Muslims And Christians In The Bulgarian Rhodopes

The book by Magdalena Lubanska examines the role of religious syncretism in the social and religious life of Muslim-Christian communities in the Western Rhodopes. The author is interested mainly in the origins and motivations of various beliefs and behaviors which at first sight may appear to be syncretic. She looks at syncretism in the context of anti-syncretic tendencies, particularly pronounced among the Muslim neophytes and young members of the Muslim religious elite, who are not interested in the local forms of post-ottoman Islam (“Adat Islam”), preferring instead a “pure” form of religion, a class of fundamentalist religious movements rooted in orthodox Islam and seeking to remain faithful to mainstream Islamic thought and tradition (“Salafi Islam”). Lubanska findings offer an insight into the fact that although certain actions may appear syncretic in nature, their underlying intentions are often not in fact motivated by syncretic tendencies. This is the first study to look at syncretism in Bulgaria from this perspective.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Bulgaria’s entangled Muslim and Orthodox Christian pasts still shape contemporary notions of identity, religion, and politics—and secularism—in unexpected ways. This book freshly looks at how these vital traditions come up against one another and the challenges of the world today.

This book opens a new research field in Balkan contextual theology. By embracing culturally rich traditions of the Western Balkans as its starting point, it explores their existential and theological bearings. Placed at the crossroads of civilisations and religions, this region has witnessed some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. At the same time, it has produced unique textures of inter-cultural life. The volume addresses some of the most poignant phenomena endemic to the region, such as sevdalinka music, intimate forms of neighborhood, archetypes of ‘sacred warriors,’ the experience of democratic jet lag, collective melancholy, and intergenerational trauma. As the first book of this nature, it aims to encourage further development of contextual theological thinking in the region and promote its international reception.

Everyday Life in the Balkans gathers the work of leading scholars across disciplines to provide a broad overview of the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey. This region has long been characterized as a place of instability and political turmoil, from World War I, through the Yugoslav Wars, and even today as debate continues over issues such as the influx of refugees or the expansion of the European Union. However, the work gathered here moves beyond the images of war and post-socialist stagnation which dominate Western media coverage of the region to instead focus on the lived experiences of the people in these countries. Contributors consider a wide range of issues including family dynamics, gay rights, war memory, religion, cinema, fashion, and politics. Using clear language and engaging examples, Everyday Life in the Balkans provides the background context necessary for an enlightened conversation about the policies, economics, and culture of the region.

Focusing upon a region in Southern Bulgaria, a region that has been the crossroads between Europe and Asia for many centuries, this book describes how former Ottoman Empire Muslims were transformed into citizens of Balkan nation-states. This is a region marked by shifting borders, competing Turkish and Bulgarian sovereignties, rival nationalisms, and migration. Problems such as these were ultimately responsible for the disintegration of the dynastic empires into nation-states. Land that had traditionally belonged to Muslims?individually or communally?became a symbolic and material resource for Bulgarian state building and was the terrain upon which rival Bulgarian and Turkish nationalisms developed in the wake of the dissolution of the late Ottoman Empire and the birth of early republican Turkey and the introduction of capitalism. By the outbreak of World War II, Turkish Muslims had become a polarized national minority. Their conflicting efforts to adapt to post-Ottoman Bulgaria brought attention to the increasingly limited availability of citizenship rights, not only to Turkish Muslims, but to Bulgarian Christians as well. ÿ

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople -- Introduction -- The Byzantine period (324-1453) -- The period of the Ottoman Empire (1453-1923) -- The period of the Turkish Republic (1923) until the present day -- Conclusion -- 3 The development of the Autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church -- Introduction -- The Church of Greece during the apostolic era (49/50-732/733) -- The modern historical period (1833) of the Autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church until the present day -- Conclusion -- 4 Modern historical context of the States of Greece and Turkey as it relates to the minority question -- Introduction -- The Muslim minority of Western Thrace and other minority communities in present-day Greece -- The legal status of Islam in Greece -- The Greek Orthodox minority of Turkey -- Conclusion -- 5 Methodology -- Introduction -- Design -- Rationale of the chosen geographical areas -- Researcher's narration -- Informants -- Procedures -- Apparatus -- Ethics -- Results and analysis -- Correlations -- Discussion -- Limitations of the study -- Further studies -- Conclusion -- 6 Conclusions -- Appendices -- Appendix 1: Patriarchal and Synodal Tome of the Proclamation of the Autocephalous Church of Greece -- Appendix 2: Declaration of the Independence of the Church of Greece -- Bibliography -- Index