The public discourse of the Muslim leadership has been integral to promoting the Islamic concept of hijab and female modesty after decades of state-forced national modernization and what was pursued as an emancipation of the “socialist women.” Within that “emancipation,” female Muslims were involved in a process of social engineering in which veiling was rejected and perceived as a form of a “reactionary” tradition. Yet it is an open question whether veiling represents an ongoing process in secular post-Communist Bulgarian society towards re-Islamization, “resuming” the authority of the sharīʻa in the everyday practices and public life of Muslim women through a return to a stricter adherence to Islamic norms. In so doing, I trace the polysemy of the Islamic concept of hijab on the basis of intersection between the interpretations by the Bulgarian Sunni religious authorities, domestic cultural codes, and the perceptions of veiling by Bulgarian Muslim women themselves.
One source to follow the public debate comprises two periodicals with the same name issued by the Chief Muftiship of the Muslim Denomination in the Republic of Bulgaria—the newspaper and the above-mentioned magazine Myusyulmani. After the 1989 changes, the Muftiship launched its own newspaper (1999–2004), and in 2005 this official publication was replaced by the monthly bilingual magazine, Myusyulmani in Bulgarian and Müslümanlar in Turkish. From 1999 through 2016, nearly 20 percent of the articles dealt with topics related to Muslim women. Muslim women wrote one-third of the stories or their opinions were represented in the form of interviews. In general, the two publications are devoted to the teachings of Islam on women’s roles, duties and rights, the explanations of religious beliefs, practices, and the moral observance and behavior in accordance with the Islamic faith. However, the most frequently discussed topics are related to the appropriate Islamic covering, women’s public behavior, education, inheritance, the Muslim woman as a wife and mother, the right choice of a husband, or religiously acceptable woman’s work outside of the home. Those subjects are linked to the hijab, which illustrates the particular importance of this topic.
The second type of evidence is ethnographic and draws on field research among Bulgarian Muslims in several localities of the Rhodopes Mountains since 2003. Along with the observation of practices, this chapter is based on interviews and conversations with several representatives of younger Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, born in the early 1970s, who have received their Islamic education in Bulgaria or abroad in the Arab world. I focus on the Islamic views of two respondents active on the local and national level who articulated female and male Pomak views—Hatije Tiber and Muhammed Kamber.
Married with two daughters, Hatije lives in her native village of Avramovo, Blagoevgrad region, although the place is culturally and geographically closer to Velingrad. She wears hijab and modest attire. Hatije received a bachelor’s degree in Primary School Pedagogy from Blagoevgrad University and in 2005 graduated the Higher Islamic Institute in Sofia as an expert in Islamic theology. She also holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. Between 2000 and 2007, Hatije worked as a teacher at the primary school in Avramovo. Although she was an experienced teacher with extensive abilities and knowledge, after the relocation of that school she was asked to unveil if she wished to continue her career in the national public-school system. Hatije refused to unveil. Now she is regularly engaged in her family’s agricultural work and teaches in the summer Qur’ān school—a course organized for the children in her village.
1 Veiling as Public Performance of Faith according to the Mainstream Islamic Tradition
The religious justifications for veiling in its classical meaning are to be found in the Qur’ān and the Sunna and refer to the concept of hijab (ḥijāb).4 For Muslims, the wearing of the hijab is closely related to some passages from the Qur’ān (especially Q. 24: 31; 33: 53–55, 59) and sayings of Prophet Muḥammad from the ḥadīth collections that enjoin women to dress modestly and to cover themselves.5 Islamic exegesis (tafsīr) and jurisprudence (fiqh) has not fixed certain religious prescriptions for a specifically Islamic type of clothing but focused on the interpretations what parts of the woman’s body have to be covered in public (ʻawra, pudendum or, literally, genitals)6 rather than what she
This approach to veiling as a public performance of faith is clear-cut and linked to the religious duty of observing the gender division incumbent on the Muslim community (umma) through the medium of dressed gendered bodies. Female modesty transforms into a collective social concern in order to publicly preserve the divinely ordained physical boundaries between men and women.7 The veiling of Muslim women as a means to maintain social distance between the genders became a de facto institution regulating social relationships in accord with Islamic sacred law (sharīʻa). Furthermore, as Julianne Funk emphasizes, covered Muslim women have the power to form clear boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims and sustain the code of conduct that accompanies the hijab.8 Paradoxically, veiling, which Muslims do not perceive as a religious symbol, acquires symbolic dimensions in the ideologically neutral public space of modern secular societies: an outer expression of personal faith marks the woman clearly in public as a devout Muslim, no matter what her reasons to cover.
2
Most of the ethnic Turkish population in Bulgaria today is secular and the Islamic headscarf during the recent years is less common among the younger generation compared to the increasingly massive expression of religious identity via hijab-veiling among the Pomaks.9 Yet this diversity among the Muslim community in Bulgaria does not cause any intra-Islamic debates on whether the veil is mandatory or not. The study of the official periodicals of the Chief Mufti’s Office clearly shows that all authors who wrote about Muslim women are unanimous that believing women have to cover their heads and not display their beauty.10 Thus the Muslim leadership asserts their community in a clear-cut manner that there is an existing scholarly consensus in Islam on the mandate of hijab. This unanimity is also a reaction to the various campaigns for “de-veiling” Muslim women by the Bulgarian state, which earlier had pursued strong secularist policies, sometimes by force.
In Bulgaria, the Muslim veil is denoted by words such as zabradka, bulo, kurpa, feredzhe, hijab, yashmak, shamiya, kyulbe, or djar, all of which are used to describe particular parts of the clothing covering woman’s body, head or face when she leaves her home and appears in public spaces. The terms are with Slavic, Arabic or Turkish roots and represent a Balkan contextualization and Ottoman interpretation of the women’s garment in accordance with the Islamic moral rules for decency and modesty. Neuburger claims that in Bulgarian writings on the practice, these terms are used interchangeably.11 However, etymologically the Bulgarian words zabradka (headscarf), bulo (veil) and kurpa (kerchief) refer to different types of headscarves worn by Christian women. The naming of the hijab as zabradka by Muslims, especially in the 20th century, is a domestic cultural contextualization and involves an attempt
The Bulgarian government carried out campaigns against the Islamic veil during the early consolidation of the modern nation-state building in 1912–1913, included an assimilationist policy for a forced Christianization (pokrustvane) of the Pomaks, who were claimed to be “Bulgarians in their blood.”12 In the period 1937–1944 active members of the state-supported Pomak movement Rodina played an important role in this process of de-veiling called razferedzhavane (removing the feredzhe) of Pomak women. Muslim women intermittently shed and re-donned their veils and shalvari,13 whether out of modernist affinities or as a survival strategy. Although the majority of Pomaks were opposed to Rodina and its de-veiling program, state support ensured that pro-Rodina Muslims held an increasingly large measure of local control.14
Feredzhe is the most well-known garment, traditionally worn by Muslim women in the Balkans during the Ottoman period and until the first decades of the 20th century.15 It is a long dark (most often black), modestly cut robe that covered all the body to the throat. Women also covered their heads and faces with a variety of veils or wraps. Hatije explained that in the past, Muslim women from her region put the shamiya over their heads and, while in public, additionally covered the faces and chests with a piece of cloth called kyulbe. Muhammеd Kamber specified that until 1912 his female ancestors worn the feredze and covered their heads and faces with the yashmak (an Ottoman type of veil analogous to niqab) that only expose the eyes and the nose. He insists
In spite of the assimilationist Communist policies of forced name-changing or the activities of the regime to modernize and emancipate women through unveiling, many Muslim women continued to veil during the so-called “Revival Process” (Vuzroditelen protses) when the Arabic-Turkish names of the Pomaks (in the 1970s) and Turks (in the 1980s) were forcibly changed to sound “more Bulgarian.”17 However, women continue to express their Muslim identity through the veil. The attempts of the Bulgarian state to impose restrictions on religious garments and to force Muslim women with administrative measures and fines to take off their headscarves is a sensitive topic in Myusyulmani magazine. A 2012 editorial emphasizes that the Muslim veil was viewed by the Communist authorities as a clear demonstration of foreign Turkish nationalism and religiosity: “The Turkish woman was not allowed to wear a yashmak because it was a representation of both national and religious clothing. The de-veiling policies of the regime proclaimed that it is not acceptable for a socialist woman to hide as a ‘scarecrow’ behind sheets, burqu, or feredzhe.”18 Because of the prohibitions against wearing a veil at work, in shops, in public transport, or during public events, many Muslim women, especially in the cities, removed the headscarves.
When I asked Muhammed Kamber to explain how the Pomak women from his region kept veiling during this period, he answered: “Our women did not occupy administrative or governmental positions in the towns. They were ordinary farmers and herders living out in the fields and in mountain villages. In fact, this circumstance facilitated and helped them to dress according to Islam.”19 The lack of desire for a professional career in the Communist governmental and public administration as well as the avoidance of the urban
Nonetheless, modified Islamic veiling unsanctioned by the Communist authorities worked only in the closed environment of the village and particularly in agricultural fields. As Hatije pointed out, over time the economic reality of rural life changed with the opening of different economic opportunities (for example, sewing, weaving carpets, and the assembly of low-current relays) in nearby villages where the Pomak women could find well-paid jobs but were obligated to abandon the shalvars, to wear trousers, and to remove their headscarves inside this “public” workspace. Veiled Muslim women were also forbidden to attend gatherings and festive events in public urban or holiday places. Many of them gave birth at home to avoid going to a hospital where they were obliged to take off their headscarves.21
Since 2012, Hatije Tiber maintains her own blog, Muslimabg, where she publishes poems, essays, reflections on Islamic celebrations and seminars, and personal stories about pilgrimage (hajj) or veiling.22 Her memoir, “My First Hijab,” was republished by the magazine of the Muftiship in 2014.23 In this narrative, written in the form of personal confession, Hatije denies the allegations that Muslim women are oppressed and deprived of decision-making on whether to cover. She shares memories from the past to show that her forcible unveiling by activists of the Communist Party, when she was fifteen-years old, did not liberate or emancipate her but rather generated only pain and intensified her anger. She is convinced that unveiling deprived her of her core identity. After the democratic changes in Bulgaria, Hatije pursued her studies covered with hijab in the universities. She admits that she was proud to be judged on the basis of her virtues as Muslima, as well as her academic knowledge, and not according to her beauty. Hatije prefers to remain veiled and not to fulfill her
3 Return to the “True” Rights, Duties, and Responsibilities of Women in Islam
Hatije represents the Islamic piety movement among Pomaks that emerged in Bulgaria since the 1990s. This movement has succeeded in “attracting believers who seek a new kind of Islamic knowledge, distinct from official religion or the folk Islam passed down by their elders.”25 For her part, Hatije characterizes the 1990s as “a very favorable period for exploring Islam and a stricter observance of its commandments.” In an informal conversation, she underlined that a lot of things have changed during the past twenty years: “Indeed, there was a period of a strong conflict between the old hodzhas and the young ones who graduated from Saudi Arabia but gradually the community began to accept the need for a better understanding of the religion. Beginning in the 1990s, lectures were held extensively, especially for women, because as key figures in the family they had to learn more about Islam, and they likewise began to attend the Qur’ān school to learn how to read the Muslim Holy Book in Arabic.”26
This call of the piety movement for an “authentic” return to the “true” Islamic teachings as revealed in the Qur’ān and exemplified by the Prophetic Sunna have over time been gradually integrated into the discourse of the “official” religion. The newspaper, and subsequently the magazine Myusyulmani, provided a platform for publications of young Muslim women who acquired their Islamic education in the Arab world. Some expressed the opinion that the knowledge of Islam, duties, responsibilities, and rights of Muslims as a whole are extremely important, because the “predominant Islam in Bulgaria today is perverted and irrespective of the meaning of the Holy Qur’ān.”27 Moreover, as Gyulgyun Saitova stresses, this local tradition is not related to the Prophet Muhammad’s legacy, and many of their rights as Muslim women
Important contributions to promoting such a discourse can be found in articles clearly emphasizing the fundamental role of the Muslim woman as a mother for the care and upbringing of future generations in order to preserve the Islamic standards of morality in society,31 since “the best reward on the Day of Judgment will receive the woman who has fulfilled all her duties as a wife and mother.”32 That is why some authors have brought to the fore not only the “necessity” but the duty of every Muslim to build a strong family. For example, Hatije Ismail, a then student at the Higher Islamic Institute in Sofia, reviewing the sources and principles of Islamic family law, concluded that “the marriage is a religious obligation, a moral fortress and a social duty for Muslims, because as a religion and a socio-political system, Islam recognizes the family as the basic unit of society.”33 Opinions expressed in the official publications of the Muftiship have the purpose of reminding Bulgarian Muslims that the family is a core Islamic value and the basic element and the cornerstone of the umma. Therefore, religiously prescribed gender roles preserve the Islamic social order. In this clearly outlined paradigm of social relations, the roles of
Based on the Islamic notion of family, some articles in Myusyulmani criticize European secular societies for the tendency to ruin the traditional family by encouraging family planning and birth control, or by promoting the cohabitation and tolerating some forms of same-sex civil unions or marriages.34 In 2008, one of the Islamic leaders in the Muftiship and currently a Deputy Chief Mufti, Vedat Ahmed, published an article criticizing a new draft Bulgarian family code which intended to reform the law related to cohabitation. According to him, the legalization of same sex marriages or arrangements by two non-married individuals to live together, “implies a high risk as a danger [leading to a] moral degradation of society.”35 There was considerable objection to the bill, mainly from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Chief Mufti’s Office, and, consequently, the Bulgarian Family Code which was passed in 2009 did not recognize the legal status of cohabitation as a valid form of marriage.36 Its existence has been recognized by various regulations, but only civil marriage has legal validity.
Some editorials of Myusyulmani express a negative attitude towards female emancipation and the gender equality in the West. These achievements of modernity are seen as unacceptable for Muslim women because burdening women with roles extrinsic to them makes any aspiration for imitating the Western pattern condemnable from an Islamic perspective.37 In this regard, the current (since 2005) Chief Mufti, Mustafa Alish Hadzhi, explains that, in Islam, women enjoy certain privileges of which man is deprived. She is financially secure from her birth and for the rest of her life by her husband, if she gets married, or by her male relatives, if she remains single. Hence, Muslim women are not obliged to work and it is a Muslim man’s responsibility to look after his family.38 Family life is a social life, writes the Chief Mufti, and social life,
Despite the observed diversity of local traditions and practices among Muslims throughout the country what is remarkable since the collapse of the Communist regime is that the views on the role of women in wider society promoted by the Chief Muftiship and expressed in their two major journals indicate a movement from the inherited “local” Muslim traditions to the “great” Islamic tradition and normativity. Defending the validity of Islamic doctrine, the systematic argumentation and discourse of the publications present the gender roles as static and enforced by the religious structure regardless of space and time. For example, along with the saying that Muslim women are not bound to carry out any career outside the home to make a living, as the classical Islamic texts stress, the Regional Mufti of Gotse Delchev, Aydin Mohammed, criticizes the changing roles of women in the contemporary Bulgarian society: “The main role of the Muslim woman today seems to be based solely on her work in order to provide support to improve the family’s livelihood. She works in manufactories, in the fields, on a farm, in the kitchen, or wherever money can be earned.”40 In reality, he adds, this leads to unfulfillment of her maternal and marital family obligations. Aydin Mohammed is convinced that neither the public kindergartens, nor the schools and universities but the mother plays the most important and leading role in the early training, upbringing, and educating children in Muslim families.41 The enormous increase in the number of working Muslim women, encouraged by state emancipation policies, is a matter of concern for many believers because this can significantly change family patterns and roles.
Along the same lines, an editorial about the education of young Muslim girls and women encourages education but places faith-based restrictions on subject areas. These constraints, it is argued, are placed “with respect to women in order to preserve their dignity and moral values.” Permitted are all the sciences and knowledge “beneficial to the nature and belief of the woman.”44 For example, it is considered unacceptable for a women to practice professions or activities which may damage her body (such as military service, construction, or metallurgy), contrary to her feminine nature (engaging in affairs obstructing her main roles as a wife and mother), requiring a strong character (e.g., working as a judge)45 or violating of her honor and dignity, such as gender mixing in the workplace.46 This outline socially unacceptable roles and professions for women pits claimed Muslim objections squarely against the value of gender equality in the workplace.
The official Islamic discourse as represented by Myusyulmani magazine is also concerned about women’s careful and informed choice of a husband. For example, the magazine elaborates on guidelines to instruct today’s Muslim youth in Bulgaria on how to make the “right choice” of a spouse in accordance
When Hatije Tiber explained the massive return of the Pomak community to religion and its values, she specified that the veiling of women constitute an indispensable part of this process: “There are two tendencies in the veiling: a small percentage of women wear a headscarf simply because they follow the local traditions, while the larger group of women made a conscious decision to wear hijab and to cover themselves in public.”49 Arguing that in the near past Bulgarian Muslim women did not properly understand the Islamic requirements to dress in the appropriate way, Hatije gladly notes that she belongs to the second group which strives to fulfill religious requirements and not follow the local tradition in which women’s clothing does not entirely meet the standard for “real” Islamic dress.
Hatidje Ali Ibrahim,50 also from the Islamic piety movement from Avramovo, wrote one of the first articles in Myusyulmani that provided detailed instructions about Islamic clothing requirements for women. The dress code, she pointed out, “is of particular importance because through clothing the Muslim woman increases her dignity in society and preserves her virtue, while a woman who does not respect the clothing prescribed by Allāh loses her honour and the respect of others.”51 Proper dress and covering the body in public with a wide opaque “head-to-toe” modest garment that does not show the woman’s figure, does not emulate the dress of the opposite sex and is not perfumed, provides Muslim women with dignity, purity, chastity, and nobility as understood in the Islamic tradition. For Hatije Ibrahim, women must veil. Nonetheless, “Islamic clothing does not make the believing woman unpleasant nor humiliate her but
The periodicals of the Chief Muftiship promote Islamic rules for women’s dress code by publishing articles from a female perspective. For example, Gyulgyun Saitova, who was studying by that time at Faculty of Shariʻa of Zarqa University, Jordan, explains her belief that clothes can serve as flirting tools that can lead to illicit relationships. Therefore, in Islam the woman should be well dressed, wear makeup and perfume only for her husband, and not show her beauty in public spaces. She adds that according to Islamic law, a Muslim woman’s beauty should be primarily for her husband and her close relatives (maḥram), with whom marriage is permanently unlawful by kinship or foster relationships. She reassures her readership that this religious command effectively eliminates the problem of infidelity in the Muslim family as the husband believes that his wife will preserve her purity and honor by observing the Islamic dress code and modesty in public.53
4 Public Perceptions: Religious Requirements vis-à-vis the Secular Rules
The hijab polarized public opinion in Bulgarian society at large, because its wearing challenges the secular concept of neutrality, a debate that has also galvanized France now for several decades.54 In 2006, a lively national public debate about Islamic veiling ignited in Bulgaria when two Muslim girls in a Smolyan high school wearing headscarves refused to un-veil and to wear the school’s uniform after the director of the school banned the veil in classrooms. A local non-governmental organization, the Union for Islamic Development
Right after the Commission’s decision, the Chief Mufti Mustafa Hadzhi made a statement against it and declared that the headscarf is a religious duty divinely incumbent upon Muslim women.57 Actually, since the fall of the Communist regime in Bulgaria, the Chief Muftiship has clearly argued that there is a consensus position on the mandatory nature of the headscarf. However, the Smolyan case provoked almost all members of the Muftiship to actively engage in a campaign to protect wearing the hijab in public and girls’ rights to wear it in public schools. Hussein Hafuzov, the then secretary-general and spokesman for the Chief Muftiship, gave an interview to the editor of Myusyulmani magazine in which he affirmed that the headscarf (zabradkata) is not “a religious symbol” but “a religious duty” by quoting the Quran 24:31–32 and 33:59. Furthermore, he said that “Muslim women are prohibited from leaving their homes without wearing a headscarf and this is a definitive
In the same time, the Chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council, Vedat Ahmed, also defended the veiling of schoolgirls.60 He briefly outlined the textual proofs for wearing hijab, explaining Islamic scholars label the area that should be covered (‘awra), arguing that within the Ḥanafī school of law the face and hands are excluded from the ‘awra and women may therefore uncover them. In so doing, Ahmed used two terms interchangeably to denote Islamic veiling: hijab and tasettur. The last term, also of Arabic origin, means “covering.” Due to the fact that it was widely used by Ottoman Ḥanafī jurists, it became widespread in the Balkans through Ottoman Turkish—tesettür. Further, the fulfillment of this religious duty is an obligation incumbent upon all Muslim girls who have entered puberty and that an exception to go out in public uncovered for the gaze of men can be made only for old women. To him, “covering women’s private parts and beauty is an expression of praise and obedience to the Creator” aiming “at ensuring the chastity and honor of women, as well as the honor of men who are often tempted by the beauty of women.”61 Still, Vedat Ahmed concludes by arguing that the Muslim veil per se guarantees the affiliation of the woman to the definitive divine religion.62 In this sense, hijab functions as a means of visible expression of her Muslim identity and faith in the public space.
In the past several years, the community has been at the center of media attention and public controversy after its Salafī preacher, Ahmed Moussa, was put on trial three times, accused of spreading “religious hatred.” Pazardzhik became the first Bulgarian city to ban full-face veils in public. On 27 April 2016, the Pazardzhik Municipality Council voted an amendment to the Ordinance on Public Order prohibiting wearing of any clothing or accessories that completely cover the face and obscure the identity of the wearer. The facial veil is perceived as a potential security threat because it allows one to hide one’s features. People who do not follow the ban face fines ranging from 300 Bulgarian leva63 to 1,000 Bulgarian leva for repeated offences.64 Following Pazardzhik, several Bulgarian towns prohibited the wearing of full-face veils in public. Along with bans on the local level, on 30 September 2016 the Bulgarian parliament approved a nationwide law outlawing face-covering veils in public—at state institutions, schools, areas of administrative, and public services.
The bill has been also harshly criticized by members of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (mrf), whose principal electorate is mainly the Muslim community in Bulgaria. Initially, when discussing the proposed draft in the parliamentary committees, the main criticisms were not related to the violation on religious rights. During a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee of Legal Affairs, the member of the parliament from the mrf, Chetin Kazak, noted: “The Bulgarian version of the Muslim religion and the Bulgarian Muslim tradition do not require the wearing of such clothes. Therefore, it is ridiculous to adopt a special extraordinary legislation because of two dozen fully veiled women from the Roma neighborhood in Pazardzhik.”67 Basically, there are no statistics in Bulgaria on the exact number of Muslim women covering themselves with different types of niqab and “Arab” style khimār. Estimates on the media provide information about 20 to 40 women from the Roma community in Iztok neighborhood of Pazardzhik.68 Representatives of the State Agency of National Security stated during the deliberations on the draft law
Despite the opposition from the mrf, on 30 September 2016, Bulgaria’s parliament approved the Law Prohibiting the Wearing of Clothing Concealing the Face.70 The mrf, together with six independent mps,71 former members of the parliamentary group of mrf who founded a new Political Party dost,72 accused other Bulgarian parties of “demonstrating religious intolerance” and refused to take part in the vote. In fact, the full-face veil issue put the secular leadership of the mrf into a dilemma, forcing them to take a stand on a controversial issue that divided their electorate. The vast majority of the mrf’s supporters are secular Turks, and even the headscarves are rarely an element of the women’s dress in public. Nevertheless, the politicians from the mrf and dost were strongly opposed to the face veil ban law, saying it infringes on the freedom of religion guaranteed by the constitution. When, for example, ten years ago, during the national debate about wearing headscarves at public schools, “mrf, in accordance with the official policies of the Turkish government, did not support headscarves in schools. On the other hand, the mrf had good networks in the non-Turkish Muslim population in Bulgaria (both Pomak
The law was approved by a majority of the votes. Immediately afterward, the independent member of the parliament Hussein Hafuzov,74 the former Secretary General of the Chief Muftiship, made an emotional statement, asserting that the “law limit[ed] women’s ability to wear religious garments in conformity with the Islamic dress code.”75 He declared firm opposition to the law, claiming that it was “the first step towards a complete ban of Islamic clothing.”76 He also recalled earlier attempts by the Bulgarian state in the 20th century to de-veil (razferedzyavane) Muslim women. According to Hafuzov, the definition of the burqa as “non-traditional” clothing of Muslim women in Bulgaria is “absolutely untenable from a religious point of view,” because “the feredzhe is a kind of burqa, dear colleagues, and what the burqa covers is covered alike by the feredzhe.” At the end of his speech, Hussein Hafuzov emphasized that this legally imposed restriction on Muslim women’s clothing was “an attempt [to damage] the reputation and honor of Muslim women” and “the Bulgarian parliament offends not only the Muslims who are living in the country but also the entire world Muslim community.”77
Hafuzov intensified his criticism of the law by including religious reasons in his public political discourse; he defined veiling as a means of preserving the dignity and honor of woman. He defended the right of the Muslim community to draw and maintain the divinely ordained (according to Islamic doctrine) gender boundaries in the public space of the Bulgarian secular society. For the first time since the democratic changes in 1989, it was not a representative of the Muftiship but a Bulgarian mp who explicitly stated that the full veiling of Muslim women in Bulgaria is not a manifestation of “foreign influences.” Public face covering was a long-standing practice in Ottoman time to which some devout Muslim women have returned. Bringing to the fore the claim
Shortly after the official approval of the Law Prohibiting the Wearing of Clothing Concealing the Face, the Chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council and Deputy Chief Mufti Vedat Ahmed published a critical analysis of the Bulgarian state policy to “modernize” Muslim women during the last century by dictating how to dress and practice their religion. Instead of resorting to the common term razferedzavane, or re-dressing,78 he used a much stronger, emphatic expression when symbolically calling the forced de-veiling campaigns “a struggle for ‘undressing’ the Muslim woman in Bulgaria.”79 This phrase indicates how significant the hijab issue is for the religious leaders of the Muslim community in Bulgaria. Vedat Ahmed noted that the struggle for “undressing” is not typical only for Bulgaria, “the Bulgarian mark, nonetheless, is stable in this process.”80 Summarizing some evidence on the topic and referring to documents from archival sources and historical studies, the Chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council concluded that from the first years of the modern independent Bulgarian state (after 1878) until today, the most successful governmental actions towards de-veiling were the campaigns of the atheist Communists. Ahmed highlights that despite all those state efforts and pressure over the last one hundred and thirty years, the attempt to “undress” the Muslim women have failed in reality which shows that it will not succeed in the future, “except if the believing women ‘undress’ themselves or if the Apocalypse comes.”81
When in December 2016 I asked Hatije Tiber and Muhammed Kamber to express their opinions about the “burqa ban,” they both said that this is a “discriminatory law.” Although Muhammed pointed out that there are no fully covered women in his region, and Hatije stressed that she would never wear
5 Conclusion
There is an ongoing process of “re-Islamization,” which stipulates active promotion of a stricter observance of the commandments of Islam among an increasing number of Muslims in Bulgaria. The official Muslim leadership, as well as the representatives of the younger, more devout generation of Pomaks, make efforts to spread more widely the “true” Islamic teachings as revealed in the Qur’ān and exemplified in the Prophetic Sunna. The analysis of the periodicals issued by the Chief Muftiship indicates that the call for a return to the rightful rules of the Islamic faith and the public proclamation of the religious norms and values is tantamount to the assertion of their shared Muslim identity.
The observed higher degree of adherence to the norms of the “great” Islamic tradition against the backdrop of “local” tradition and practices in the everyday life is publicly justified and explained as a fundamental human right for practicing religion without state interference. The Muslim veil is seen as a genuine public expression of a woman’s piety, modesty, and high moral standards as embedded in Islamic textual religious tradition. Yet, the hijab maintains a social distance between genders and outlines the acceptable roles of women in accordance with Islamic law. It also generates social tension as this inherently Islamic religious commitment in public space is perceived by the society at large as an attempt to impose social norms and moral codes contradicting the secular order of Bulgaria.
The traditional definition of the Pomaks denotes Bulgarian-speaking Muslims residing mainly in the Rhodopes, the southern border region of Bulgaria. More recently, the identity of the Pomaks has been studied by Evgeniya Ivanova, Islyamizirani Balkani: Dinamika na Razkazite [Islamized Balkans: Dynamics of Stories] (Sofia: New Bulgarian University Press, 2014) and Fatme Myuhtar-May, Identity, Nationalism, and Cultural Heritage under Siege. Five Narratives of Pomak Heritage—From Forced Renaming to Weddings (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014).
The historical origin of the Pomaks is discussed by Tsvetana Georgieva, “Pomaks: Muslim Bulgarians,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 12, 3 (2001), 303–16.
Editorial, “Religiozna Identichnost na Myusyulmanite v Bulgaria [Religious Identity of Muslims in Bulgaria],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 1/169 (2009): 2.
Mona Siddiqui, “Veil,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 5: 412–16; see also Jean Chelhod, “Hidjāb,” in EI2, 3: 359–61; Gautier H. A. Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical Hadith (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 166, 433–34; Lynda Clarke, “Hijab according to the Hadith: Text and Interpretation,” in The Muslim Veil in North America: Issues and Debates, ed. Sajida Alvi, Homa Hoodfar, and Sheila McDonough (Toronto: Women’s Press, 2003), 214–86.
Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā’ al-Turāth al-ʻArabī, 1423/2002), 3: 364.
See Abū Jaʻfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʻ al-Bayān ʻan Ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, 12 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyya, 1994), 5: 419; ʻAbdallah ibn ʻUmar al-Baidāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-ta’wīl (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1416/1996); Burhān al-Dīn al-Marghīnānī, al-Hidāyah fī Sharḥ Bidāyat al-Mubtad, 4 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 2000), 1:109. For more details, see Baber Johansen, “The Valorization of the Human Body in Muslim Sunni Law,” in Law and Society in Islam, ed. Devin Stewart, Baber Johansen, and Amy Singer (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 75.
Вarbara Stowasser, Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 168; Judith Tucker, Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 175–99; Susan A. Spectorsky, Women in Classical Islamic Law: A Survey of the Sources (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 50; As̕ ad Abu Khalil, “Gender Boundaries and Sexual Categories in the Arab World,” Feminist Issues 15, 1/2 (1997): 91–104; Fadwa el-Guindi, “Veiling Infitah with Muslim Ethic: Egypt’s Contemporary Islamic Movement,” Social Problems 28, 4 (1981): 465–85.
Julianne Funk, “Public Expressions of Bosnian Muslim Religiosity and Lived Faith: The Cases of Friday Prayer and Hijab,” in The Revival of Islam in the Balkans. From Identity to Religiosity, ed. Arolda Elbasani and Olivier Roy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 213–16.
Pomaks define themselves either as Muslims—to differentiate themselves from the majority Bulgarian Christian identity—or as a Bulgarian-speaking community in contrast to ethnic Turkish Muslims. As reported by Evgeniya Ivanova, the research leader of the sociological survey “Attitudes of Muslims in Bulgaria—2011,” only 26 percent of Pomaks identify themselves ethnically as “Bulgarian,” while the self-identification of 69 percent is “other.” About 20 percent choose Islam as an ethnic marker. The survey is published in: Ivanova, Islyamizirani Balkani, 226–54, see also 130, 176.
Mary Neuburger makes the observation that the Muftiship, in its post-1989 newspaper “Muslims,” provides no women represented without veiled hair and necks. See Mary Neuburger, “Re-Dressing of Bulgarian Muslim Women, 1878–1989,” in Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress, ed. Stephanie Cronin (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 263.
Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 118.
Stoyu Shishkov, “Rodopskite Pomatsi [The Rhodope Pomaks],” Rodopski napreduk 8–9 (1911): 209–14.
Baggy trousers made of colourful flowery fabrics that extended down to the ankle.
See Neuburger, The Orient Within, 119–25.
Behar Sadriu, for example, mentions that the full face-veil (Alb. peçe/ferexhe) was also practiced among some Muslim women in Kosovo until the middle of the twentieth century (Behar Sadriu, “Rhetorical Strategies of Kosovo’s Imams in the Fight for Women’s Rights,” in The Revival of Islam in the Balkans, 189). Andreja Mesarič also considers in her study the practice of full covering of Bosnian Muslim women and points out that face veiling had been practiced by certain sections of Bosnian society well into the twentieth century. It first started declining under Habsburg rule (1878–1918) but only disappeared from practice in the 1950s. See Andreja Mesarič, “Muslim Women’s Dress Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Localizing Islam through Everyday Lived Practice,” in The Revival of Islam in the Balkans, 108–9.
Response to my questions, e-mail communication, 8 February 2017.
See Mihail Gruev and Alexey Kalyonski, Vuzroditelniyat Protses: Myusyulmanskite obshtnosti i Komunisticheskiyat Rezhim [The Revival Process: Muslim Communities and the Communist Regime] (Sofia: Ciela, 2008).
“Borba za Razferedzyavane [Struggle for Removing the Feredzhe],” Myusyulmani 4/208 (2012): 7.
Muhammed Kamber, personal communication during a fieldtrip, April 2016.
Hatije Tiber, personal communication, 15 April 2016.
Personal Skype conversation with Hatije Tiber, 12 December 2016.
Hatije Tiber’s Blog,
Hatije Tiber, “Moyat Purvi Hijab [My First Hijab],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 12 (2014): 12–3.
Ibid., 13.
Laura J. Olson, “The Multiple Voices of Bulgaria’s Unofficial Islamic Leaders,” in The Revival of Islam in the Balkans, 122.
Personal Skype conversation with Hatije Tiber, 15 December 2016.
Gyulgyun Saitova, “Suvremennata Zhena v Islyama [Contemporary Woman in Islam],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar, 8/98 (2000): 5.
Ibid.
Emine Sheima, “Pravata na Zhenata spored Islyama [Women’s Rights in Islam],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar, 3/81 (February, 1999): 7; Mustafa Alish Hadji, “Zhenata v Islyama [The Woman in Islam],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 1/126 (2005): 10; Sadia Akhtar, “Progres ili Potisnichestvo? Islyam ili Svoboda [Progress or oppression? Islam or Freedom?],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 5/95 (May, 2000): 6; Hasan Mustanski, “Zhenata v Islyamskata Religia [The woman in the Muslim faith],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 7/151 (2007): 13.
“Myastoto na Zhenata v Islyama [The place of women in Islam],” Myusyulmani 9 (September, 2014): 5.
Hanife Musa, “Zhenata—Pazitelka na Doma i Semeyniya Uyut [The Woman—a Guardian of Home and Family Comfort],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 9/213 (2012): 6. See also Eyyub Ensar, “Dobroto Otnoshenie kum Zhenite [The Good Attitude towards Women],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 12/89 (November, 1999): 9.
Saitova, “Suvremennata Zhena v Islyama,” 5.
Hatije Ismail, “Islyamsko Semeino Pravo [Islamic Family Law],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 7/97 (July, 2000): 8.
Safa Saigali, “Raboteshtata Zhena-Maika i Vuzpitanieto na Detsata [The Working Mother and the Nurturing of Children], Myusyulmani newspaper, 4 (94), April 2000.
Vedat Ahmed, “Priema se na Eks Nov Semeen Kodeks [A New Family Code is Passed Very Quickly],” Myusyulmani 12/168 (2008): 4.
Bulgarian Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, “Family code”,
“Zenata v Zapadnata Tsivilizatsiya [Woman in Western Civilization],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 11/88 (October, 1999): 6.
Mustafa Alish Hadzhi, “Zhenata v Islyama [The Woman in Islam],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 1/126 (2005): 10.
Ibid.
“Islyamut Gree nad Rodopite: Intervyu s Aydin Mohammed—Rayonen Myuftiya na Gotse Delchev [Islam Shines over the Rhodopes: Interview with Aydin Mohammed, Regional Mufti of Gotse Delchev],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 4/136 (2006): 3.
Ibid.
Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 172.
Here, I use “judicial” in the sense of Islamic jurisprudence, and not of secular law.
Editorial, “Kakvo Moje da Uchi Zhenata [What Can a Woman Study],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 10/87, (September, 1999): 7.
The woman cannot become a judge and deal with criminal cases “because her nature is more compassionate and merciful rather than strong and hard”, as explained in an editorial. See Myusyulmani 8/113 (November, 2002): 3. Such sharī‘a-based instructions differ from other Islamic interpretations of the issue, however, despite the diversity of opinions, they reach the same conclusion. For instance, the President of the High Judicial Council of Saudi Arabia stated that women are unfit to serve as judges because this would grant women undeserved authority (wilāya) over men (“Maʻ Samāḥat al-Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh bin Ḥamīd,” al-Tawḥīd, Rabīʻ al-Awwal 1396/March 1976, 13).
Editorial, Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 8/113 (November, 2002): 3.
“Zhenata, za Koyato shte se Zhenite [The woman you will marry],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 2/182 (2010): 10. See also Esin Tyudjjar, “Izbor na Saprug/a [Choosing a Spouse],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 10/226 (2013): 8.
Hasibe Turan, “Religioznostta na Zhenata i Otrazhenieto y Vurhu Obshtestvoto [Woman’s Religiosity and Its Impact on Society],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 1 (2015): 4.
Skype conversation with Hatije Tiber, December 2016.
Hatije Ali Ibrahim, “Islyamskoto Obleklo za Zhenata [Islamic Clothing for Women],” Myusyulmani 5/95 (May, 2000): 9.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Saitova, “Suvremennata Zhena v Islyama,” 5.
For more details about the French public positions on the necessity to limit religious freedom in secular contexts, see Valeri Amiraux, “The Headscarf Question: What is really the Issue?,” in European Islam: Challenges for Society and Public Policy, ed. Samir Amghar, Amel Boubekeur, and Michael Emerson (Brussels: Center for European Policy Studies, 2007),124–43; John R. Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007); Joan W. Scott, “Symptomatic Politics. The Banning of Islamic Headscarves in French Public Schools,” French Politics, Culture & Society 23/3 (2005): 106–27. The headscarf issue as an example of the struggle over the control and interpretation of symbols is discussed by Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 9, 90–91. See also Joan W. Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
However, no changes in the legislation banning all religious symbols in schools were formally made. The official opinion of the Ministry of Education is that the issue of religious symbols in public schools is considered in the context of the Law on National Education stating that there shall be no privileges or restrictions of rights on the grounds of race, nationality, ethnic belonging, sex, social origin, religion, or social status. See Focus Information Agency, “Ministerstvo na Obrazovanieto: Religiozni Simvoli, koito Protivorechat na Tselite na Obrazovanieto, Sledva da Budat Ogranichavani v Suvremennoto Uchilishte [The Ministry of Education: Religious Symbols, which Contradict the Objectives of Education, Must Be Restricted at the Contemporary School],” Written Answer of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Science to Focus Information Agency with Reference to the Headscarf Affair in Bulgarian Public Schools, 30 May 2012,
For more details, see Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe, 176–82.
“Myuftiystvoto shte se oplakva na Poslanicite na ES” [The Mufti’s Office Will Refer Complaints to EU Ambassadors],” Sega Newspaper, 1 August 2006, 4.
Ismail Chaushev, “Islyamut kato Stil i Nachin na Povedenie: Intervyu s Hussein Hafuzov, Glaven Sekretar na Glavno Myuftiistvo [Islam as a style and manner of conduct: Interview with Hussein Hafuzov, Secretary-General of the Chief Muftiship],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 11/143 (2006): 3.
Ten years after this case, Muhammed Kamber also expressed in a conversation during my field work in April 2016 his anxiety over the current situation of administrative restrictions though there is no formal ban of headscarves or religious symbols in schools. He admits that many young Muslim women prefer to wear the hijab and to remain without education, if they are faced with the choice to de-veil.
Vedat Ahmed, “Farut na Myusyulmanskoto Tselomudrie—Hidzhabut [The Light of Muslim Chastity—the Hijab],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 11/143 (2006): 9.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Approximately 150 Euros.
See more at News.bg: “Pazardzik Zabrani Burkite [Pazardzhik Has Banned the Burqa],”
Before the approval of nationwide “burqa ban” twelve Muslim women were fined in Pazardzik in the period May–October 2016. See Nikolay Spasov. “Burkite sa na Put da skarat Kmeta i Obshtinskite Suvetnitsi v Pazardzik [The Burqas Cause a Dispute between the Mayor and the Municipal Councillors in Pazardzhik],” Trud Newspaper, 25 October 2016.
Bulgarian Parliament,
“Glavnoto Myuftiistvo: Zabranata za Nosene na Burki Mozhe da Ogranichi Pravata na Myusyulmanite [The Chief Muftiship: The Burqa Ban May Limit the Rights of Muslims],” Dnevnik, 4 May 2016,
Protocol of the Committee Meeting, 26.05.2016, 43rd Bulgarian Parliament,
Kameliya Tsvetanova, “Kray na Burkite v Bulgaria—Litseto na Pokaz [End of the Burqas in Bulgaria—Face Must be Seen],” Dnes.bg, 15 June 2016,
Kristen Ghodsee (Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe, 162) makes the same observations: “When the ‘Arab style’ first started appearing more widely in 2005, I saw young women in Rudozem wearing the niqab (a face veil that shows only the eyes) as well as three girls dressed head to toe in matching white headscarves and gowns”.
The law “bans wearing in public clothing that partially (mouth, nose or eyes) or completely covers the face”. According to the law, clothes hiding the face may not be worn in government offices, schools, cultural institutions and places of public recreation, but exceptions are allowed for health or professional reasons. Infringements carry fines of 200 leva (102 eur), rising to 1.500 (767 eur) leva for repeated offences. Darzhaven Vestnik [State Gazette], 80 (11 October 2016): 2,
They were expelled from mrf for what it considered an excessively pro-Turkish government stance. For more details see Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, “Movement for Rights and Freedoms Chairman Mestan relieved from post, expelled from Party,” 24 December 2015,
Abbreviation of Demokrati za Otgovornost, Svoboda i Tolerantnost (Democrats for Responsibility, Freedom and Tolerance). The name of the new party was deliberately designed, so its abbreviation corresponds to the Turkish word dost (“friend”).
Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe, 178.
Now Vice-president of the newly established dost party.
See the verbatim report of the plenary session on 30 September 2016, 43rd Bulgarian Parliament,
Ibid.
Ibid.
Neuburger, The Orient Within, 116.
Vedat Ahmed, “130-Godishnata Borba za ‘Sublichane’ na Myusyulmankata v Bulgaria [130 Years of Struggle for ‘Undressing’ the Muslim Woman in Bulgaria],” Myusyulmani/Müslümanlar 12/264 (2016): 14–5.
Ibid., 14.
Ibid., 15.