that a corrupt heart causes corruption in the entire body, and vice versa (Interview 19, Ribnovo 2005).

According to Mary Douglas, “The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious. The body is a complex structure. The functions of its different parts and their relation afford a source of symbols for other complex structures. We cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body” (Douglas 1984, p. 116). Accordingly, Muslims attach great importance to protecting the body from impurities by exercising constant self-control and by assistance from others. Women in particular are deemed responsible for the image of the Muslim community. To the Muslims from the Western Rhodopes, controlling women’s purity is more important than giving them an education. Apart from financial problems, often the only reason why Muslim women drop out of the educational system after primary school is that their parents are afraid to place them in a school outside of community control and far from a Muslim environment. Female purity is controlled not only by men but also by other women, e.g. by mothers-in-law who police their daughters-in-law, and mothers who police their daughters. In a casual conversation, one woman from Ribnovo told me that her husband, though he consented to her receiving an education in a different city, continued to control her life by denying her money and only doling out enough for her to buy a return ticket; she could not even afford to go to a cafe with her female friends.

To many of the Muslims I spoke to, the world is a source of potential moral contamination which can only be prevented through spiritual fortitude and strict control of the senses: the eyes should look away from impurity, the ears should ignore unclean speech, the hands should not touch unclean things and the legs should not carry one to places where corruption is likely. Those who keep their purity are saved, and their bodies do not decay after death (Interview 19, Ribnovo 2005).

The concept of impurity is invoked to justify the need for such practices as abdest (ritual ablutions before prayers), the covering of the body by women, or male circumcision. Those who neglect those things are physically and spiritually unclean, and consorting with such people may carry the risk of spreading the impurity. Contacts with non-Muslims require particular caution. Arguably, the concept of impurity also safeguards the community against religious syncretism by preventing assimilation.

Unlike the proponents of “Salafi Islam”, who tend to justify circumcision in terms of “medical materialism” (Douglas 1984, p. 71) by invoking hygienic, medical or scientific standards, Muslims who practise “Adat Islam” tend to treat such practices as (unexplained) tradition or through etiological narratives, saying that the prophet Muhammad was born circumcised.

In the following statement, a Muslim woman justifies circumcision both in terms of tradition, which helps distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims, and hygiene, an aspect whose importance in Islam was emphasized by many Muslims:

M.L.: Why is circumcision necessary?

Sh.: To keep the Muslims different from the rest, that’s how I see it. Well, that’s what the religion demands.

M.L.: Does it matter on what day it is performed?

Sh.: No. And they also say that it’s more hygienic [she laughs – M.L.]. In the Muslim religion many things are purely a matter of hygiene. Same thing with women. All the women here keep themselves pure, meaning they shave their armpits and sensitive places. It’s a big sin, to leave this hair growing on the body. (W, M, Interview 2, Ribnovo 2005)

Another type of religious narrative explaining Muslim practices comes in the form of didactic parables. To explain the great significance of voluntary almsgiving in Muslim life, Bula from Ribnovo told me the story of a widow who shared her bread with a poor man, and unknowingly secured an extra forty years of life for her child, who was destined to be killed by a wolf (Interview 13). On occasion, references to an event taking place in illo tempore are made to explain natural phenomena, such as the cuckoo’s forked tail (Interview 45, Dabnitsa 2006).

The religious narratives of the adherents of “Adat Islam” offer a matrix for a comprehensive vision of the world, often comprising a mix of epistemologal, emotional and moralistic aspects. They explain matters of religious ritual, but also the human spiritual and physical condition; separate stipulations are made for the female condition, women being generally viewed by some Muslims as inferior to, and less intelligent than, men as a result of the sin of Hawwa; Hawwa succumbed to Satanic temptation²⁶⁴ and tasted the forbidden fruit of Paradise because she was dimmer than Adam and then gave it to the (still drowsy) Adam. For this transgression/ haram, people were expelled from Paradise and condemned to heavy toil, and women began to menstruate. In ”Adat Islam”, misogyny is explained almost exclusively in terms of the narrative of Hawwa’s transgression, a narrative hodzha Mehmed considers shared story by Jews, Christians and Muslims:

Hodzha 2: Well, in general terms, men are at a higher level.

M.L.: And why is that the case?

Hodzha 2: Why is that?! It would take a whole day to explain that. Well, it’s just like it’s written in the books. When Allah created the azreti²⁶⁵ [Turkish: hazreti] Adam, he created Adam and he put him in the dzhennet, he put him in the Paradise, and he says to him: “Here. You’ve got everything. You can eat everything, make use of everything here. But there is one tree you can’t eat the fruit of”. This is in the Jewish books, and in the Christian books. And Satan stole in the garden, and he ate something from that tree. They committed haram, they ate of that tree. That’s why today the dzhanabu²⁶⁶ [TurkishCenabı Allah - M.L.] Allah sent the ten commandments. And the woman who ate of that tree… [hodzha speaks indistinctly – M.L.], and that’s the reason why women are behind, that they’re lower down [in the hierarchy – M.L.]. And although you always get many male prophets, you never get female ones. Men get to be presidents, they get to be kings, they get to be sultans, but you never see that with women. With the women, Allah makes them sick every month. It all stems from that. (Interview 19, Ribnovo 2005)

Another group of narratives popular in “Adat Islam” touches on Muslim attitudes towards Christianity.

Despite having a rich narrative tradition which depreciates Christianity and other religions, the adherents of “Adat Islam” tend to exhibit a greater religious tolerance than Salafi Muslims in that they admit the possibility that people of different religions can be saved. This is illustrated in a parable about camels which remove bad Muslims into Christian graves, and good Christians into Muslim graves:

Bula: When we die, they put us in graves. You are Christians, we are Muslims. There are others, like Gypsies, Jews. Depending on one’s religion everybody gets buried in a grave in the proper way, right? We shroud them in linen, Christians bury them in their clothes, the Jews, I don’t know what the Jews do with them. Everybody is put separately in a grave, and if that was a good man, with a good character, if he gave alms, prayed to Allah and did his work… Here, here are the Christians: because if you want to do something to go to heaven… Then in that place, after they’ve taken you to the cemetery, angels come and assign people… They tie 90,000 camels. They take them and lead them to Muslim graves. And conversely, our bad people are taken by the camels from their Muslim graves and they get carried to your graves, Christian graves. And they deal with them. Those who are good are taken into Muslim graves, and those who are bad are taken into Christian graves. That’s [how it is – M.L.] (W, M, Interview 14, Ribnovo 2005)

Interestingly, this belief is attested in Frederick W. Hasluck’s classic work – Hasluck reports this belief in Monastir (today’s Bitola, Macedonia). Hasluck also cites a variant heard by Gervais-Courtellemont in Mecca, which tells the story of camels seen moving bodies between the graves in the Al-Mu‘alla cemetery. The first case describes a Christian princess who fell in love with a Moor slave and secretly converted to Islam: her body was found buried in a Muslim cemetery (Hasluck 2005, p. 73). Hasluck heard a similar story in Monastir. During a drought, the locals were praying for rain in a türbe (mausoleum), when the body the buried hodzha was found to have been replaced by that of a non-Muslim princess (Hasluck 2005, p. 73, 448).

Bula mentioned a specific example of such a “miraculous transfer”of the body by the camels, relating to a priest of Pletena who allegedly practised both Islam and Christianity. Though buried in a Christian cemetery, the priest was removed by the camels to a Muslim cemetery, an event which supposedly took place a mere forty years ago:

Bula: And they gave him a Christian burial. And the Christians, you know, they come on the fortieth day to inspect the grave, they pour some liquids on the grave, they inspect the bones²⁶⁷, I don’t know what they do. They dig him up, pour vinegar [into the grave], I don’t know. They went, they dug up the grave. He’s not there. And when all the living men saw that the hodzha said: “Allah took care of him”. Because he used to say the prayers. His sons said, “Five times a day our father bowed to pray the Muslim way. And he’s not in his grave”. And then an old hodzha said: “Allah has taken care of him. There are 70,000 camels moving people from Muslim graves to Christian graves, and from Christian graves to Muslim graves. They do that every day”. (W, M, Interview 14, Ribnovo 2005)

She placed this event in her own orbis interior by locating it in Pletena, a village not far from Ribnovo. This kind of practice whereby events from the holy books become relocated to the orbis interior is a characteristic feature of “Adat Islam”, repeatedly occurring in the narratives I heard.

This story is also interesting in that it inverts the narrative, widely accepted in the local Christian population, that the Muslims are in fact crypto-Christians. It describes the example of a crypto-Muslim or, more precisely, a person with a dual religious identity, Orthodox Christian and Islamic.

I discovered another story providing evidence of the belief in such miraculous transfers of saintly people. According to one Muslim woman from Satovcha, this is what happened with the bodies of a hodzha and an Orthodox priest who died at the same time:

A.: A certain priest died, and a certain hodzha, too. I don’t know how the priest and the hodzha died, I don’t know what happened. But one night they decided to open up the hodzha’s grave. They went, they opened up the hodzha’s grave, and what do you want me to say, they found the priest in there. And in the priest’s grave they found the hodzha. Go figure, what is a man supposed to believe?! The hodzha was very religious, and the priest was very religious. The priest swapped places with the hodzha. And that’s that, believe what you like! Even though he posed as a Muslim, praying a lot, working, trying hard, he still ended up in Bulgarian²⁶⁸ grave. And the priest went to a Muslim grave; like I say, you make a small mistake and you end up in the other religion’s place. (W, M, Interview 24, Satovcha 2005)

As A. emphasizes, a small mistake may be enough to result in damnation as a non-Muslim, specifically a Christian, a term she treats as synonymous with “Bulgarian”. Also present is a sense that human classifications often fail to overlap with God’s because God makes decisions about human salvation according to his own criteria.

At a different point in our conversation, bula, who told the story of holy men being miraculously transferred to Muslim graves, unequivocally condemns mixing religions as a horrendously sinful practice. Inspired by a religious magazine she’s read, bula interprets the disastrous tsunami which struck Indonesia in 2004 as an act of divine punishment for the mixing of faiths and the laxity of religious observance. On that occasion, this religious interpretation was reportedly corroborated by a sign as the name of Allah, written in Arabic characters, appeared in the ocean waves (Interview 13, Ribnovo 2005).

Picked up from a religious magazine, the story of Allah’s name in the waves suggests that modern forms of proselytizing are being incorporated into “Adat Islam” under the influence of foreign religious press published in Bulgaria.

5.1.1  Elements of Ritual Practices from the Orthodox Christian Calendar in the Religious Life of the Pomaks

The practices described in this section as well as the memories of practices past suggest that a sphere of shared rites used to exist in a not too distant past between the Christians and the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims in the region. Although this relates to religious practices closely connected with Orthodox Christian holidays (except for the Peperuda), the practices are disconnected from their theological and doctrinal meaning. They take place outside of church space, unsupervised by the clergy, and they seem related not so much to Christian cult as to the agricultural customs or what might be called the “agricultural ethos”²⁶⁹. As such, they should not be treated as symptoms of religious syncretism among the Pomaks; instead, they represent the most enduring ritual habits to survive the local population’s conversion to Islam.

Conversion to Islam did not result in an instantaneous and automatic break with old rituals and beliefs. The decline of such practices is gradual, progressing in tandem with the growing religious consciousness of the Pomaks and their need to remain distinct from their Christian neighbours. Today, such practices tend to be referred to in the past tense. Where they survive in isolated cases, they are unmoored from a broader context and practised by individuals in a rudimentary format. Far more prevalent among other Polmaks is a generalised tendency to reject all rites which may be shared with Bulgarians as contrary to Sunni Islam (with the exception of the healing practice of sleeping in churches). A significant role in this break with old non-Muslim practices is played by young reformist hodzhas who seek to reform the local “Adat Islam”. Perhaps this waning is compounded by the fact that Christians view the existence of such practices in the daily life of the Pomaks as evidence of their crypto-Christian identity, an interpretation the Pomaks reject.

A comprehensive list of all ritual practices past and present as practised by both religious groups falls outside the scope of this book, nor do I describe those ritual practices which were not mentioned by my respondents but are, or used to be, characteristic of a given religious feast²⁷⁰. I am not interested in the Peperuda, Trifon Zarezan, Blagowets or Gergiovden as such: my focus is instead on the meanings and interpretations which accrue to such occasions in the thinking of my respondents, which I seek to analyze in the context of religious syncretism and anti-syncretism. I seek to illustrate those problems using examples provided by my respondents.

I collected the material about the Peperuda (“butterfly”) rite in an interview conducted in Leshten in September 2006, where I asked whether the local community practiced a kurban against hail and drought²⁷¹. The respondents said they no longer did, but in the past both the Muslims and the Christians used to hold Peperuda rites. A married couple from Leshten²⁷² said that the Christians continued to practice the rite until 1994, and a Muslim man from Dryanovo named Shukri said that Muslims continued to practice it until as recently as fifteen years ago (Interview 38).

The Peperuda does not have a fixed date in the calendar but is generally practiced in spring or summer in connection with the holidays of the season, such as St. Jeremy’s Day (1 May), St. Athanas’s Day (2 May), St. Nichola’s Day (9 May) and Gergiovden and Enyovden (Blgarska… 1994, p. 254). Donka of Leshten argues that moon phases play a role as well:

D.: In this case, Shukri [addresses directly Shukri, another respondent – M.L.], when there is a full moon or when the moon is gone completely. (W, Ch, Interview 38, Leshten 2006)

The practices involved in this rite mostly include imitation magic accompanied by imploration for rain (Wakarelski [Vakarelski] 1965, p. 304). The central role in this rite is played by an orphan girl²⁷³ aged 10-13, clothed in greenery (leaves, sprigs of lilac, etc). According to Michail Arnaudov, the ritual costume in the Gotse Delchev region also included a bone from an unknown grave and three to four live frogs (Arnaudov 1971, p. 176). As the peperuda, the girl would then circle the village in the company of other girls (peperudarki) singing songs calling for rain (God is also addressed in the rainmaking implorations).

According to accounts of Christians from Leshten, the rite would begin in the church. Whe priest would lead the girl clothed in green out of the church and indicate the direction of the procession (Interview 38, Leshten 2006), but the procession should generally turn to the right as this is a “blessed” direction “according to custom” (Interview 38, Leshten 2006).

Participation of clergy in such practices is somewhat surprising, especially given the fact that this particular rite proved to be the least acceptable to the Orthodox Church, as Hristo Vakarelski points out (Wakarelski [Vakarelski] 1965, p. 304). In exchange, the clergy introduced so-called pokrsti/krstonoshe ceremony, in which people walk in procession with a cross. Days of the Cross are held after the May and June devotions, which, too, have lost much of their popularity (cf. Wakarelski [Vakarelski] 1965, p. 304).

In the Muslim community, where religious elites were not involved in the rite, the custom was slightly different in that the Peperuda would leave a private house rather than the mosque. After that, respondents said, the rite looked the same; the girl would go from house to house in the company of other children, receiving various gifts (such as socks or handkerchiefs):

M.L.: Could you compare those two? Because I know nothing about it. How do you [the Muslims] celebrate that, and how do you [the Christian]? Are there any differences?

Woman D.: It’s almost the same.

Shukri: Well, I don’t know. With us, they first dress up an orphan girl.

D.: Yes, exactly, yes.

Sh.: Then they dress her in a special costume and they go from house to house singing a song, Sitna liyatna rositsa [Fine summer dew]²⁷⁴.

D.: Exactly.

Man Sh.: They sing with her, and other girls… The whole group walks from house to house. They receive gifts. And if they collect any money, this money is given to the orphan girl. And they sing, and they wait. When the rain comes, it comes. (W, Ch; M, M, Interview 38, Leshten 2006)

Shukri adds that passers-by would catch frogs and keep them with their feet aimed downwards in another rainmaking practice (Interview 38, Leshten 2006).

Although those examples are fragmentary and do not provide a comprehensive reconstruction of the rite, I believe they are an important reconstruction attempt, especially occuring as it does in a mixed religious group.

It would have been interesting to compare their collective reconstruction with actual ethnographical observations of the rite as practiced by each of the religious groups. Particularly, it would be interesting to know whether the songs in the Muslim variant made the same kind of references to God²⁷⁵ as those in the Christian variant, or would they have been modified and adapted – disappointingly, this question can be no longer answered through direct observation.

Other rites practised by both groups follow the cycle of Orthodox Christian holidays, however in different communities the same ritual practices may fall on a different holiday taking place at a similar time, coinciding with the same natural cycle of seasonal change. For instance, the custom of sweeping the house clean and burning the sweepings in front of the house to protect it from snakes, lizards and fleas is practiced in early spring, at a time when such pests are emerge from their hiding places: on Baba Marta²⁷⁶ (1 March), on the Day of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (9 March) or Blagovets (the Feast of Annunciation, 25 March).

The Pomaks of Ribnovo sweep their houses clean and burn their rubbish on the Day of the Forty Martyrs²⁷⁷, which they refer to as Sisvet. The name is probably derived from the name of the feast in Bulgarian, chetirisi svettsi²⁷⁸ (where the last syllable of the word “forty” and the first syllable of the word “saints” combine to form the word Sisvet). Over time, the origin of this abbreviation was forgotten and is not known to its users today, including the hodzha of Ribnovo (Interview 10), who pointed out that the Muslims of Ribnovo were unfamiliar with the origins of the term but misinterpreted it himself as a reference to All Saints’ Day (Vsi Svetii), a feast celebrated on 14 June in the Orthodox calendar (too late to hold rites connected with the early springtime stirrings of the natural world). Although the hodzha was trying to influence the inhabitants of Ribnovo to break off with this practice, he became nostalgic about his childhood, when his own mother celebrated the custom:

M.L.: What about Sisvet?

Hodzha 1: All Saints’ Day. All the people get up in the morning. My mother used to do that, and all my sisters had to do that… I was the youngest, mother would tell my sisters to sweep everything clean, starting with the attic and ending on the ground floor, to sweep everything all the way to the entrance to get rid of the trash. The trash that wouldn’t burn was thrown away. The trash that burned, it would be burnt in front of the… In the yard, or by the garden, so that the smoke that wafts through the house… To stop the vipers, the lizards, the snakes from bothering you at home. It’s actually true, if you burn nothing but those sweepings those animals won’t bother you in that year, and you won’t come across them on meadows. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Such “unwelcome guests” are also chased away by ringing bells (or metal objects) throughout the house and yard, and by jumping over a fire. Certain formulas accompany the rites. The Turkish woman of Dabnitsa (see below) does that twice a year – on Blagovets and Gergiovden, celebrated on 6 May, at the turn of spring and summer), saying the words: Gyule²⁷⁹, gyule mandalitse, ti na pole ya na brdo, gyule, gyule mandalitse ti na brdo, ya na pole²⁸⁰:

Turkish W.: people are very busy these days. Nonetheless, we still celebrate it all, write, you don’t even take out your sewing needle. The day before you have to make banitsa with cabbage. In the morning you get up, keep the house. You take out the blankets, sprinkle them, use the mothballs and put it all away. Right, from the beginning, to this day I take a milk can. I have a fear of snakes, so I bang the can all over the house. I start with the attic, I come downstairs, banging away. I even come out of the house, I light a fire, because I saw my mother doing this. I light a fire in front of my door, and I jump over the fire a few times, saying: Gyule, gyule mandalitse, ti na pole ya na brdo, gyule, gyule mandalitse ti na brdo, ya na pole. That’s what you do to drive snakes out of your house.

M.L.: Do you, Christians, do the same?

Man A.: We do the same thing, except that’s during Blagovets.

Turkish W.: Oh, I do that both on Blagovets and Gergiovden. (Turkish Woman, Muslim and Man A., Christian, Interview 45, Dabnitsa 2006)

It should be noted that this rite has a different significance for Turks then it does for Pomaks, because it is only in the former case that we are dealing with religious syncretism. The differences between the Turks and the Bulgarian Christians being more pronounced, the Turks are less intent on maintaining religious boundaries. Shohret, cited below, does not associate the word Blagovets with the Annunciation, however she treats this as a festive day on which blago (festive foods) are consumed. On that day, she eats banitsa with cabbage prepared beforehand, and she does not do any household chores.

Based on the respondents accounts, the conclusion seems to be that they celebrate the various customs and rites associated with Blagovets or Sisvet up to a point where they become identified as specifically Christian and contrary to their religion:

M.L.: Do you have that holiday, Sisvet?

F.: Yes, when Sisvet times I sweep the house clean, and we burn the trash in front of the house.

M.L.: Why?

F.: Because in the summer you could find, say, a bug in your flour, or some kind of beetle. On Sisvet we burn [a fire] in front of the house to make sure Allah protects us from this ... (W, M, Interview 12, Ribnovo 2005)

M.L.: Have you heard about a holiday called Sisvet?

Bula: We’ve been forbidden to do that…, We don’t celebrate this holiday. We only have the bayrams, Arfe and Friday. Those are Muslim holidays. (W, M, Interview 13, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha 2: Bayram is our holiday. The first bayram, the second bayram. That’s our holiday. (Interview 19, Ribnovo 2005)

Some Muslims also mentioned other days in the Orthodox Christian calendar which involved certain rites or practices. According to the hodzha of Ribnovo, the roots of vines should be covered with earth and dung in the period between Trifon Zarezan²⁸¹ (1 or 14 February) and Blagovets: performing such farm work after 25 March would result in a poor harvest. As the hodzha explains, his father adhered to this rule very strictly because it was tradition. He mentioned Christian families once living in Ribnovo, who he believes may have originated this custom:

M.L.: And what about Blagovets? What do the Muslims think about it? What is the point of that holiday?

Hodzha 1: Things related to Blagovets, that’s things like… Like, this is to do with some kind of restrictions, such as those relating to vines. When you hear about Trifon Zarezan, then you have to prune [your vines – M.L.] by Blagovets, you have to be finished covering the roots. If you go and cover the roots after Blagovets, the grape harvest will be poor, things like that. This is not really about celebrating anything, it’s just that some work should be performed within a certain period of time. And our people, older people, like my mother, my father, my grandfather… I remember my father a little, I was a young boy… About 14 years old, maybe 15, when he died. He didn’t forbid those things, in fact he encouraged us, because this was obviously a legacy from his father… his grandparents, I don’t know. And besides, many years ago there used to be… A former head of Ribnovo told me, he is an elderly man now… So, maybe there used to be some Christian families living here. Our head was a Christian, maybe all this is a legacy of that time…

M.L.: When was that?

H.M.: That was in earlier times… but I don’t know anything about this. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

The hodzha was not denying that his father synchronized his viticultural activity with Christian holidays, and that in doing so he was continuing an ancestral tradition. But unlike his father, who considered this sufficient grounds for performing the rite, the hodzha saw this criterion as immaterial. The other explanation (the influence of past Christian inhabitants of Ribnovo) is not clear: it is not clear whether this was an indigenous population which had resisted conversion to Islam or perhaps converted later than the rest of the families in Ribnovo, or perhaps they were migrants arriving from a different location. Notably, rites related to the agricultural ethos proved more long-lasting among the Pomaks than those related to Christianity. The rhythm of the agricultural rites continued to be tied to the Orthodox Christian calendar, however it should be noted that this calendar is divided into summer and winter seasons: the winter season begins on St. Dimitar’s Day (26 October), and the summer season begins on Gergiovden²⁸² (6 May).

Rites connected with Gergiovden seem to be particularly long-lasting among the Pomaks. In Bulgaria, St. George is considered as one of Bulgaria’s most important saints (Blgarska… 1994, p. 78), a protector of shepherds and their herds. His cult in South-Eastern Europe goes back to the 5th century, where Gergiovden is considered to be on a par with, if not actually higher than, Easter. As the saying goes, “Hubav den Velikden, oshte pohubav Gergiovden” (“Easter is a beautiful day, but Gergiovden is even more beautiful”) (Marinov 1994, p. 592). The holiday falls on the first day of summer, marking the start of the shepherding season.

In the words of Józef Obrbski (1905-1967), a Polish ethnographer, “As it stirs to life on St. George’s night, nature reaches a pinnacle of flourishing. On that festive night nature also becomes imbued with the magical power, and mystical sense of wonder, and the adats related to St. George’s Day deal primarily with the way people could harness that power for good or evil. On St. George’s Day the voices of all birds become dangerous – they can break people. All plants – herbs, grasses, flowers, trees and shrubs – gain a wonderful power, healing and magical in parts, which may be passed on to people, animals, objects. On that night, all kinds of magic rites become particularly potent. For this reason, St. George’s Night is the best time for engaging in practices of traditional medicine, magical or counter-magical” (Obrbski, p. 45).

Today, a blood sacrifice is made for St. George (unless the holiday falls on a Wednesday or a Friday, which are days of fasting) with the intention of securing good health. Until recently, most rites associated with this holiday were also connected with the well-being of farm animals (to boost their fertility and milk yields), but this aspect has waned in importance, at least in the Western Rhodopes. I heard that this is related to the abolition of the Shepherd’s Day [ Den na Ovcharya – my respondents claim that this was the name for the sixth of May celebrations in Communist Bulgaria].

Christians and Muslims mostly associate Gergiovden with health concerns relating to oneself and to one’s loved ones. The practices engaged in on that day are limited to making a kurban for the saint and sleeping in churches bearing his name. However, Muslims, including young ones, often remember many more rites being practised in their childhood. One of those was rolling in the morning dew before dawn on 6 May and gathering geraniums (zdravets) and other herbs for use in “healing” baths. There is an obvious semantic, and therefore symbolic, link between the Bulgarian name of geranium (zdravets) and the Bulgarian phrase “for health” (zdrave). Although the younger Muslims tend to reminisce about, rather than engage in, rites related to St. George’s Day, they seem to talk about them with affection. The hodzha is no exception, even though today he is working hard to eradicate any vestiges of those rituals from the Muslim community of Ribnovo. The hodzha remembers healing practices performed on Gergiovden such as rolling on meadows at dawn, gathering geraniums and using them in the healing bath:

Hodzha 1: As a child I didn’t know about Islam. I did whatever my mother told me to do. For instance, on Gergiovden, on the evening before Gergiovden, meaning 5 May, yes on the evening of the fifth, I would get ready to make sure I could wake up around five next morning to go before sunrise and roll on meadows for health. I would roll around a little bit, and then go gather geraniums. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Nefse, a Muslim woman from Breznitsa, still makes bundles of herbs and flowers on the eve of the holiday. She makes a separate bundle for every family member, tying a small identifying item (a bead, a coloured thread, etc.) to each bundle. Each bundle must contain an odd number of plants, and geraniums must be used (Interview 56, Breznitsa 2009).

On the same day, flower and herb bundles made by different women are carried to one place and kept the whole night in a dish filled with water. The following day the bundles are taken out, and the women sing songs of fortune-telling and good fortune (Interview 56, Breznitsa 2009).

Specific passages in each song are taken to apply to the owner of the bundle that’s being picked out of water while the words are being sung. This rite is similar to laduvane, a wedding fortune-telling rite where flower bundles and a ring are left overnight in “silent water”, and then used for fortune-telling by singing songs about marital happiness and the social standing of the married couple (Kalendarni… 2003, p. 46). This is how this practice is interpreted by a Christian woman of Garmen and a Turkish woman of Dabnitsa:

Turkish W.: We used to have very nice celebrations on Ederlezi, even in my own day. We used to gather together, as girls. We would take a pot, put it under a rose bush and place objects inside, distinctive things such as bracelets, we would leave everything in the pot. Then we would cover one woman’s eyes with a kerchief. She would poke around in the pot and pick out a person’s item, and we were singing a song, how do you call that?... “Mni, mni, mnila.”

M.: Fortune-telling.

T.W.: Yes. That’s right. You give auguries, say, you’ll get married this year, or that’s what your boyfriend will be like. (W, M, Interview 45, Dabnitsa 2009)

Sofiya from Garmen mistakenly believed that the custom was only practised by Christians²⁸³:

S.: Right, the flower bundles, once you’ve made them, you put them in a vessel filled with water and leave them overnight under a rose bush. In the morning, before sunrise, we gather and we go there all together. And one of them is a “shamarika”, she takes out the bundles and every woman recognises her own, and she says what’s going to happen. Whether it’s going to come true or not. You know, bachelor-related stuff. And on that day… She knows which bundle belongs to whom. When the fortune-telling is done, she takes the bundle. Then the next girl does the same, until all the bundles have been taken out, one for each girl. Those things are gone now…

M.L.: Was it just the Christians doing that, not the Muslims?

S.: Only the Christians. (Interview 33, Garmen 2006)

The practice of assigning a separate flower bundle to each member of the family, as Nefse does, may have evolved from this marriage fortune-telling custom, a local variation introduced in Breznitsa when girls of marriageable age (the original target group) had let the practice fall out of use.

The information about Gergiovden celebrations as shared by my respondents are fragmentary, out-of-context references to elements of certain rites. They generally identify the rites as connected with health concerns, neglecting to mention that the day is also important to shepherds and their herds: references to rites involving animals are sporadic and fail to explain the purpose of the rites, which was to prevent lactation problems and disease in cattle. The hodzha cited above only mentioned one health-related practice, the striking of cattle with green sticks (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005).

This rite used to be part of the ritual in which cattle was let out to pasture before sunrise. According to a Bulgarian folklorist Tatiana Angelova Koleva, this was often a stick of red hawthorn, believed to prevent the “stealing”²⁸⁴ of milk (cf. Koleva 1981, p. 52).

The Muslim woman of Ribnovo (cited below) mentions sprinkling milk over friends and unmarried young men and women swinging on swings. Although she was aware that Gergiovden was not a Muslim holiday she admitted that Muslims celebrated on that day, too:

F.: Well, listen to me now. Gergiovden is a holiday for Christians, not for us. But our people celebrate, too. Unmarried girls swing on swings, and people pour milk over each other on Gergiovden. Maids swing on swings. That’s what. (Interview 12, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha 1: Then boys and girls gather throughout the day, they hang swings from large trees and they swing all day long. They eat, they drink, they celebrate.

M.L.: Do Muslims and Christians celebrate together?

H.M.: There are no Christians around here, but we used to celebrate that.

M.L.: Even without the Christians?

H.M.: Even without the Christians. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Such statements confirm that Gergovdien practices unrelated to Christianity were performed both by Christians and Muslims. In fact, the latter often make no connection between the celebrations and St. George, or at least that was the case with some of the inhabitants of Ribnovo, who use a corrupted variant of the word, Gergiden.

The most robust Gergovdien-related custom in the area involves sleeping in churches named after St. George as a form of healing practice, which continues to be performed by Christians and Muslims alike.

5.1.2  Incubation in St. George’s Church in Hadzhidimovo

The monastery of St. George in Hadzhidimovo (formerly Turkish: Singartiya) enjoys a special reputation among the holy sites of the Western Rhodopes as Christians and Muslims come and spend the night in the church hoping to be healed. The practice can be engaged in throughout the year, however the place attracts the highest number of pilgrims on the evening of 5 May, the night before Gergiovden, believed to be a time imbued with particular hierophantic and healing powers. With the exception of hodzhas²⁸⁵, practically all of the people I spoke to admitted to having sought healing in that place at some point in their lives.

According to a legend narrated to me by the daughter of a former local priest, Trifon Semetchiev, the monastery was built on a field belonging to a Turkish owner after a miraculous icon of St. George was found in the ground. A chapel was built, followed by a church. The church burned down some 130 years later, but the icon was saved from the flames. Reportedly, Lyudmila Zhivkova arrived at the scene and helped procure building materials for the reconstruction. As a matter of general policy, however, the Communist government otherwise sought to obstruct the church’s operations and made life difficult for the pilgrims and the local clergy (Interview 32, Hadzhidimovo 2005).

Today, the brick church remains unfinished. The church faces a courtyard flanked by a monastery providing accommodation to monks²⁸⁶ and pilgrims. In the middle of the courtyard opposite the church there is a spring whose water is believed to have healing powers. I have also seen Muslims using the water for rinsing their faces.

The pilgrims arriving in this place believe that, irrespective of one’s religion, healing can be obtained here from a variety of ailments both physical (paralysis, muteness, deafness, blindness and sterility) and mental²⁸⁷ (madness, sleepwalking), as well as less serious problems, such as bedwetting in children.

The visitors did not know how far back in time the custom went: they explained that it was a legacy of the earlier generations, practised even under the Communist regime in Bulgaria, and that it had always been open to people of different religions.

According to custom, the decision whether to seek healing from a priest, a hodzha or a doctor can be resolved by means of a fortune-telling rite in which three marked needles are left overnight in a cup or a vessel filled with water; help should be sought from the party whose needle turns rusty:

Eymi: See now, let’s say I’m sick, I go to a doctor, he can’t help me, I visit a hodzha, he can’t help me either. So I go to a certain older woman, and she casts lead for me. And she says, “You take three needles, and put them in a coffee cup, just make sure the cup stands in moonlight. Put it on the windowsill and leave it sitting there overnight. The next day examine the needles, and see which one is rusty. You mark those needles [beforehand]: black thread for the doctor, white thread for the hodzha, red thread for the priest. Whichever needle turns rusty, that’s where you need to get help. If it says “priest”, you seek help from the priest. (W, M, Interview 57, Hadzhidimovo 2009)

I heard that explanation several times from different people. When the needle with the red thread turns rusty, this can be interpreted as a suggestion that a priest should be consulted (the priest will write down a prayer on a piece of paper, which is then worn around the neck as a talisman²⁸⁸), or that one should get a night’s “healing sleep” in a church. The threads are not essential, needles of different lengths can also be used:

Temenuzhka: You take three needles and you name them. The first one’s for the priest, the second’s for a hodzha, in any place you like.

M.L.: Meaning, it has to be an actual name of a priest or a hodzha?

Eymi: Yes. Exactly. You can take a bigger needle and a smaller one, or you can mark them with threads to tell them apart. In the evening you put them in water in some container. You put them in, and in the morning they turn rusty. Whichever needle turns rusty, that’s where you need to go. (W, M, Interview 58, Hadzhidimovo 2009)

As part of participant observation in Hadzhidimovo on 5-6 May 2009 I tried to establish the exact practices which are engaged in, or avoided by, the Muslims. According to my observation they did not leave the church for the vechernya²⁸⁹, however they just listened without taking an active part. They did not make the sign of the cross when the Christians did, they did not bow in prayer or pray aloud, and they did not join in the singing of songs. On the other hand, they chose to refrain from attending the liturgy held on 6 May (this observation was confirmed by Metropolitan Natanail and Archimandrite Grigoriy).

The difference between the Vespers and the liturgy on the following day is that the vechernya does not include the taking of Communion, which is the centerpiece of the liturgy on 6 May. This would suggest that Muslims avoid the liturgy because they realize it celebrates an event rejected by Islam, namely the death on the Cross and resurrection of Christ (Lubanska 2009b).

Inasmuch as possible I tried to ask Muslims about their motivations and ritual practices in Hadzhidimovo. However, it was not possible to interview everyone, and my choice of respondents was rather arbitrary, based as it was on the criterion of attire²⁹⁰, by which I identified the Muslims in the crowd. I did not record all of my interviews. On occasion, I would quickly approach someone engaged in a ritual practice (such as a Muslim woman offering a lamb before the icon of St. George) and ask a few quick questions, writing the answers in a notebook. The interviews in Hadzhidimovo tended to be the shortest of my conversations in this book, some of them lasting for about five minutes. When asked about their motivations in coming to Hadzhidimovo, one Muslim woman mentioned the human condition, where one God stands above all:

E.: We are all the same. God made us this way, some are small, some are big, slim or fat, or lame. You need religion to keep harmony among people. Not like when each person only thinks about themselves. (W, M, Interview 58, Hadzhidimovo 2009)

Others explained that they slept (Bulgarian: prespivane) in churches when they suspected that they have been afflicted by Christian/“giaour” jinn:

Sh.: What’s a person to do when a giaour dzhin has got you [she is arguing with a hodzha, saying that in such cases there is no other choice but to get help from non-coreligionists – M.L.] (W, M, Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

Sleeping in churches seems to be the most important of all the healing practices. Almost all of my respondents had an unwavering faith in its effectiveness. According to some, the practice must be performed on the night of 5 May for three consecutive years in order to be effective. Some notice that hodzhas are currently trying to ban the practice:

Fatme: The hodzha won’t let us go there. The hodzha says that coming to that place does us no good at all.

M.L.: Why is that?

F.: He says we should only pray to Allah. Pray only to Allah. (Interview 12, Ribnovo 2005)

Frederik W. Hasluck traced the origins of sleeping in churches to the fact that pilgrims often had no alternative accommodation, and the fact that healing powers were often considered to be at their most effective on the night before a holiday (Hasluck 2005, p. 694). Hasluck calls the practice “incubation”: “in the wider sense … incubation²⁹¹ means sleeping in a holy place with the intention of receiving some desired communication from the numen supposed to inhabit the holy place” (Hasluck 2005, p. 689). Those communications included healing, but also prophecy²⁹² or conceiving children²⁹³ (e.g. women sleeping in the cave of the Seven Sleepers in Tarsus) (Hasluck 2005, p. 268). Some of my female respondents said they refrained from falling asleep in churches for fear of missing their prophecy.

The members of clergy I spoke to, the Metropolitan of Nevrokop (Gotse Delchev) (Interview 62) and Archimandrite Grigoriy (Interview 27) trace this custom back to night vigils during which the faithful used to pray to God and sing akathists²⁹⁴. In the absence of competent leadership, the vigils turned with time into the practice of sleeping in the church.

Gergiovden is a popular time for incubation not only in Hadzhidimovo, but also in other local churches named after St. George or other saints.

This practice is not limited to Bulgaria, and can be found in other countries of South-Eastern Europe. Glenn Bowman, who conducted his research in Macedonia, noted that the day after Gergiovden Muslims came to the Church of St. Nicholas in Makedonski Brod with its tomb of the Muslim holy figure of Hidir Baba or Khidr, the hero of stories reminiscent of the Christian stories of St. Nicholas (Bowman 2010, p. 201). Some engage in the practice for healing purposes, others do it in order to venerate the saint (Bowman 2010, p. 206). The Polish anthropologist, Karolina BieleninLenczowska mentions another shared place of cult in Macedonia, the monastery of St. Jovan Bigorski, in which Muslims as well as Christians have been known to experience healing (Bielenin-Lenczowska 2009, p. 49–50). Healings of people practising other religions are a popular element of local legends about miraculous places.

***

I consider the Muslim practice of incubating in St. George’s Church in Hadzhidimovo as a symptom of superficial syncretism in that it does not involve adapting the cult of St. George or Muslim participation in the church ritual. Although the Muslims do take part in some of the practices, they always emphasize that such involvement is selective and incomplete. I agree with Glen Bowman²⁹⁵ that we are dealing with sharing certain practices or locations rather than with true syncretism, especially given that it does not involve changes to religious identity (cf. Bowman 2010, p. 208).

In the light of my material, Muslims have a sense of a distinct religious identity. They discuss it openly, and it leads them to limit their participation in Christian rites. In some cases, the boundaries defining things which are “not done” were fluid, and seemingly self-imposed by individuals. Where one person might categorically reject a certain practice as being incompatible with Islam, another person might engage in it, believing it to be similar to certain Islamic rites. This is the case of the kurban offered by a Muslim woman in Hadzhidimovo on Gergiovden:

M.L.: Do you pray in front of Sv. Georgi?

Woman A.: Well, we do pray… U-huh. All of your Bulgarians leave their kurban there, cooking the kurban, eating, drinking.

Man H.: She’s referring to us… You’re confusing everything… You’re in too much of a rush [rebuking Aksime – M.L.]. We don’t do any of this. We go, we sleep, we pay, we leave a lev each.

A.: And I make a kurban. (Muslims, Interview 29, Satovcha 2006)

While the Muslims do not took part in the liturgy or receive Communion, ritual-like behaviours such as like kissing the icons or lighting candles remain a matter of dispute to, at least some of the Muslims:

M.L.: When you come there, do you light candles?

Man H.: No, we don’t light candles, no…

Woman A.: We did.

H.: But we shouldn’t. You shouldn’t light candles. You shouldn’t, no ...

A.: We have white candles. Yours are yellow. Ours are white.

M.L.: What do you mean, white?

A.: White…

M.L.: You light candles…?

H.: Thick ones. Same as your people.

A.: There was a time when we had no electricity in the mosque, and we did that.

M.L.: When was that?

H.: But that was for lighting, and these are used in churches.

M.L.: And did you bring those white candles for Sv. Georgi?

A.: We did. (Muslims, Interview 29, Satovcha 2006)

The fact that Muslims do not light candles does not mean that they do not bring them into the church:

D.: We don’t light them. We mustn’t do that.

M.L.: So you don’t?

D.: So we didn’t. We don’t do that sort of thing. We would leave them unlit. Just so they’re there. (W, M, Interview 4, Ribnovo 2005)

Some of the Muslim visitors claimed they never kissed icons, others admitted to making an exception for certain icons, mostly those depicting religious figures recognized in Islam, such as ‘Isa and Mary/Maryam (local Muslim variant: Miryem, Turkish: Meryem), before which some Muslims may light candles or leave coins. Kissing the icon of St. George or lighting candles in front of it remains problematic. Some of my female respondents argued that St. George was one of the acceptable icons, others disagreed:

M.L.: Do you pray here?

Eymi: Well, we are Muslims.

M.L.: You just sleep here?

E.: Oh, yes. We come to Miryem [as pronounced in the local dialect – M.L.] That’s right. We kiss her and we stay there.

M.L.: The icon… Is it just Miryem?

Temenuzhka: Oh, yes, you need to kiss other icons as well, you need to kiss them.

M.L.: And do you light candles?

E.: And you might light a candle. Lighting candles is not quite all right in our case, but those who want to, let them do what they like.

M.L.: But you don’t kiss the icon of Sv. Georgi?

T.: No. Because we’re Muslims. (W, M, Interview 58, Hadzhidimovo 2009)

Woman 7: We light candles.

M.L.: Before all the icons or...?

K.: Before Sv. Georgi and Miryem.

M.L.: Only those two?

K.: Us Muslims, yes, I don’t know about the others ..

M.L.: You light candles. Do you kiss the icons or not?

K.: Those who want to kiss them, do.

M.L.: Is it ever the case that Muslims who leave candles also kiss icons?

K.: Those who want to kiss them, do. (W, M. Interview 60, Hadzhidimovo 2009)

Muslims lighting candles in church had also been seen by Archimandrite Grigoriy, who spent several years working in Hadzhidimovo (Interview 27). Some of my Christian female respondents reported that their Muslim female friends would sometimes ask them to light a candle “for health” on their behalf.

Unlike Christians, the Pomaks refrain from making the sign of the cross (nor do they ever cross themselves in front of icons), and they do not bring loaves of bread into the church for blessing. Christians put such loaves containing slips of paper with prayer intentions in front of the iconostasis, and then hand them out in front of the church as part of a healing ritual. Like Christians, Muslims bring into the church clothes of friends or relatives who could not come to the monastery. It would appear that the clothes - as with people - can “incubate” in churches, and are believed to have a healing power when worn after spending a night inside the church. As far as I know, the Muslims keep such clothes with them instead of placing them in front of icons or hanging them from a crucifix. Clothes, as well as household objects and money, can also be brought as gifts. One Muslim woman I met said that those were gifts for St. George:

Woman A.: Well, then. When we went to Sveti Georgi, I took a shirt for him, I took some socks for him…

Man H.: Yes. Household items, some clothes. You can take some money as well. But candles are not permitted to Muslims. (Muslims, Interview 29, Satovcha 2005)

Popular votive gifts include towels or even bedsheets that have been slept in in a church.

Although some Muslims do make a connection between Hadzhidimovo and St. George, the saint seems to be of secondary importance to Muslims, who are motivated primarily by a belief in the efficacy of the healings taking place in the church.

Only Christians shared stories which were specifically about St. George. The Muslims did not invoke any Muslim saint to explain the healing powers of the place, even though such dual-cult practices are characteristic of many holy places in SouthEastern Europe (cf. Hasluck 2005; Bowman²⁹⁶ 2010, Hayden 2002, 2013). In view of Hasluck’s findings, potential candidates could include Khidr and Ilyas together with Sari Saltik, with whom St. George was identified. However, only two of my Muslim respondents referred to the holiday by its Muslim name, Ederlezi (etymologically derived from the names of Khidr and Ilyas, two Muslim saints), explaining that the holiday fell on the same day as Gergiovden, or that it was actually the Muslim name for Gergiovden:

I.: In Islam, two men are mentioned, Hizr [Khidr – M.L.] and Ilyas. According to some stories, they met on that day. Theologically speaking, they are men, because there are no saints in Islam. There are people who have lived good religious lives, and the Highest has raised them a step higher. They don’t die, they live in a different dimension. The same applies to Isa, Jesus. According to Islam, Jesus didn’t die, he wasn’t crucified. He was raised to the second heaven. (Muslim, Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009)

Angel: Okay, so why is it called Ederlez?

Turkish W.: Because everything turns green. Winter ends, and spring comes. (Muslim, W, Interview 45, Dabnitsa 2006)

However, beyond this fragmentary information such statements failed to contribute more to my research. There were no stories about the two Muslim saints or their potential connection with the healings at Hadzhidimovo. There seems to be no symbolic rivalry over the figure of the saint or the sanctity of the holy place, probably because the Muslims visiting the monastery are Sunnis, not Bektashis. Unlike the latter, who recognize a rich pantheon of Islamic saints similar to that of Christianity, the Sunnis only recognize those figures which are mentioned in the Qur’an (like ‘Isa or Maryam, but not St. George). Unlike the Bektashis, who are receptive to the idea of there being many ways to salvation (a belief which results in a more syncretic attitude towards other religions),²⁹⁷ the Sunnis believe that salvation can only be achieved inside Sunni Islam. In the case of Hadzhidimovo, I suppose Muslims are less interested in St. George than in the healing properties of the location itself – the popularity of the place depends predominantly on its reputation for producing healings:

M.L.: Generally speaking, do you believe in Sveti Georgi?

Woman 5: We do, how could we not? They are one and the same for Muslims and Christians. We don’t know exactly who Sveti Georgi is. (Muslims, Interview 57, Hadzhidimovo 2009)

This indifference to the figure of St. George does not apply equally to all Muslims, some of whom personally offer lambs in front of his icon displayed in front of the entrance of the church. Importantly, getting healing sleep in the church and offering lambs are seen as two different things. As one Muslim woman explained, “That depends on the promise you’ve made… I promised to offer a lamb. Somebody else might have promised to spend the night here” (unrecorded interview). Those unable to offer a lamb of their own can make a symbolic donation to the church, usually 10 levs, asking for the intention to be written down, and then offer a lamb previously offered by another person. Such lambs are kept in a small pen in the church courtyard, looked after by specially appointed men who give out lambs to people who have made donations. When the lamb has been offered to the icon, it is returned and put back in the pen, to be given to another “donor”. When the lamb is being offered, another man holds its head, making it touch the icon St. George (specifically, St. George’s horse) three times. When I asked about the meaning of offering a lamb to St. George, the people I asked explained that they did this for healing purposes: “If you offer something to St. George, he might give you health in return”. This suggests that the rite operates on the universal principle of do ut des as described by Marcel Mauss.

***

According to Robert M. Hayden, interactions taking place in a holy place between vistors of different religions are peaceful until one group is convinced of its dominance or both are subject to an overriding power (Hayden 2013, p. 324; 2002; 2014). However, disturbances to this power relationship provoke a sense of threat or even hostility in the other group sharing the place, which may become appropriated or destroyed (Hayden 2002, p. 205; 2013, p. 324, Hayden, Walker 2013, p. 402;). As Hayden writes, “Obviously if people are living intermingled they ‘tolerate’ each other, in the sense of not trying to drive each other away. Yet this does not necessarily mean that they thereby have a ‘tradition of tolerance’ in which they respect each other’s beliefs. They may instead be constrained from expressing hostility against each other” (Hayden 2013, p. 323). Hayden refers to this phenomenon as “antagonistic tolerance”, derived from the Lockean negative concept of “enduring the presence of the other but not embracing it as long as one group is clearly dominant over others” (Hayden, Walker 2013, p. 402). This kind of tolerance is a product of necessity, underpinned by constant vigilance which leads to acts of violence as soon as the power relationship gets thrown off its former balance.

Hayden writes that his research model is inspired by his reading of Hasluck and “explains long-term patterns of relationship between members of groups which identify themselves and each other as Self and Other communities, differentiated primarily on the basis of religion, residing in close proximity or even intermingled but rarely intermarrying” (Hayden, Walker 2013, p. 401). This is a thesis I cannot entirely agree with, unless we replace the term “antagonistic tolerance” with Hayden’s original and subsequently discarded coinage, “agonistic tolerance”²⁹⁸ (Hayden 2002, 2013). The concept of agonistic tolerance implies two aspects of coexistence which become noticeable in a religiously mixed environment: 1) agonicity or rivalry between religious groups over prestige and recognition²⁹⁹, and, less obviously but more poignantly, 2) agony, in the sense of a reminder that the religious tolerance developed by coexisting groups should never be taken for granted and, given the wrong geopolitical circumstances, might easily come to an end with disastrous consequences. Muslims and Christians in the Rhodopes appear to be aware of this possibility when they share stories of their past conflicts (namely the massacres occurring at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century). Many of their behaviors, such as the apparently syncretic religious practices or good relations between neighbours, are largely calculated to maintain that awareness. Tolerance is not a given: it is a task requiring care and committment on both sides. The term “agonistic tolerance” is also preferable to “antagonistic tolerance” in that it is more inclusive: it does not presuppose a negative affect towards the Other but rather a more general attitude of social actors in a multiconfessional milieu struggling to maintain religious autonomy. Moreover, agonistic relations between religions may also occur between groups which tolerate each other in Mill’s sense of “embracing the Other” (Hayden 2013, p. 323; Hayden, Walker 2013, p. 400).

For instance, the dervish custodians and administrators of “holy places” described by Hasluck did not promote antagonistic tolerance. The takeover of Christian religious sites was an obvious statement of dominance, but that does not imply that their tolerance and recognition of Christianity were insincere, especially since their pro-syncretic religious doctrine treated Christianity as one of the ways to salvation (Hayden 2013, p. 323).

In my opinion, the term “antagonistic tolerance” needlessly restricts the range of emotions and scenarios characterizing interactions in a mixed religious environment. Unlike antagonism, which presupposes hostility, agonicity can be fueled by various forms of social sentiment. I agree with Hayden that the nature of such agonicity can be fruitfully studied by examining the phenomenon of “competitive sharing” in shared holy sites, which should be treated as “indicators of political dominance, or challenges to it” (Hayden 2013a, p. 413). At the same time, our analyses should not disregard exceptions and atypical situations. How can the concept of antagonistic tolerance account for a situation in which Muslims make financial contributions to build a church (a practice known in the Ottoman Empire as waqf)? My fieldwork in Bulgaria yielded many stories of Turkish donators who funded the construction of churches to express gratitude for miraculous healings, or graves of Turks buried in a Christian monastery. Obviously, such stories cannot always be relied on as straightforward historical evidence, but they do raise concerns about the accuracy of modelling religious dynamics according to the concept of antagonistic tolerance.

In this context it is worth mentioning another writer on this subject, Galina Valtchinova, who studies the religious cult in Krastova Gora in Bulgaria. Valtchinova points out that the sharing of a holy place by different religious groups is possible “as long as the unmediated contact with the divine prevails and is experienced as an inclusive moment … But the place regularization – and especially the introduction or multiplication of institutional intermediaries – is a step toward the exclusion of the other” (Valtchinova 2012, p. 87). Glenn Bowman’s most recent publications seem to be develop similar ideas, emphasizing the influence of the institutional religious authorities on the poetics of holy places: “Here too the role of religious authorities – and those who claim to be religious authorities – in various sites differs widely, and can – sometimes depending on the respect accorded them, or not, by local populations – either open sites to diversity … or purge them of all but those they deem orthodox (Bowman 2012, p. 5).

These insights seem accurate. Much depends on the attitude of concrete religious elites towards syncretic religious practices, including the cult of shared holy places. After all, elites tend to be specialists in cultural objectivisation. It is worth asking, do such elites share a uniform worldview? Who is the significant Other in opposition to whom they define themselves? Where do their ideological inspirations come from? How do geopolical changes affect their attitudes towards non-coreligionists? I believe that it is more promising to take a closer look at religious elites than to look for a universal model³⁰⁰ to explain relations between religious groups who recognize the same holy places. In the case of the Western Rhodopes it seems that the elite representing “Adat Islam” favors it, or at least find a precedent which warrants it; elites connected with “Salafi Islam”, who shape their religious identity in opposition to Ottoman and Christian influence, tend to view them unfavorably and have an anti-syncretic attitude.

5.2  “Salafi Islam”

The term “Salafi Islam” is not an emic category: Muslims in the Rhodopes use the term “pure Islam” (chist islyam) instead, thus essentializing Islam as a certain ideal form of belief and religious practice, free from heterodoxy and religious syncretism. In their opinion, “pure Islam” is the form of Islam practised in the seventh century, whose essence remains enshrined in the Qur’an and the Sunnah; today, this form of Islam is adhered to most closely in Saudi Arabia, and can be adapted locally in Bulgaria. According to Salafi-oriented Muslims, the same form of Islam should be practised worldwide. They tend to dismiss “Adat Islam”, a form of belief which they wish to reform by purging it of accretions contrary to the Sunnah, which they referred to as bid‘ah³⁰¹. Negative attitudes of Salafi Muslims towards liberal culture seem to play a major formative role in the emergence of “Salafi Islam”.

5.2.1  Attitudes Towards “Adat Islam”

Salafi Muslims in the Western Rhodopes do not believe in many paths to salvation in Allah, claiming instead that “pure Islam” offers the only way to achieve salvation.

The attitudes of young hodzhas towards religious syncretism are reminiscent of the German clergy in the 17th and 18th centuries, who saw syncretism as a dangerous blend of pure tradition and external impurities. In this light, the hodzhas perceive all religions and traditions other than the ideal form of Islam as contaminations resulting from religious syncretism. As Charles Stewart notes, “wherever syncretism occurs, or has occurred, it is usually accompanied by a parallel discourse which might be termed meta-syncretic: the commentary, and registered perceptions of [social – M.L.] actors as to whether amalgamation has occurred and whether this is good or bad” (Stewart 2005, p. 282). In simpler terms, syncretism provokes a discussion among religious elites. In this section I give an account of the specific aspects of this discussion among the local hodzhas and educated Muslims.

According to this group, “Adat Islam” contains many accretions which are alien Islam. This attitude, which goes against the Hanafi school of Islam popular in the Ottoman Empire, is reminiscent of Protestants objections to the corrupting excesses of folk Catholicism. They are critical of what they perceive as a number of errors in “Adat Islam” corrupting the Sunnah³⁰², i.e. the form of religious practice taught by the prophet Muhammad. They are similarly critical of other forms of Islam which depart from their understanding of the religion, such as Sufi brotherhoods.

This attitude is more characteristic of Wahhabi Islam, with an understanding of Islam so narrow that its adherents “would not even consider Islam’s mystics or other sects to be proper Muslims” (Ahmed 2007, p. 71).

The elites which shape “Salafi Islam” criticized the post-Ottoman nature of “Adat Islam”, arguing that it has been shaped by traditions passed down unthinkingly from generation to generation³⁰³, often departing from their narrow vision of Islamic orthodoxy:

Hodzha 1: Back then [in the times of the Prophet Muhammad – M.L.] Muslims were very devoted to Allah. Today things are very different. There are more Muslims who are religious as a matter of tradition, not conviction. These are two very different things, to be a Muslim out of conviction or because you inherited the religion. Two different things. Here in Ribnovo, you might say that seventy or eighty per cent of the people obey the tradition. My mum is a Muslim, and I am a Muslim, but this is far removed from the proper form of Islam. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Salafi Muslims believe that their religious practices are rooted in a tradition which is far more ancient than those of the older generation in the Western Rhodopes because it survives unchanged since the times of the prophet Muhammad³⁰⁴. Consequently, they would like to see their tradition replace the adats in the local community. They compare Muhammad to a mirror in which all Muslims can see their reflection:

Hodzha 1: Because Muhammad is our mirror, there is nobody else. There is no imam, no Islamic scholar who can be a mirror to the Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad is our mirror. And we must be like him in terms of how we serve with our bodies, how we behave, how we say our prayers. We have do things like he did them. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

According to Sunni Islam, the Sunnah, which together with the Qur’an forms the legitimate and normative source of faith, comprises all of the teachings (hadiths) and practices of Muhammad:

Hodzha 3: I can add something about abdest. One day when the Prophet was doing his abdest, he said, “Allah told me to do abdest”. And he showed how to do it. The second time he performed the abdest twice. When he washed the parts of his body twice he said, “This is how you perform the abdest, the reward for which is double”. And when he washed them the third time… Meaning, three times, he said, “This is the abdest of peygambers and of all the Prophets, for which the reward shall be greatest”. Meaning, he showed people how to perform abdest.

M.L.: And Muhammad was shown that by Dzhibrail?

Hozdha 3: Of course. He showed him many things. How to say the prayers, how to perform the abdest. He corrected his mistakes and listen to him learning the Qur’an. In every Ramadan month³⁰⁵, once in every year, he came during the month of Ramadan and listened to him studying the Qur’an. And he corrected his mistakes if there were any problems. (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

The reform-minded hodzhas contrast the local form of Islam, which they perceive as “corrupt”, with the Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, allegedly a perfect reconstruction of the original religious practices of the prophet Muhammad:

Hodzha 1: But the Arabs have a different order from us, and we realize that, and many young people realize that because they read books, but we can’t introduce this to the older people because they don’t have this knowledge, and we might end up with contradictions on our hands. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Adapting Arabic models to a Bulgarian setting might be seen as a form of religious syncretism, a problem I only mention briefly and in passing because the focus of the book is on the processes of religious synthesis between Islam and Orthodox Christianity in the Western Rhodopes.

Similar processes have been observed in different parts of the world, e.g. by Mariane Ferme in the Mende community in Kpuawala (Sierra Leone), where one of the imams after making a pilgrimage to Mecca “he had worked to make religious and ritual practices in Kpuawala conform to his ideal of ‘good’ Muslim behavi[ou] r in the larger Islamic world, and particularly in what he saw as its conceptual and spatial centre – ‘Mecca’” (Ferme 1994, p. 28). This means that Muslim religious elites in the Rhodope Mountains are not alone in their ambition to unify Islam worldwide. The “Salafi Islam” imposed by the Muslim elites introduces a level of problematic complexity to the relationship between Islam and the local traditions. Certain practices, once regarded by the community as integral to its religious life, are now deemed worthless, and tradition is made to clash with religion. And conversely, the elites see tradition as an accretion of pagan or non-Muslim rituals obstructing local adoption of true Islam as practised in Mecca:

M.L.: Right. If you could explain… What do you mean by shamanism? In what sense do you use that word?

Hodzha 6: It’s paganism. Paganism.

M.L.: Right, so it’s one and the same thing. These two words can be used interchangeably?

H.6: Yes.

M.L.: And here in this area, in Satovcha, other any Muslims…, Other any Muslims who lapse into paganism?

H.6: Yes. For instance, casting lead is paganism.

M.L.: And making muskas [Turkish: muska – M.L.]³⁰⁶, isn’t that the same thing?

H.6: It’s almost the same thing. Amulets, muskas, it’s the same thing. Shamanistic stuff.

M.L.: Meaning, the nanas³⁰⁷, they’d use that kind of thing? But you said you did that, too?

H.6: No, not the muskas. I do things which are compatible with Allah’s commandments. I do what the rasul³⁰⁸ [Turkish: resul, Arabic: rasul–M.L.] did. (Interview 30, Satovcha 2005)

When asked, the same hodzha admitted that there were Muslims who practised Christian customs, which he considered shamanistic, but he was unwilling to discuss the subject further. As he said:

Hodzha6: Well, I don’t know exactly. I can’t tell you because I have a strict framework, and I’m trying to stick to it and not to go outside of it. (Interview 30, Satovcha 2005)

This “framework” is “pure” Sunni Islam. Salafi Muslims seem alienated from the “Adat Islamic” lifestyle and from the local traditional religious culture, and alienation produced by the secularisation and religious persecution under the Communist regime in Bulgaria which created a rupture in the transmission of local religious traditions. In Communist times, such Muslims were mostly religiously uneducated, and what little they knew was transmitted orally by the earlier generations. The traditions fell by the wayside or were continued in secret. Some of those Muslims were party members under Communism, when they claimed to be atheists.

***

It seems that those Muslims who practised “Salafi Islam” make a hasty judgement in juxtaposing the local traditional Islam, as taught by the older hodzhas, and the “pure Islam” which they teach and consider more compatible with the truths revealed to the Muslims. Upon closer examination, many of the narratives functioning in “Adat Islam” cannot be dismissed as mere “old wives’ tales”spun by the local culture³⁰⁹. On the contrary, many such narratives are analogous to the lives of prophets recognized in Sunni Islam (qisas al-anbiya). Although written lives of the prophets would seem to be a fitting kind of text for the religious elites, they are not unfamiliar to the young hodzhas she received their religious education not only in Bulgaria but also often in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Macedonia or reject. In common with other representatives of “Salafi Islam”, their teaching invokes solely the Qur’an and the hadiths. When I discussed this with one of my respondents, he agreed with me and admitted that the stories told by an old hodzha, which he used to dismiss as “fairytales”, turned out to be long hadiths and considerable feats of memory (Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009).

However, this did not affect his overall opinion about the educational standards among the Muslim elites in the Western Rhodopes. According to Isa, quality religious education was available until 1913, when the local lands belonged to the Ottoman Empire and the hodzhas were trained in Istanbul. For him, the period 1913–1990 was marked by religious ignorance, when the hodzhas did not even understand the texts they were reading in mosques (Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009).

Another person to draw attention to this period of falling standards in Muslim religious education was the Blagoevgrad Regional mufti, Aydin Mohamed:

Mufti: I mean, the best way to learn religion is [to learn it] from people who studied it themselves. I mean, for one hundred years the people in Bulgaria had no access to information, they just passed on whatever they’d learned from their grandparents. They didn’t study, for instance, it wasn’t like they learned separately about the different part of Islam. They didn’t sit down to learn something, so if you want information about Islam in the authentic sense, the things in the Qur’an, you must look for those [people – M.L.] who studied it somewhere. And if you want to hear stories, legends etc., then you should look for older people. Or if you’re interested in superstition, legend, if you want people to tell you fairy stories about Scheherazade, then it’s the older people you want. (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005)

My respondents in this group perceive the form of Islam promoted by the younger hodzhas as more adequate, and criticize “Adat Islam” for its syncretic approach³¹⁰ to the local traditions and for its heterodox nature:

I.: That’s how I know that there are certain similarities with the sayings of the hodzhas. We might say that the difference between the older hodzhas and the newer ones is that the new ones are trying to make sure things are done properly. To make sure everything is as it should be. Whereas the older ones, they have this, how shall I put it, it’s a bit like the dervishes of the past. He goes into a village, lives the Islamic way,³¹¹ sees their traditions and starts to cultivate them, make them part of Islam and talks to people about Islam. (M, M, Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009)

The young local religious elites generally have a patronizing attitude towards “Adat Islam”, dismissing it as provincial. Older members of the community unwilling to reject their tradition are seen as particularly problematic: the younger elites realize that it is not possible, or even advisable, to abolish all of the adats. Consequently, they focus their efforts on educating the faithful about the threats of religious syncretism. The main idea is to achieve a renewed form of local Islam where the Muslims refrain from practising the holidays of other religions and, in time, of rituals amounting to bid‘ah. In terms of non-Muslim holidays, Gergiovden seems to be the biggest problem for the hodzhas. To eradicate this holiday, the hodzhas point out the links between the holiday and St. George, a connection which the hodzha believes escapes the faithful (at least in Ribnovo), who use a corrupted form of the holiday’s name, Gergiden, a meaningless word which obscures the connection to the Christian saint. Instead, the holiday is associated with the beginning of summer, and is therefore seen as traditional/adat rather than religious:

Hodzha1: There’s just one date that’s without question celebrated by some of the people in Ribnovo, and that’s Gergiovden. They’ve renamed it to Gergiden, but in truth this is Gergiovden. Some people say, “we used to do that on Gergiovden in the past, we would let our sheep out to pasture”… and so on. I don’t know the details, I’m not involved with such things ... So I tell him, “It’s not Gergi den, it’s Gergiovden”. “So that means it’s Gergiovden?!” You see, they’re inadequate. He has this idea… because the word is corrupted, he has a different idea. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

The hodzhas discuss the problem of Muslims celebrating non-Muslim holidays in special sermons in which they discourage such practices, branding them as shirk, the sin of idolatry. They use a variety of approaches, for instance they argue that it is pointless to engage in less important practices where the truly important rites connected with the holiday take place in the church and are alien to Muslims:

Hodzha 1: When I told them about Gergiovden, right, I… In the mosque I would give them whole lectures on the subject, talking specifically about those things, and people saw sense, they realized it made no logical sense. If you don’t go to church, you don’t practice the most important part. You only use the holiday, but the most important part is to go there and join in… uuum… Like the Christians do in church, to light a candle and pray… they have those procedures of theirs. They [the Muslims – M.L.] don’t do that, but they celebrate the elementary, less important part. That’s a mistake. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

As shown in the previous section, it is not quite true that Muslims take no part in church rituals (some of them light candles and kiss the icons at Hadzhidimovo). However, the hodzha tries to present the holiday as an element of Christian cult, which Muslims should reject wholesale as idolatrous. The division proposed by the hodzha – distinguishing between the more important practices (taking place in the church) and the less important ones (which I refer to as “adat practices”) – represents an approach to religion which is characteristic of orthodoxy or intellectual rationality, but has nothing to do with the outlook of people actually involved in such “secondary” rites. Moreover, even for many Christians such rights are often more important than the sacraments. Not many Christians receive Communion on that day, however most of them offer lambs to St. George and eat the kurban.

Also, many older Muslims and Christians attach the most importance to those rites practiced on St. George’s Day which are part of an ancestral tradition, regardless of whether or not they are doctrinally sound in Christian or Muslim theology. This was pointed out by my respondent Isa, who observed the two differing attitudes towards Gergiovden among the Muslims: Salafi Muslims reject this holiday as having nothing to do with Islam, but the practitioners of “Adat Islam” consider it important because the day was celebrated by their ancestors (Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009). According to the hodzha, the holiday of Sisvet/the Forty Martyrs is a similar case in point:

Hodzha 1: Meaning, if you tell them that it’s not Sisvet, because that’s what they call it, Sisvet. If you tell them that it’s not actually Sisvet, that the word comes from all saints, all saints, he will say, “Oh, really? Is that actually so?” You see, at some point in the past he… The thing is, that Christians all around, and things gradually creep in. And he says, “But is that actually so?!”. And if that’s the case, he begins to reject this idea. In fact, he knew what it was connected with, and he did that because he saw people doing it in Osikovo, he saw people doing it in Skrebetno, and there is a Christian village opposite where they do the same. And if you explain to him the meaning of this, but it’s not about Sisvet, but All Saints, then he starts thinking, and actually admits his mistake. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

The hodzha’s comment that the Muslims fail to realize the meaning of the holiday scenes seems correct, especially given his inaccurate etymology derived from “All Saints”. At the same time, the sermons exert a certain influence over the local community, who begin to realize and argue that this is a Christian holiday, not a Muslim one.

One of the hodzhas disapproved not only of Muslims incubating in churches, but also doing the same in tyurbeta³¹² [Turkish: türbe, Arabic: turbah] frequently found in the Central and Eastern Rhodopes:

M.L: Okay, what about tyurbeta?

Hodzha 6: Tyurbeta are exactly the same.

M.L.: But they’re Muslim tombs, aren’t they?!

H.6: Tyurbes are Muslim?! They’re Muslim in popular opinion only. They’re pagan. See, we have a tyurbe here, a remnant from shamanistic times. You can go and look to see that this tyurbe is a remnant from shamanistic times… irreligious times. A tyurbe is a tomb. Can a dead person help you? How can he help you?

M.L.: And what about evliyas³¹³ [Turkish: evliya, Arabic: sing. wali, pl. awliya –M.L.], aren’t they…?

H.6: Evliye… there are no auliyas in modern times. (Interview 30, Satovcha 2005)

Tyurbes were places of cult where Muslim saints or evliyas were venerated (Lozanova 2000, p. 156). The hodzha cited above does not recognize those figures as saints, an appellation which he believes only applies to Qur’anic figures.

I heard a similar interpretation from another hodzha, who compared the cult of evliyas venerated in mausoleums to the Orthodox Christian cult of icons. In the following comment he makes a reference to the Alevis, an Islamic sect where images of saints are placed in their türbes and candles are lit in front of them:

Hodzha 3: More than that, the lighting of candles probably isn’t rooted in Islam. But the lighting of candles is practised by some Muslim sects. Have you seen Demir Baba teke? Those Alawites go and light candles there. And in the same way, they have icons inside. This is prohibited. This has nothing to do with Islam. (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

This shows that anti-syncretic attitudes in the young Muslim elites are aimed not only against Muslims engaging in local Christian rites but also against Muslim sects. They perceive the most serious danger in those things which may undermine the core of Muslim spirituality that is strict monotheism. In this respect, Christianity with its cult of the Holy Trinity, is regarded with great suspicion. The Christian cult of the saints and the belief in the healing power of “holy places” are considered particularly idolatrous and “shamanistic” or pagan, regardless of whether these things are practised in Islam or in Christianity:

Hodzha 6: They come and sleep. That’s shamanism. Who helps… He who gives illness, gives health as well. Who is it that gives us food, who gives us our senses, our eyes, our eyesight, our health and our strength? Who gives us all those things? God gives them to us. And if God wills it, you… I mean, if you have a problem, that’s God’s will. It’s not the will of a mosque. (Interview 30, Satovcha 2005)

Another adat the hodzhas would like to see abolished as bid‘ah is the Turkish custom of saying prayers for a deceased person 52 days after their death:

Hodzha 1: This is bida a novelty.

M.L.: A novelty?

H.1: It’s an adat which is not compatible with Islam. In Islam, what’s the meaning of the fifty-second night?! The fifty-second night, according to some scholars, I’ve read it somewhere, but it’s not confirmed, it’s not guaranteed… That’s one man’s body decays in the grave. At such a time Islam prohibits… To be precise, not prohibits, prohibits is too strong a word… Does not recommend doing things that make life difficult for a Muslim. In Islam, Allah says there is no coercion in religion. In the sense that if a man does not have enough money to set the table for the guests and say the prayers for the dead person, then that’s a certain coercion, which is not permitted in Islam. You can say your prayers or perform your rites whenever you can, and not at a time when you have to borrow money to do that. That’s not an Islamic practice. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Unlike the hodzhas, who consider the rites performed on the fifty-second day as a matter of indifference to personal salvation (because the custom was not introduced by Muhammad), the practitioners of “Adat Islam” put them on a par with other rites necessary for salvation. On that day they not only pray, but also make a blood sacrifice (kurban) for the salvation of the deceased, an offering which may also be made on Kurban Bayram. A failure to do so may prevent the soul of the deceased person from successfully crossing the bridge suspended over the pits of hell, whereas those for whom prayers were said on that day can cross the bridge without a problem riding a horse or a lamb:

M.L.: Why do the local people offer a kurban for a deceased person?

F.: Now listen to me, we make a kurban, so that [the person – M.L.] can find a horse in the next world, a horse. When we go to be judged, across the bridge, there is a bridge there. See, you spend three thousand years walking on that bridge. Three thousand years walking uphill, three thousand years walking on level ground, three thousand years coming down hill. That’s thousands of years! A bridge. But if a kurban has been sacrificed here, that person will cross that bridge like a lightning. They will be carried [as fast] as a lightning! (W, M, Interview 12, Ribnovo 2005)

Salafi Muslims consider this custom to be incompatible with Sunni Islam:

I.: People around here mostly sacrifice a kurban when somebody dies, a mother, a father, a grandmother… On the first Kurban Bayram [after the death – M.L.] we sacrifice one for the deceased person. But you don’t have anything like that [in Islam]. In Islam there is a duty to sacrifice an animal, if you can afford it. But there is also a different kind of kurban – if you’ve made a vow. That’s what she said [the Isa’s wife], they went to a church, they had a problem. [They made an oath], that, if that problem is solved, they would make a kurban. But this thing that appeared here, the making of a kurban after a person’s death, that’s a corrupted practice.

M.L.: Do you mean, not every sacrifice of a lamb is a kurban, just those sacrificed on that holiday?

I.: Only on the holiday, if [the lamb] was promised. Because in Islam, intentions matter – why do you sacrifice the animal. You sacrifice the animal with a certain intention in mind, to make a kurban and to hand it out to others. (M, M, Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009)

Some of the hodzhas who officially promote “Salafi Islam” are prepared to make muskas (amulets) unofficially, and, when asked, say prayers fifty-two days after the death of a deceased person³¹⁴:

I.: Here [in Breznitsa – M.L.] we don’t make muskas. I know they make them in Gotse Delchev.

M.L.: Were they made in the past?

I.: As a rule, you shouldn’t make some. But they’re more… How should I say it. When someone’s got into harm’s way, then the hodzha agrees to make one.

M.L.: Those young [hodzhas], do they make muskas, too?

I.: Yes, yes, all of them. There’s one or two in every area, making the muskas. (M, M, Interview 55, Breznitsa 2009)

To the reformist hodzhas, certain local departures from the Sunnah are of secondary importance, including those relating to Muslim prayer techniques, such as the number of bows/rekyes³¹⁵ made during prayer. As one hodzha explains, those practising “Adat Islam” bow too much when praying:

Hodzha 1: When people come to a mosque to pray… to say the prayers… Especially on a Friday… Um… We make sixteen of those… They’re called rekyes, bows. Whereas Muhamad, the Prophet Muhammad didn’t bow sixteen times on a Friday. He didn’t bow as much. ...

M.L.: Why sixteen times?

H.1: That’s a big subject. That was introduced by the Ottomans, and it goes against Muhammad’s Sunnah. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

According to the hodzha, what matters to the Muslims who make the “wrong number of bows” is conformity with ancestral tradition rather than compatibility with Islam. However, changing the habits of the local population is not a priority for the reformist hodzhas because the wrong number of bows is not so much sinful shirk or idolatry, but rather an Ottoman innovation or bid‘ah not found in the Sunnah.

In this sense, the efforts to reform the local Islamic practice involve not only eliminating pagan practices connected with the Christian liturgical calendar, but also eliminating those religious practices which are found in the Ottoman Empire but not in the Arabic countries, which the hodzha believes are closer to the Sunnah.

The hodzha believes that the popularity of apotropaic astrology and talismans (muskas, amaliykas) in “Adat Islam” is a product of Ottoman influence. He used to take a personal interest in astrology until one day in a mosque in Sofia he met a fellow Muslim who sharply disapproved of such practices as a form of magic, a criticism the hodzha encountered again when receiving his religious education in Saudi Arabia:

Hodzha 1: You couldn’t find a book like this among the Arabs. Most books about those things are in Turkish.. … Later, when I went to Saudi Arabia, I learned more information about the subject. Magic is serious haram. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

According to the hodzhas, the most important religious transgression resulting from magical practice is a failure to put one’s trust in God as people turn to objects or other persons (hodzhas, traditional female healers), which amounts to shirk because the Qur’an instructs the faithful to turn to Allah in all problems:

M.L.: And the Qur’an… a small book of the Qur’an?

Mufti: It doesn’t matter what it is. I mean, you don’t put your trust in the Highest. You put your trust in the object. Say, you forget to take it with you when you leave the house. You get up in the morning, have a bath and forget to take it. Now, what’s a person going to do? I mean, say, that person goes to Sofia. Does that mean he has to come all the way back and collect this thing or he might get sick?! I mean, this shows that this is shirk, that this is idolatry. You put your trust in that thing, and not in the Highest. (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005)

On top of that, the act of walking into a toilet with a talisman on one’s body makes a Muslim guilty of another sin, namely that of defiling the Qur’an. Also, the young hodzhas disapprove of such practices because they regard them as inferior and superstitious forms of religious life.

Some compare amaliykas/ muskas to Christian icons³¹⁶, treated in an animistic manner as items intrinsically endowed with a power that can be tapped by people in need. According to the hodzhas, a Muslim who puts his trust in amaliykas becomes like an Orthodox Christian who venerates icons, disregarding the fact that an icon or an amaliyka is that most a vessel or vehicle of divine grace.

In the following statement, two perspectives clash: that of an ordinary Muslim woman and that of a hodzha. The former sees no conflict between believing in Allah and wearing amaliykas, which she believes are God’s gift to mankind. By contrast, the hodzha considers them idolatrous: those who engage in such practices are deluding themselves that physical objects are capable of providing protection, and also get duped by peddlers of magical items. The hodzha’s perspective is reminiscent of the “Protestant bias”, whereas Shurfe is trying to get the hodzha to approve of her physical need to carry a “holy/magical item” about her body. I consciously refrain from describing Shurfe’s needs as typical of “Adat Islam” because this kind of physical approach to religious practice is not limited to this type of religiosity.

Importantly, the hodzha also condemns as shirk the invoking of God’s name when averting the evil eye or giving people amaliykas:

Sh.: Yes, but you don’t… Because you believe in the amaliykas you’re wearing… But you believe in Allah all the same [she explains to the hodzha that wearing amaliykas does not mean that belief in Allah becomes less important – M.L.]

Hodzha 3: But that means you have a certain respect [for those things].

Sh.: It’s Allah’s things that protect you, the things Allah said.

H.3: That is to say, thismuska , and this amulet, they’re seen as a small icon, and it… people expect it to provide some kind of help or benefit, and so on. This is strictly forbidden. There are things like that. Sellers make them to sell and make money ... What I mean is, you’re making something to rank on a par with Allah and you make him an accomplice. Allah will help me, but that’s … shirk. It’s an unforgivable sin in Islam. There is no greater sin in Islam than shirk. It’s the one sin Allah won’t forgive. Shirk. There is an ayat… in the Qur’an [to that effect], meaning that Allah really says he will not forgive a person who gets familiar like that. (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

Some of the hodzhas connected with “Adat Islam”, though less radical, are similarly disapproving of amaliykas, though they approve of traditional female healers³¹⁷ provided they directly invoke Allah to help the suffering person. A similar requirement applies to hodzhas and doctors:

Hodzha 2: ... More than that, there are certain women who have a special relationship with Allah, we call that baene [chanting healing chants]. But in order to have this kind of relationship with Allah, the woman says, “O Allah, I wish this man was given help. O Allah”. Those are special words to do that. Those three things are permitted. The doctor, hodzhas and traditional healers are permitted, however they must all have a relationship with Allah. “I’m a doctor but there is a God above me. I want to… I’m going to perform surgeries, but I’ll do that with God’s permission”. (Interview 19, Ribnovo 2005)

To protect oneself against the evil eye, jinn and harmful magic, the hodzhas mentioned Qur’anic suras 113 (al-Falaq, Daybreak) and 114 (An-Nas, Mankind) should be recited as a protective measure. Allah revealed the suras to Muhammad in similar circumstances, and these should be sufficient to Muslims seeking protection, although a deeply religious person who reads the Qur’an on a daily basis should be generally immune to harmful magic.

“Adat Islam” comprises practices the hodzhas dismiss as superstitions, although their precise conclusions on what is and what isn’t a superstition may vary. For instance, reciting the formula mashallah and belief in harmful magic is acceptable to some and strongly condemned by others:

Mufti: I mean, this is nothing but superstition. It’s superstition and people should not believe in it. Say, somebody says, “Somebody’s performed magic on you”. And I say: “I don’t believe that.” They can cast a hundred uroki on me, I don’t believe that and I don’t feel like that’s even a thing. I mean, you can talk someone into believing those things, and they’ll be done for. You talk him into believing he’s had bad uroki done to him [he was bewitched – M.L.], and he believes that, even if it’s not true, he starts thinking about it and… that person ends up in a mental institution. (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005)

Salafi-oriented Muslim respondents renew their religious life by adapting new models of faith, imported from Arabic countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, considered to be the mother country of “pure” Islam. In the words of the Dutch journalist and writer Ian Buruma and Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit, “Saudi Arabia is today the prime source of fundamentalist, puritanical ideology, affecting Muslims everywhere, from North Africa to Indonesia” (Buruma, Margalit 2005, p. 135). The Saudi form of Islam, dominated by the Hanbali school³¹⁸, is seen as more correct than the variety promoted by the Ottoman Empire and connected with the Hanafi school³¹⁹:

Hodzha 1: in Turkey, parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, Jordan. And likewise all of the Balkan Peninsula, they’re almost all of them Hanafi Muslims. You get Hanafis in Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia and many other places. But mostly in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire imposed this mazhab³²⁰ [Arabic: madhhab – M.L.] and wherever it reached, it introduced this kind of Islam, Hanafi Islam. Because, if you take the method of saying the prayers, they have this term, this set of prayers which is adapted to army personnel. Whereas in Saudi Arabia the understanding is a bit different in terms of learning the rites, reciting the prayers. The people are freer because they know exactly, they know exactly how the Prophet Muhammad acted, whereas around here you can meet people recite their namaz, their prayers, in a way that is somewhat corrupted… (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Unlike in the Ottoman Empire, where the Sunnah became corrupted in a variety of ways including the prayer technique, argues the hodzha, in Saudi Arabia the prophet Muhammad continues to remain the one and only role model for the faithful. To emphasise the break with the Ottoman influence, some Muslims in this group have given up the traditional Turkish costume to replace it with Saudi-style clothes, though this seems to be a marginal phenomenon. Among the Muslim women I talked to there was only one such person, the wife of one of the hodzhas (she got the Saudi clothes from her husband, who for two years had studied theology in the country).

Salafi Muslims believe that there exists a single normative model of Islam applicable throughout the world, identical to that practised in early Muslim society (Akbar 2007, p. 34). They wish to replicate it in their own environment and to educate their children within this model. When asked what Bulgarian Islam was like, one hodzha denied that there was such a thing as “Bulgarian Islam”:

Hodzha 1: There is no Bulgarian Islam.

M.L.: Well, that’s just a name I came up with…

H.1: Nobody calls it that. You have to think of Islam as a religion, it doesn’t matter if it’s Bulgarian, Turkish or Syrian. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha went on to explain that there was “only one Islam”, despite the manipulative distinction being made in Bulgaria between traditional and fundamentalist Islam. He believes the former to be a heterodox model, often conflicted with the requirements of religion and consequently unacceptable:

Hodzha 1: There is only one Islam, there is no doubt about that. But some wants to present it as traditional, others as fundamentalist. They want to point out those due forms, and present traditional Islam is more acceptable in Bulgaria, and fundamentalist Islam as unacceptable in Bulgaria. They say the fundamentalist one, the fundamentalist variety, is harmful to others, something I personally find unacceptable. What does that even mean, fundamentalist Islam? The idea is to go back to the fundamentals of Islam, to go back to the life of the Prophet Muhammad and examine his life, his dealings with people; to revisit the fundamentals of your religion. Then you realise that he did not encourage suicide or hatred. They see that all those things that people attribute to the fundamentals of Islam is contrary to the truth. That’s why they say it’s better to profess traditional Islam, whereas traditional Islam is based on tradition and is actually not always compatible with the religion. (Interview 10, Ribnovo 2005)

Although the hodzha’s u nderstanding of fundamentalist Islam is limited to the kind of Islam that comes back to its fundamentals (or the so-called “pure” Islam), he realises that the term has much broader connotations³²¹. It should also be pointed out that although the Salafi Muslims associate their preferred model of “pure” Islam exclusively with the Qur’an and the Sunnah, in practical terms the model seems to be influenced by the Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam. As Harry Norris notes, “in Bulgaria, among both Turks and Pomaks, mosques are being restored and rebuilt, and increasing support, especially financial, is being sought from Turkey and Saudi Arabia in order to build madrasas and finance training courses for imams” (Norris 1993, p. 8). Increasingly, Islamic education is being provided by hodzhas educated abroad.

In addition to the influences identified by Norris, the growing impact of “Salafi Islam” in the Western Rhodopes is the result of religious propaganda translated from Arabic or Turkish, available in the form of cheap (occasionally free) brochures and Internet content. Available in Bulgarian translation are books by writers including Huseyn Hodzha/Hüseyin Hoca³²² (2005), I.A. Abu Harb³²³ (2004), Abdullah ibn Abdulhamid/‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Abd al-Hamid (1997) or Maurice Bucaille (2004). Such books are distributed free of charge in mosques or sold in local bookshops and groceries.

Only some of that literature, published by several outlets, has the approval of Bulgaria’s chief muftiate (Glavno myuftiystvo na myusyulmanskoto izpovedaniye v Republika Blgariya). One of the religious textbooks (Al Abdulatif Abdulaziz Muhammad/‘Abd al-‘Aziz Muhammad Al ‘Abd al-Latif 1999) was financed by a grant from Sheikh Sulayman ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Rajhi and the Tayba Foundation. The Bulgarian government’s website³²⁴ identifies the foundation as an institution promoting higher religious education in Jordan, an option used by some Bulgarian-speaking Muslims who are members of the Society for Islamic Development and Culture (Obedineniye na islamsko razvitye i kultura) which the foundation established in 2004.

Many of the books do not indicate the publisher. The books I have browsed or received from my Muslim acquaintances are not representative of the full spectrum of the problem, and the following comments should not be treated as a comprehensive and reliable analysis of popular religious literature, but certain observations can be made. As mentioned above, some of the books attempt to present Islam as compatible with modern science. In The Short Illustrated Introduction to Islam by Abu Harb (Kratko ilistruvano vvedeniye v islyama, 2004), Chapter I, entitled “Evidence for the Truth of Islam”, contains a section on “The Holy Qur’an and the development of the human embryo”, arguing that Surah 23: 12–14 is compatible with modern medical knowledge (Abu Harb 2004, p. 10). The Surah describes a stage in embryonic development when the embryo is similar to “a clot of blood” which develops into a “clinging clot”. Abu Harb explains that the Arabic word ‘alaq – translated into Bulgarian as ssirek, meaning a seed or germ of flesh, can be translated in three different ways: 1) a leech, 2) a clinging thing, or 3) clotted blood. According to the author, the option 1) is a reference to the fact that the embryo draws blood from the mother, similar to a leech (Abu Harb 2004, p. 10), and goes on to provide a similar analysis on other usages from the Qur’an relating to embryonal development. The section on “The Holy Qur’an and the origins of the Universe” focuses on a passage from Surah 41: 11: “Then He lifted Himself to heaven when it was smoke”, allegedly a passage showing remarkable compatibility with the discoveries of modern atomic physics, a fact which supposedly astonished a world-famous modern scientist, Dr. Alfred Kröner³²⁵ (Abu Harb 2004, p. 11). The rest of the chapters are constructed according to the same logic of interpretation. To quote just the titles, they touch on the Qur’an and subjects such as the brain (p. 20–21), seas and rivers (p. 21–24), deep seas and internal waves (p. 24–26), clouds (p. 26–31), or Commons from scientists regarding the scientific wonders of the Qur’an (p. 31–36).

In contrast to Muslims connected with “Adat Islam” (who primarily rely on sacred narratives that explicate the human condition by symbolic means), Salafi Muslims set great store by the supposed “scientific accuracy” of the Qur’an and the various historical justifications for its authenticity. They emphasise the fact that the Qur’an was written in the times of the prophet Muhammad³²⁶, unlike the Torah and the Gospels which, having been composed a long time after the deaths of Musa and ‘Isa, were naturally corrupted by humans. Another influential source in Bulgaria is a book by Maurice Bucaille, La Bible, le Coran et la science (1976), published in a Bulgarian translation by the Chief Muftiate of Bulgaria as Biblyata, Korant i naukata (2004). The book, which has had a number of editions in Bulgaria, examines the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels and the Qur’an in the light of modern science to reveal the Qur’an as scientifically correct. A chapter in Bucaille’s book, “Contradictions and Improbabilities in the Descriptions”, reveals numerous discrepancies in the four Gospels to dismiss them as false and to prove the truth of the Qur’an (2004, p. 121–132). The book devotes a chapter to the activities of the apostle Paul who, as a founder of Christianity, distorted the teachings of ‘Isa. Many such writings are kind of “catechism” for the educated, such as al-Nawawi, Gradinite na pravednitsite³²⁷ (2008), translated from Arabic by Prof. Tsvetan Teofanev (Bulgarian translator of the Qur’an and a convert to Islam) or Osman Nuri Topba’sIslyamt, forma i duh (2009), translated from Turkish. Unlike the brief brochures aimed at a diverse readership, these books are more ambitious studies on Islam and were familiar to some of the Muslims I met (such as I. and his wife F., interviews 55 and 56, who had read them).

Such books are an approachable and ostensibly scientific introduction to Islamic rituals. Accordingly, Salafi Muslims tend to invoke so-called scientific arguments when discussing the meaning of such rituals (medical materialism). For instance, the great importance of ritual purity in Islam is explained in terms of hygienic concerns, a modern category, suggesting that although Muhammad demanded purity as a religious ritual, the practical concern was to protect Muslims from germs in dirt. To corroborate this interpretation, a hodzha recounted an example from the times of the prophet Muhammad: a Christian physician arriving in a Muslim community in Egypt found himself jobless given the high standards of health achieved thanks to the practice of abdest and good nutrition habits. When he realised the health benefits of Islam, the physician converted (Interviews 18 and 10, Ribnovo 2005):

Mufti: In the times of Muhammad a man came from Egypt, he’d heard a city-state was being built there, a physician, and he said, “I’ll go and make money there”, that is to say, he wanted to work there for a living. He went there and stayed for a month. There were no sick people, none of the Muslims got ill. So he asks them, he says, “How do you live?” – he cries. “I want you to explain your ways to me. I’ve been without work for a month, nobody gets sick”. That’s when he found out that purity was half of the faith. He says, “Right, that’s one thing. Now, how do you eat?” – he says. “I mean, if you keep pure, that’s 80% of the diseases taken care of,” he says. “Now the food, what do you eat?”. And they said, “We divide the stomach into three parts. One is for food, one is for water, and one part must remain empty so people can breethe freely”. And he said, “There’s no work for me here, I’m leaving this place.” (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005)

Similarly, the hodzhas argued that circumcision was introduced by Muhammad rather than Allah (and was therefore part of the syunnet or Sunnah rather than farz, and that the procedure protected the faithful from sexually transmitted diseases by reducing the risk of infection:

M.L.: So, what’s the point of circumcision?

Mufti: Oh, right. Circumcision. When there is a male child, the circumcision… That’s something that the Christians and the Jews do as well. It’s obligatory with the Jews and the Muslims. This is a matter of hygiene. I mean, this is not farz, this is Sunnah. It’s recommended but it’s not obligatory. But it’s very important from the point of view of hygiene and… I mean, with uncircumcised people… uncircumcised people get venereal diseases more often than circumcised people do.

M.L.: Old people say that circumcision is also practised because Muhammad was born circumcised?

Mufti: Yes, that’s true. I mean, I have nothing to add. (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005)

According to some of Muslims, Islamic practices such as male circumcision or prohibition of pork consumption are dictated by concerns of health and hygiene rather than religion. They argue that pork consumption leads to high blood pressure, high cholesterol and twenty-three other diseases. The animal was created by Allah as fodder for other animals, not people. In fact, even the Bulgarians living in Dabnitsa do not raise pigs:

Turkish W.: This leads to disease³²⁸. This is scientifically proven. I’ve read that in Bulgarian books. It’s not even tasty, anyway.

M.L.: What kind of diseases?

Turkish W.: High blood pressure, cholesterol. Many different ones. No Bulgarians in Dabnitsa even raise pigs, maybe two families at most! They mostly slaughter calves. (Muslim, Interview 45, Dabnitsa 2006)

Another reason why some Muslims believe circumcision is beneficial is that some Christians undergo the procedure for medical reasons. According to my respondents, the obligation of circumcision was claimed to be particularly beneficial in the Mediterranean climate which favours bacterial growth and various infections.

Compared to the older generation, Salafi Muslims tend to have a much less elaborate understanding of the symbolic aspects of rituals. Their explanations ignore symbolic details, such as the placing of a kerchief on the head of a sacrificial lamb. Instead, they are over more general nature and do not contain as many narrative components:

F2: Since this is principally a custom dating back to the Prophet Ibrahim, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? He was childless for many years. And when they were old, he dreamt for three nights that his wife would get pregnant. She was in quite an advanced age. That she would bear him a son named Ismail.

M.L.: Yes.

F2: And then, after the wife had given birth, he saw in a dream that he had to sacrifice his son, that he had to slaughter him in the name of Allah. That’s how it started, the slaughtering of the kurban.

M.L.: But he didn’t slaughter him?

F2: No. Then Allah said, he passed the trial, and from now on a kurban would be slaughtered [an animal will be sacrificed instead of a child – M.L.] (W, M, Interview 55, Ribnovo 2009) p. 40), which makes all meat-eating animals unclean (Wasilewski 1989, p. 40).

When asked about the meaning of abdest, the same Muslim woman said it was done in preparation for prayer, but made no reference to the story of Adam and Hawwa as narrated in a similar context by bula of Ribnovo, for instance³²⁹:

M.L.: Why is it that abdest involves the washing of hands, feet, those parts of the body?

F.: To make them pure. When you, say, take a shower, you get washed, you get washed, and in the same way abdest makes you clean, to prepare you for namaz, for prayer. That’s the point of abdest. (W, M, Interview 16, Ribnovo 2009)

As explained by Fatme, the only point why women cover their bodies is to protect themselves from the lustful male gaze and thus ensure a more comfortable experience when leaving the house (Interview 16, Ribnovo 2009).

5.2.2  Attitudes Towards “the West”

The West is an important point of reference for “Salafi Islam”, and it is perceived as a civilisation posing a threat to the morality of a religious person, expressed the most fully in Islamic spirituality. The puritanical ideology of Salafi Muslims is largely built on opposition to Western values, which to my respondents prioritize the narcissistic inclinations of individuals over divine commandments or the common good. The occidentalism³³⁰ of some of the Muslims I talked to is mostly focused on the United States as perceived as the quintessential West. The Muslims voicing occidentalist moods were mostly hodzhas and neophytes criticising the Western lifestyle. Perhaps importantly, this is currently free of threatening implications: “not liking Western pop culture, global capitalism, U.S foreign policy, big cities or sexual license is not of great moment: the desire to declare war on the West for such a reason is” (Buruma, Margalit 2004, p.5). To Muslims I spoke to, the truly significant issue is the need to reform local Islam and fashion it into a puritanical religion faithful to the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Accordingly, they construct an opposition between their preferred form model of religiosity on the one hand, and the local traditions or the Western values on the other. “Even today with the resurgence of Islam most devout Muslims are not political Islamists so as advocates of enforcing public morality. They yearn for what they see as traditional way of life, which they identify with Islam. Even if they have little idea what the ideal Islamic state should look like, they care deeply about sexual mores, corruption and traditional family life. Islam, to the believers, is the only source and guardian of traditional collective morality” (Buruma, Margalit 2005, p. 128).

Some Muslims perceived the West as a remarkably expansive source of anti-morality, continually spreading to new areas, and bringing novelties predicated on a concern for personal financial prosperity, effectively nullifying existing moral norms. In this perspective, embracing Western models is a sure path to spiritual destruction, replacing religious faith with stimulants such as drugs, alcohol or sex:

Hodzha 1: You cannot reject everything that goes on in the West. But there are things that we really should just leave to them, such as “being single”. In the West, people only care about surviving on their own, they have no interest in other human beings. In Islam, this is forbidden. In Islam, this is condemned. Also, in the West, you may remember, perhaps you didn’t live in Bulgaria at the time, but when the West came, it brought with it drugs, large-scale prostitution. It brought with it competitive wealth building. (Interview 6, Ribnovo 2005)

According to this hodzha, fashion is particularly affected by the promotion of such “anti-culture”³³¹, which is given over to indulging one’s animal instincts. Fashion is directed primarily at women, with adverse moral effect:

Hodzha 1: Just look at the fashion runways, from what I’ve seen, and I often watch it to see the direction fashion is taking worldwide. This…, At the end of the day, widest fashion have to always expose the whole body to everyone’s view?! You can be stylish and covered up, you can be wearing the prettiest fabrics made in today’s… world. To have that, and to cover up the body… and to look dignified in society, and to take a place of honor. (Interview 7, Ribnovo 2005)

According to my respondents, women are a microcosm reflecting a society’s morals. Unlike Islam, which grants moral protection, Western society treats women as “the temple prostitutes in the service of Western materialism” (Buruma, Margalit 2005, p. 134).

The need to cover up the female body is explained by the specific nature of male sexuality, which makes exposed female flesh an irresistible temptation. A kerchief helps men to see the woman for the spiritual being she is, whereas an uncovered head makes her only a sexual object. When covered up, the woman safeguards the honour of her husband and family, otherwise she defiles her own body, putting it in plain sight of all the men who immediately start fantasising about her:

Hodzha 5: The word hidzhab³³² [Arabic: hijab – M.L.] means Muslim costume. Because Allah commanded it, it has to be worn. The point is, should everyone be free to see my wife’s body, which I see?! Which is better? I mean, you give yourself, and you give what’s inside you, to just one man. Not to everyone in the street, not for every man to look at you! Which is more valuable and precious?! (Interview 26, Satovcha 2009)

On the one hand, this presents men as being hardly in control of their lusts, and on the other it shows women as the mental equivalent of a child. Repeatedly, my respondents emphasized that women were psychologically much weaker and not able to control themselves when unaided. To corroborate this theory, some of my respondents mentioned tendencies observed in the West, where an imbalance between the number of men and women coupled with the requirement of monogamy produces moral degeneration, with unmarried women becoming lovers of married men, lesbians or marriage breakers, leading other women astray. According to the hodzha who expressed this view, Islamic polygamy would be preferable to Western monogamy from the female point of view as it would provide more women with physical and moral protection. It is understood that, left to their own devices, unmarried women, so-called liberated women, become sexually profligate:

Hodzha 1: Having two wives is better than having twenty lovers. Do you understand?

M.L.: Yes.

H.1: That’s why with the Christians…

M.L.: It’s better to have one, and to have no lovers…

H.1: Yes, but they are very uninhibited. You see this tendency worldwide, there are more women than men. So what do those free women do? Either they should get married… A woman with a woman, this is a thing that happens. Or, obviously, when a man finds a woman nicer than his own wife, she will inevitably take her husband away. No doubt about that. Or that man, even if he doesn’t leave his wife, he’ll have 20-30 lovers, as is the case in the West, in the East, and everywhere in the world. (Interview 7, Ribnovo 2005)

On top of sexual profligacy and material greed, there is also general interpersonal frigidity, which the hodzha views as another problem of the Western civilisation (Interview 9, Ribnovo 2005).

In politics, the defining characteristic of the Western world is hypocrisy, expressed in the division of people into categories despite official protestations of human equality. For instance, according to Blagoevgrad Regional mufti, Aydin Mohamed, the European Union and the West (or to be more precise, their politicians) are biased against Muslims, barring them from different rights and opportunities on account of their religion. As an example, he mentioned Turkey’s difficulties in becoming a member of the EU despite the country’s economic prosperity (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005).

According to my respondents, no country’s policies are as badly riddled with hypocrisy as the United States (popularly referred to as “America”). Among the Salafi Muslims, one of the most popular anti-American narratives is a conspiracy theory whereby the 9/11 terrorist attacks, falsely attributed to Muslims, were in fact instigated by American politicians trying to turn the world against Islam and to shore up support for their political manoeuvrings (Ahmed 2007, p. 21):

Hodzha 3: I’m sure you know how many thousands of people are there every day in those towers. Why?

Pavlina Carlucci: Many thousands.

H.3: How many?

M.L.: I don’t know exactly.

H.3: About 50,000. And how many victims were there? Two, three thousand. Even though the buildings went down immediately. How is that possible? (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

According to some of my respondents, al-Qaeda is being used by the Americans as a pretext for implementing politically advantageous goals and military campaigns, often concealing prosaic objectives, such as access to oil supplies. Not coincidentally, bin Laden (Usama ibn Ladin) had been trained by the Americans and was still at large at the time of the field research (2005):

Hodzha 3: Al-Quaeda is an American product. Everyone knows that. So far no one has been able to prove that the attacks on America were carried out by al-Kaida (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

M.L.: You mean, the people from al-Qaeda are not Muslims [i.e. their actions are un-Islamic – M.L.]?

Mufti: What I mean is, al-Qaeda is a cover-up. I mean… I don’t know. I mean, al-Qaeda is like a pretext to justify their… I mean, bin Laden, everyone says he was trained by America, bin Laden was. I mean, that means something. Where is bin Laden now? Is it really that hard to find him and to put him behind bars?! (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha 3: I think that man [bin Laden – M.L.] doesn’t even exist. I think everyone has doubts whether he even exists. But I don’t know. The world’s greatest power with all those ultramodern… They can’t catch him, why is one man so... [elusive]. Where could he be hiding?! (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

In longer conversations it often emerged that the anti-American attitudes of my respondents were connected with their anti-Semitism, which Akbar Ahmed identifies as a characteristic of “Deoband Islam” (cf. Ahmed 2007, p. 22). The United States is perceived as a country ruled by a Jewish financial elite hostile to Muslims. According to hodzha Murat, this explains why so many people were away from the World Trade Center on the day of the attack. Similarly, a mufti felt that attributing the attack to Muslims was a political conspiracy and a media hoax designed to deceive the masses. The mufti described how a similar conspiracy could be hatched by politicians in Bulgaria by framing around Muslim travelling on a coach from Gotse Delchev to Sofia:

M.L.: Are you saying that America was behind the terrorist attacks?

Mufti: Yes. I mean, it’s just not possible that 3000 Jews worked in those skyscrapers and none of them died. I mean, there were 3000 Jews working in those skyscrapers. At the time of the attacks, not a single Jew was at work that day. Meaning, those politicians, perhaps even Muslim politicians from America… They have done really well out of it… I mean, let me give you an example. For instance, if they wanted to start a war in Bulgaria, there is a coach going from here to Sofia. And there are always Muslims travelling on that coach. I mean, you get those people here. Not one coach goes to Sofia without some Muslim on it. Now in Bansko, where almost everyone is Christian, if they blew up the coach there, the people in Bansko would say, that Muslim was a kamikaze. Though it would be nothing… nothing… I mean, that’s how they foment conflicts. They cast a shadow over Muslims, and that’s exactly what they did in America. I mean, that’s what happened in Europe. People, the common masses, they believe it was Muslims who did that… The politicians… I mean, they know it wasn’t the Muslims. They believe that Muslims couldn’t do such a thing. I mean, a Muslim who’s killed a person goes to hell for eternity. If he killed that person. Which is to say, a Muslim couldn’t do it.

M.L.: You mean, those people …

M.A.: This means the whole thing was staged. Those people were paid to do that. (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha 3: That’s not all. If you look at the percentages, how many Jews were there, you will see that the Jews stayed home from work in large numbers. (Interview 17., Ribnovo 2005)

The same respondent argued that then-president George W. Bush promised to the Jews that the territories of the former Mesopotamia would be Christian [sic] again. In his opinion, the Jews had the greatest influence over electing American presidents and were capable of removing inconvenient politicians from political life, as was the case of Bill Clinton, who became the victim of a conspiracy involving Monica Lewinsky:

Hodzha 3: According to my information, Bush specifically, this is what we say in the schools, higher up…, he made a promise that the former Mesopotamia would be Christian again.

M.L.: Who did he promise that?

H.M.: The Jews.

M.L.: Why?

H.3: Because it’s already a fact. I don’t blame the Jews for being… they have those… capabilities. We know well that they appoint the president in America. We know that America gives them 4-5 million dollars every year. Why doesn’t America give this money to poor countries?! We know what’s going on in Somalia. We know what’s going on in the countries of southern Africa. We are witnessing thousands of children starving to death every day.

M.L.: You mean, he promised Mesopotamia to the Jews?

H.3: No, not to the Jews. What was once Mesopotamia will now be restored. It will be Christian again. We know that it used to be [part of] the Roman Empire, Byzantium and so on. The lands of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran… All that used to be one [political] entity. How much of that is true and how much is false I cannot say, I can’t say this is 100% certain. We saw what happened to Clinton. How they pulled the trick with Monica Lewinsky on him. It was the Jews who did that to him. Whose fault is it, that he is weak?! If he was a good Christian he wouldn’t have done that, right? (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

Similarly, the respondents from this group considered terrorism to be a made up problem engineered for political purposes (again, anti-Semitic attitudes are at play as the Jews are specifically blamed for this). The politicians are not consistent in the way they use the term “terrorism” because the same actions can be described as acts of terrorism or wars for human rights depending on political expediency:

Hodzha 3: We see that now in England, terrorist attacks happening in England. We see mosques on fire. Houses collapsing. Isn’t that terrorism?! The worst thing is that Jewish companies are doing the exact same thing here right now. Those big ones. I’m not talking about the nation, which… We are talking about those at the top, the very top. They are doing the exact same thing now. They compel people, they say one thing is terrorism and another thing isn’t. They say people in Iraq are civilian casualties. (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha 6: Today’s terrorism, as the Jews are presenting it, the idea is to create conflicts between different social groups and to bring about war in the world, called the apocalypse. Do you understand? (Interview 30, Satovcha 2005)

The respondents are so offended by the fact that Islam gets identified with terrorism in the West that they tend to repress the existence of terrorist attacks motivated by Islamic ideology, a fact they account for in one of three ways. According to the first interpretation, mentioned above, such attacks are perpetrated by people paid by the West. It seems that Western Islamophobia³³³ triggers a sense of ressentiment in the respondents, heightening occidentalist moods and fostering various conspiracy theories in which all evil things have their origin outside the Ummah, in America, seen as the very heart of the West.

Another theory is that the attacks are perpetrated by desperate people in desperate circumstances, usually Palestinians whose families have been murdered by Jews (Interview 18, Ribnovo 2005).

Sometimes the respondents attribute such attacks to people who are not suited to represent Islam because they have perverted its true meaning; they are like “black sheep” in a herd. The respondents consider it unfair that the West can blame all members of a religion for the actions of a single person or group (Interview 26, Satovcha 2005).

The respondents reject the image of Islam as a religion promoting suicide and terrorist attacks as unfair, and they have a need to present Islam as a religion in which forced conversion is not permitted, and eternal salvation cannot be achieved by killing people or committing suicide.

Hodzha 3: Terrorism is strictly forbidden in Islam. Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Islam absolutely… God’s emissary, when he fought wars, before every battle he would say, “Spare the women, spare the children, spare the old women and old people, do not burn houses or cut down trees”. In terrorism all those things are always present. The Qur’an says, “Do not kill yourself”. A kamikaze does just that. He kills himself. Because he says to himself, since they killed his children there is nothing else he can do but kill himself. This means he is not content with his fate, as ordained by Allah. Islam strictly condemns that. (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha 6: Islam is not terrorism ... Islam is mercy. If there was no Islam, there would be no life on this planet. Islam is the link that brings balance to nature. Islam is mercy. Let me say that again: mercy. When a man lives in harmony with himself, he will live in harmony with the people around him, and with God. (Interview 30, Satovcha 2005)

I.: Speaking of the Islamic ways, first of all Islam categorically forbids suicide. He who commits suicide goes straight to dzhehennet. No paradise for him. A religious Muslim can’t commit suicide because he knows where he would end up.

M.L.: He can’t commit suicide, even for Islam?

I.: He can’t. He can’t, precisely because of Islam. He may do that in the way of Allah, when a dzhihad [jihad –M.L.] is proclaimed and so on. But in a quiet village, you can’t just come in the evening and set a place on fire, that’s simply not allowed. Secondly, he who kills one man, it’s as if he’s killed all mankind on earth. Those two rules, edicts, ensure that no Muslim can do such a thing. (M, M, Interview 26, Satovcha 2005)

When discussing terrorism, I asked my respondents about the rules of jihad. The respondents pointed out that one’s struggle with weakness is the most difficult jihad in a person’s life:

Hodzha 3: Dzhihad is only permitted when you’ve been attacked and you have to defend yourself. That’s the first thing. Besides, dzhihad has a deeper meaning ... dzhihad does not just mean armed struggle… Dzhihad is a struggle with yourself, a struggle with your own experiences. I mean... That’s the deep meaning of the word dzhihad. Not taking a rifle and shooting people. (Interview 17, Ribnovo 2005)

Hodzha 5: Dzhihad can be interpreted as an inner struggle. Struggling with oneself, one’s sufferings and desires. (Interview 26, Satovcha 2005)

I.: Dzhihad has become a terrible word in our time. It causes fear, anxiety, terror in the world. Whereas dzhihad is something I am waging on myself, that’s dzhihad, for four years now. I am waging a dzhihad with my family. I am waging a dzhihad with her [he points to his wife – M.L.], with my parents. I’m a never-ending dzhihad. (M, M, Interview 26, Satovcha 2005)

The idea that the inner struggle is one’s most difficult jihad is described as coming from the prophet Muhammad, spoken after his men described a battle as the hardest battle they had fought in their lives:

I.: When the Prophet Muhammad came back from battle, and they were all settling down to rest, exhausted, tired, they said “But rasul Allah [emissary of Allah – M.L.] this was the hardest battle in our life. And we won it from that moment”. He turned back and said, “listen. We’ve won a battle, but another major battle awaits us.” They say, “Rasul Allah, what do you mean?”. “A great jihad awaits each of us, a dzhihad against oneself. We have to overcome ourselves to become firm believers”. (M, M, Interview 26, Satovcha 2005)

Although the different types of religious belief described in this chapter are represented by different respondents, sometimes they coincide in the worldview of a single person. Some of the utterances and behaviours suggest that young people remain partly immersed in “Adat Islam”, and older people have absorbed some of the teachings of the younger hodzhas.

Sincretic and anti-syncretic attitudes coexist in “Adat Islam” because the model is the product of many centuries of peaceful coexistence were different religious groups have learned to preserve its own religious boundaries. Although this chapter has primarily emphasised the superficially syncretic attitudes and non-Muslim-friendly soteriology of “Adat Islam”, this model in the Western Rhodopes should be considered in conjunction with narratives depreciating Christianity.

As this material suggests, the good-neighbourly relations (komshuluk) is potentially threatened not only by the political situation, but also by the growing imbalance between the increasingly diplomatic Islam of the hodzhas and educated Muslims and the heterodox Islam of the older generation. In the Islamic community this shifts the center of its values: the point of reference is no longer the mixed local population but rather the community of orthodox Muslims predestined salvation. Caused by anti-syncretic processes and imported foreign models of Islamic belief, this tendency may lead to a situation where the “shared”, traditional cultural background no longer unites the two communities.

250 I borrow the term native model of Islam from the Muslim anthropologist Abdul Hamid El-Zein who argues that discussions of Islam should start with its native models, i.e. the ways in which Islam becomes articulated in a given social context, rather than its idealized textual interpretations such as those of Ibn Khaldun, D. Hume or M. Weber (cited in: Varisco 2005, p. 146) or even C. Geertz, who according to D.M. Varisco extrapolated from his observations made in Morocco and Indonesia to write about Islam in general (Varisco 2005, p. 146).

A. Ahmed’s different models of Islam should be treated metaphorically as ideal types intended to gain a better understanding of reality rather than to reflect it closely. According to Ahmed, the different models are present in Muslim communities worldwide, providing different answers to the challenges of globalisation (Ahmed 2007, p. 33), and they are subject to continuous cross-pollination.

251 It is close to the term “Deoband Islam” introduced by A. Ahmed, an American anthropologist born in Pakistan. According to Ahmed, “Deoband” seems to be intended as an alternative to “Islamic fundamentalism” with its pejorative connotations. Although Ahmed does not treat the two models as synonymous, he believes that the Deoband ideology is similar to that of Wahhabi Islam. He counts the Saudis as the most notable representatives of Sunni Islam, and Iranians as representative of Shi‘ah Islam (Ahmed 2007, p. 71).

Ahmed defines Deoband, Ajmer and Aligarh Islam as predominant models of Islam practiced in the world today. The names of the models are based on three towns in India whose inhabitants have different interpretations of Islam and its relationship with other religions and the Western world. Given their strong Indian associations, however, I do not believe A. Ahmed’s terminology could be conveniently adopted in other countries of the world, especially to Muslims with no connections to India (Ahmed 2007, p. 71).

As far as the other two models are concerned, Ahmed identifies Ajmer Islam as pluralistic and tolerant of other religions, which it perceives as alternative ways to salvation. This model is inspired by Sufism and the mystical traditions of Islam (Ahmed 2007, p. 34), and mystics, such as Rumi, buried in Konya, Turkey, play an important role (Ahmed 2007, p. 33). The model tends to be found more frequently in Shi‘ah communities (Ahmed 2007, p. 46). In south-eastern Europe it is (or was) represented by dervishes and Sufi brotherhoods.

The Aligarh model is connected with the effort to reconcile Muslim tradition and society with Western modernity and parliamentary democracy; it is practised by moderate Muslims, such as the Arab televangelist ‘Amr Khalid (Ahmed 2007, p. 32, 41). One example is “Kalam Nawa‘im”, a weekly Arabic talkshow aired on MBC, in which female Muslim hosts discuss social problems and try to reconcile Islam with modern culture. Among those of my respondents I have had a chance to get to know better, the Mayor of Garmen, Ahmed Bashev, and his wife Shurfe, appear to be the best representatives of this model.

252 With the obvious difference that Ibn Taymiyyah, who lived in the 13th century, sought to remove as impure the ideas of the Mu‘tazilah school, whereas Salafi Muslims are trying to rid local Islam of the influence of the Ottoman Empire and of the Hanafi school.

253 See my detailed critique in Lubanska 2007b.

254 A factor he believed was responsible for the virtual lack of scholarly interest in Turkish folklore (Hasluck 2005, p. 121).

255 This said, Balkan Islam is itself losing its homogeneity as a result of globalising processes in religious culture; it combines characteristics of “Adat Islam” and of the increasingly popular Deoband Islam. H. Norris notes the growing influence Arab countries are exerting on Balkan Islam by financing religious courses for imams and new religious schools or madrasahs (local Muslim variant madrasa, Arabic: madrasah – school) (cf. Norris 1993, p. 8).

256 My respondents often make reference to non-Qur’anic narratives, Muslim legends which, like the Christian and Jewish apocrypha, are not part of Revealed Scripture (in this case, the Qur’an). Although they discuss events from the Qur’an, they also seek to satisfy pious curiousity about matters not mentioned in the Holy Book.

257 Muslims distinguish between different types of kurban: some are obligatory (when offered on Kurban Bayram), others become obligatory when promised to God kurban, and some can be offered in thanksgiving.

258 Obligatory prayers performed by Sunnis five times a day. The prayer involves a series of precisely defined gestures called rekye (Turkish: rükû, rekât, Arabic: rak‘ah) (see Glossary of Religious Terms).

259 Meaning that Muslims who practice “Adat Islam” continue to be shaped by such religious symbols, in contrast to the way people have become emancipated from the influence of such symbols in the post-modern period. This is not to suggest their passivity: on the contrary, in order for a symbol to play a formative role, it needs to be continually re-read and reinterpreted. This rethinking and reinterpretation occurs during the telling of religious narratives in which the symbols play a leading role.

260 According to the Islamic tradition, Ibrahim sacrificed his son Isma‘il rather than Ishaq (Isaac).

261 Arabic: al-Sirat – a bridge suspended over the pits of hell.

262 In Orthodox Christianity, Archangel Michael serves as the counterpart to the angel ‘Izra’il (cf. Lubanska 2005, p. 90–96).

263 There are apocryphal texts documenting her wanderings through the places of the torment of the damned (Słowiaska… 2001).

264 In a reverse interpretation, Eve’s intelligence became dimmed because she yielded to the temptation.

265 Honourable, blessed, literally meaning “honourable”, “blessed”.

266 Literally “Most High/Almighty”, one of the descriptions of Allah.

267 The respondent is referring to the second burial, a custom once practised by the Christian population of the Rhodopes which involved exhuming and reburying the bones of a deceased person.

268 The local Muslims treat the words “Bulgarian” and “Christian” as synonyms.

269 I borrowed this term from M. Zowczak, where the agricultural ethos is connected with a specific lifestyle (Zowczak 2000, p. 5). In analysing it we have to take into account both the values related to the ways of making a living, and its characteristic esthetic preferences (Zowczak 2000, p. 5). Notably, Bulgaria preserved a very rich and vibrant folklore, in some regions into the mid-20th century. As Georgieva notes, the Orthodox Church did not even try to eliminate the existing practices in certain areas of life (such as weddings, funerals and some feasts), attempting merely to modify their interpretations or to incorporate them within Christian observances (cf. Georgieva 2012).

270 A rich ethnographic literature exists on the subject, however the rites related to a given feast tend to form a certain ideal type removed from the local contexts and unique differences of local communities. Summarising these facts involve extensive quotations from existing reference works, a tiresome solution from the point of view of readers that would contribute little to the analysis presented in this book.

271 I took part in such a kurban in the Central Rhodopes near Chepelare in 2002. The kurban was organised by Muslims and involved Christian participants. All my respondents in the Western Rhodopes denied such practices ever taking part. In times of drought Orthodox Christians hold prayers for rain.

272 They are the only remaining members of the indigenous population. Because of its attractive typical Bulgarian National Revival architecture, almost all of the properties in Leshten have been bought up by Sofians.

273 This may also mean a first- or last-born child in the family; a child before sexual initiation (Blgarska… 1994, p. 254).

274 The song does not address God. It is a kind of incantation to bring natural bounty.

275 The songs cited by M. Arnaudov contain phrases like: “The butterfly flew away, it prayed to God: «(.) Give me, oh God, a dark cloud / may fine dew come down / may rye and millet produce crops / may orphans have food / the orphans, the little orphans (...)»” Bulgarian: “Dai mi, Bozhe, temen oblak/Da zarosi sitna rosa/da se rodi zhito, proso/Da se ranyat siracheta/Siracheta, siromasi …” (Arnaudov 1971, p. 177).

276 This is a non-Christian holiday as Baba Marta is spring personified. According to one female Muslim informant, Baba Marta was a daughter of Adam and Hawwa (Interview 45).

277 In other towns and villages in the Rhodopes this is referred to as Nevruz, Nifruz (Vaklinovo, Sarnitsa), Krkchibuk (Nedelino, Zhaltusha), Mart Dukuzu (Chakalarovo) (Popov 1994, p. 102). The same source identifies the name of the holiday in Ribnovo as Sisvet.

278 I am grateful to Prof. Ana Stoikova, a Bulgarian classical philologist, for pointing this out to me.

279 Güle güle! – Turkish: goodbye, farewell.

280 Christians use similar formulas: “Children and adults bang sheets of metal and bells, and run around the yard and the house. This involves a special formula, Byagayte zhmii i gushteri. Dneska e Blagovets (“Run, snakes and lizards, it’s Blagovets today”) (Kalendarni… 2003, p. 11) or Byagayte vsichki zhmii i gushteri, na 40 razkracha (“Run, all you snakes and lizards, [and keep] forty paces away”) (Kalendarni… 2003, p. 67).

281 In Balkan Orthodox Christianity Trifon is worshipped as the patron saint of vines and winemakers. The saint was a vine grower and suffered an accident (he sliced his nose off with a sickle) (Popov 1994, p. 95).

282 Called Hedrelez (Turkish: Hıdırellez) by the Alevis. On that day the twin brothers Khidr and Ilyas meet once in the year. Khidr reigns over earth, and Ilyas reigns over water (Milcheva 2003, p. 102).

283 Muslims, too, use flower bundles for marriage-related fortune-telling and other purposes (Milcheva 2003, p. 104).

284 This kind of “theft” also applied to depriving cows of milk by magical means.

285 Some Orthodox priests insisted that the site is occasionally visited by hodzhas as well.

286 Only a few monks live in the monastery on a permanent basis.

287 St. George and St. Michael specialize in curing madness (cf. Hasluck 2005, p. 692). In my field research I heard many stories of people cured of insanity in Hadzhidimovo.

288 The grandson of one of my female Muslim pilgrim was wearing this kind of talisman around his neck during the interview.

289 An evening prayer in the Eastern rite, equivalent to Catholic Vespers. See Glossary of Religious Terms.

290 Although I was mostly able to spot the Muslims in the crowd during my field research in Hadzhidimovo, this sampling method was not fully reliable, as some of them were Turks from Dabnitsa or visitors from a different region (like the Central Rhodopes), and not local Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. Also, not all Muslims, especially younger ones, wear the traditional Muslim costume.

291 F.W. Hasluck wrote that incubation was equally frequent in Muslim and Christian holy places (Hasluck 2005, p. 267).

292 To receive prophecy from Amfiaros, incubation was practised in ancient times in Oropos and other places (Hasluck 2005, p. 268).

293 I regard infertility cures to be part of the broader category of healing.

294 Liturgical hymns dedicated to Christian saints during which the congregation remains standing.

295 Bowman’s research was conducted in a different location and a different mixed holy site, but his observations are in many ways analogous to mine as described in this book.

296 Bektashi Muslims who visit the church of St. Nicholas near Makedonski Brod claim it to be the final resting place of their own saint, Khidr Baba. The stories of Khidr Baba are similar to the Christian stories of St. Nicholas. According to archaeological data, a Muslim teke (a Bektashi monastery) used to occupy the current location of the monastery (Bowman 2010, p. 201).

297 Although, as I have mentioned above, they often treat it as an element in a strategy aimed at getting new converts.

298 I wish to thank Prof. Robert M. Hayden for an inspiring exchange of correspondence in which we discussed this problem (21 and 22 October 2014).

299 Without this recognition, Charles Taylor rightly points out, it is impossible to discover one’s own identity. This process is always a product of negotiation and dialogue, “partly overt, partly internalized, with others” (Taylor 1991, p. 47).

300 Although admittedly it is tempting to accept Hayden’s category of competitive sharing as universally applicable to places of dual cult of stains in religiously mixed areas.

301 Introducing new principles, innovations to Islam (Danecki 1997, p. 52).

302 Which serves as a supplement to the farz, or religious commandments given by Allah.

303 Some anthropologists adopt a simiar perspective. As El-Zein notes, some “anthropologists tend to reduce local practice to superstition and syncretism that distort the assumed pure essence of the religion” (cited in: Varisco 2005, p. 151).

304 Obviously, this conviction is part of a certain imagined tradition on which Deoband Islam is based.

305 Muslims in the Rhodopes rarely used the Arabic term “Ramadan”, usually preferring the Persian-Turkish word “Ramazan”.

306 An amulet or amulets, also referred to in the Rhodopean dialect as amaliyka/amala.

307 Traditional female Muslim healers.

308 An emissary of Allah sent to proclaim monotheism.

309 Even though the status of the oral tradition is lower than that of scriptural narratives contained in the Qur’an, the Torah or the New Testament, it should be borne in mind that holy scriptures are nothing but codified oral tradition or codified folklore (Dundes 1999, p. 12). Also, “people raised in a culture dominated by the oral tradition, even if they never read the Bible, may have a fuller understanding of its symbolism than those who got to know it through writing. This can be explained by the specific nature of oral transmission with its dominance of imagery over concepts and synthetic thinking over analytic thinking, the former being a natural environment for religious symbolism” (Zowczak 2000, p. 7, translated from Polish).

310 The belief of Salafi Muslims that they are free from syncretic tendency is obviously misleading: by adapting the model of Islam taught in the madrasas for a local context they are engaging in a syncretic effort of a different kind.

311 The meaning of this statement is not clear.

312 A mausoleum/tomb of a Sufi saint, believed to be a place where prayers are more likely to be heard.

313 A Muslim saint. As G. Lozanova notes, the Christian saint cannot be described as an evliya; evliyas must be members of the Muslim community (Lozanova 2000, p. 155).

314 Some Muslims believe that on that day the decaying body separates itself from the bone, causing enormous suffering to the deceased person who needs help of his or her loved ones in the form of relief-bringing prayer. This is connected with the belief that the soul does not become separated from the body until that moment, and continues to suffer with the body until the separation is complete (Lubanska 2005, p. 129).

315 Special form of prostration in Muslim prayer involving touching the ground with one’s forehead, performed on a special prayer rug.

316 It is important in this context to point out that the Palamite theology of the Orthodox Christian Church makes it much harder to dismiss the gesture of kissing a religious icon as evidence of naive sensualism (cf. Czarnowski 1956, p. 92). According to the 14th-century concepts of Gregory Palamas, God is transcendent and unknowable but his energies (grace) are imminent and present in icons as a kind of stream of divine grace reaching the believer (Lubanska 2007b, p. 16). Most ordinary believers are unfamiliar with this concept, however two options must still be taken into account in analysing religious attitudes of Orthodox Christians: 1) the believer identifies the iconic depiction with the saint (non-differentiation) – a category inspired by Hans Georg-Gadamer and developed in Polish anthropology by Tokarska-Bakir (2000), the believer feels that the icon is, to use Gadamer’s term, “an ontological event” which “occupies the same ontological level as what is represented” (Gadamer 2004, p. 135), but is nonetheless not identical (por. Lubanska 2007b, p. 16). In the case of Orthodox Christianity, the sensory experience of the icon remains well within the limits of canonical belief with its sense of being affected in a real way by divine grace, or even its belief in the apotropaic powers of such items. By way of contrast, the placing by Muslims of trust in amaliykas, treated as apotropaic items, is incompatible with Sunni Islam.

317 Generally speaking, hodzhas have mixed feelings about such healers, depending on whether they use the Qur’an or magical formulas, the latter obviously being frowned upon.

318 Adherents of Ibn Hanbal (780–855) who rigorously respect the Qur’an and the Sunnah and reject any reforms of the law (Danecki 1997, p. 82).

319 Adherents of the legal school of Abu Hanifa (699–767), characterized by legal rationality and a tolerant attitude towards other religions (Danecki 1997, p. 82).

320 A school of Islamic law.

321 According to B. Tibi, this translates into a politicisation of religion: fundamentalists care little about the religious experience, merely coopting it as a vehicle of their totalitarian ideology (cf. Tibi 1997). This does not seem to apply to my respondents. None of them formulated any political goals, and all of them seemed to be committed to the cause of religious education of Muslims in the Western Rhodopes along a model which they believed was Islam from the times of Muhammad.

322 http://www.way-to-allah.com/bul/documents/Priznatsite_za_chasa.pdf (12.12.2011).

323 The book was translated into Bulgarian from English: A Brief Illustrated Guide to understanding Islam, Houston, Texas: Darussalam 1996.

324 http://old.government.bg/cgi-bin/e-cms/vis/vis.pl?s=001&p=0178&n=149&g= (11.2009).

325 Based on a cherrypicked televised quote, myth (which Alfred Kröner denies) persists on Youtube (see for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClHuG880pqU).

326 In fact, this occurred at a later date as the written text was collated ca. 650 during the reign of Caliph Uthman.

327 The Gardens of the Righteous (Arabic: Riyad al-Salihin).

328 Such explanations seem to be “not so to explain as to provide pious commentary” (Wasilewski 1989, p. 25). The literature of the subject contains a number of interpretations. M. Douglas writes that unclean animals tend to be creatures of mixed categories which fail to adhere to the logical order of the world, meaning either imperfect members of their own class or entire classes which violate the universal order (cited in: Wasilewski 1989, p. 26). Sheep, which are even-toed ungulates, provide the model of a “clean” animal in Judaism and Islam. Consequently, unclean animals will fail to meet those two characteristics. For instance, pigs are the only even-toed non-ruminant and the only nonruminant among even-toed animals known in the near East (cf. Hunn, cited in: Wasilewski 1989, p. 33). According to J.S. Wasilewski, another criterion making certain animals are considered unclean is the failure to adhere to the principle of paradisal harmony and respect for life (cf. Wasilewski 1989, p. 40), which makes all meat-eating animals unclean (Wasilewski 1989, p. 40).

329 I quote bula extensively in Section 6.1.

330 I realise that concepts such as “the West”, “Occidentalism” and “Orientalism” are vague. This is why I use them as emic categories used by my respondents. I define Occidentalism with I. Buruma and A. Margalit as a counterpart to Orientalism; a complex of negative beliefs and stereotypes about the West (2004). Islamic Occidentalism in the Western Rhodopes as discussed in this book is only one current within Occidentalism. As an ideal type, the term Occidentalism was born in the West, primarily in Germany, in the writings of German nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s, but also Nazi writers (E. Jünger), German philosophers of culture (O. Spengler) and sociologists (O. Sombart). Occidentalism juxtaposed the Western metropolis as a Moloch, or a Babylon against rural life with its idealized uncorrupted and authentic moral values (Buruma, Margalit 2005). In this sense, Occidentalism “is a phenomenon that reflects anxieties, fears and prejudices of mostly urban intellectuals who feel displaced in a world of mass commerce” rather than the ideology of oppressed villagers (Buruma, Margalit 2005, p. 34).

331 This term is used by Ph. Rieff, an American critic of liberal culture (Rieff 2006). For a more detailed discussion see (Lubanska 2008, p. 365–387).

332 A kerchief covering the hair and the neck.

333 This is largly due to the fact that Islam is excluded from the narrative and representation of Europe by Europeans (Asad 2003, p. 172). For instance, the historian M. Wintle believes that Muslim immigrants cannot describe Europe as their home because they were not shaped by experiences such as life in the Roman Empire, Christianity, the Enlightenment, or the industrial revolution (Asad 2003, p. 166). Also, Talal Asad points out that Islam is treated by Europeans as a kind of deficient “quasi-civilization”, which may have transferred certain valuable elements into Europe but did not actually produce them. This is the interpretation of the Hellenistic legacy of Islam which Europeans claim as their own (Asad 2003, p. 168–169). Also, Islam is presupposed to be innately hostile to Europe, for which it is the primary alter (Asad 2003, p. 169).