Bulgarians came to Crimea to study the experience of fighting Islamic radicalism

Bulgarians want to learn from the Crimeans how to build interethnic and interfaith relations.

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The chairman of the Bulgarian People's Unity Foundation, Hristo Marinov, stated this at a meeting with the vice-speaker of the State Council of the Republic, head of the Interregional public movement "KYRYM" Remzi Ilyasov.

According to him, the experience of Crimea, as a cradle of interethnic unity, is useful for Bulgaria, which is increasingly experiencing trends towards the development of radical religious movements.

“At the beginning of democracy in 1991-92, when we were moving from socialism to “democracy”, many young people were attracted to unofficial universities. Now they are participating in the governance of Muslims in Bulgaria. And now we have two Muftiates - one is Wahhabi, and the other adheres to the traditional religion. It has gotten to the point where children teach their parents how to pray correctly. The European Union and democracy defend Wahhabism, divide Muslims, pitting them against Christians. Youth organizations are emerging that are opposed to the old imams and traditions,” says the Bulgarian social activist.

According to him, the experience gained in Crimea in building interethnic relations is very valuable, and the Bulgarians would like to understand and adopt it.

“It is important to show it here that we can celebrate religious holidays together, visit each other, get to know each other better. This is our goal and desire,” Marinov said.

In turn, Remzi Ilyasov noted that peace in the multinational Crimea was maintained thanks to several system-forming factors - contact with people of different nationalities, dialogue with the authorities and attitude towards one’s own Motherland. The vice-speaker of the republican parliament emphasized that today on the peninsula representatives of all nations enjoy equal rights, and Muslim holidays, along with Christian ones, are celebrated at the state level.

“We celebrate holidays, build mosques. We have 360 ​​mosques and houses of prayer. Of these, there are about 150 classical mosques. We have 286 branches of the Muftiate of Muslims of Crimea, including Sevastopol. We began construction of the Cathedral Mosque. This is also nonsense, we fought for this for 17 years in Ukraine, and only now, in Russia, it has succeeded. The President of the Russian Federation said that there must be a mosque. I think in two years we will finish construction. I will emphasize that sponsors invested $30 million in the construction of the Cathedral Mosque. There are Muslims there, but most of them are not Muslims,” Ilyasov said.

The politician also emphasized that unconventional and dangerous Muslim movements had been developing in Crimea for many years with the support of Ukraine, but it was possible to protect ourselves from them only after joining the Russian Federation:

“During Ukraine, we were given different ideologies - Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Wahhabism, Habashism and other directions. At that time, we, as a people, fought with Ukraine both for our rights and said - do not allow sects to come here, in particular against Muslims. We fought for traditional Sunni Islam. They fought so that there would be one Muftiate, they turned to the authorities, and they asked the authorities to ban these movements. But the authorities were interested in the discord within us; they tried to split us. With the arrival of Russia, we received both legal and government protection from these sects. We couldn't count on this before."

At the meeting, representatives of Bulgaria proposed organizing bilateral cooperation to exchange experience in building interethnic relations. Remzi Ilyasov expressed his openness to cooperation:
“Of course, we are ready to travel, meet, exchange experiences and practices so that they, like us, have peace, interfaith harmony, interethnic harmony, so that no one can offend anyone or infringe on rights, including religious ones.” ", he noted.