Negotiating meaning through costume and social media in Bulgarian Muslims' communities of practice

Abstract

This paper shows how contemporary believers are negotiating a new identity of Islamic piety in Bulgarian Muslim communities. Driven by communal memory of repression and contemporary Islamophobia, Bulgarian Muslims have created communities of practice (Wenger 1998), participatory groups that share a common interest in learning more about their faith. Communities function on multiple levels: there are small pockets of Islamic activity at the local level, and at a broader level, an imagined community of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims connected to an imagined global Islamic community, the ummah. The practices examined here include face-to-face activities, such as learning to read the Qur’an and prayers in Arabic, learning Islamic principles and practice, and talking about faith in mosques and homes in Bulgaria. This paper also examines virtual practices, such as discussing faith on social media. The article focuses on women’s and girls’ Qur’an reading groups and discussions about wearing hijab, and it examines an online mixed-gender discussion of daily prayers. Such grassroots practice of Islam fosters a newly articulate and participatory version of religion, embracing and encouraging believers’ literacy and knowledge, activism, and agency. The mutual goals, repertoires, and activities of this community of practice create a sense of commonality and cohesiveness, while leaving room for some diversity of focus.

Keywords:

• Bulgaria
• Bulgarian Muslims
• Pomaks
• Islam
• community of practice
• hijab
• prayer

ORCID

Laura J. Olson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1617-5799

Notes

1 In this paper, I use the term ummah in the sense of an imagined community whose members share an affinity because they are Muslims. I do not refer to the concept of an alliance that undermines state authority. The concept of ummah as imagined community does not preclude real differences between Muslim groups and even exclusions of certain “sects.” Any notion of community is a negotiated one.

2 Author’s research based on five and a half months’ fieldwork with Bulgarian-speaking Muslims in 2012–2013, funded by the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research (NCEEER), American Councils for International Education (ACTR/ACCELS), and University of Colorado Graduate Committee on Arts and Humanities; funds provided by NCEEER and American Councils were under the authority of a Title VIII grant from the U.S. Department of State. Neither NCEEER nor American Councils nor the U.S. Government is responsible for the views expressed within this text. The author completed six weeks of additional fieldwork in 2015, funded by the following sources at the University of Colorado: Graduate Committee on Arts and Humanities, LEAP Associate Professor Growth Grant, and the Eugene M. Kayden Fund.

3 See Ghodsee (2010) and Ivanova (2012); and my own research.

4 Muslims comprise at least 577,139 – or 7.8% – of the total population of 7,364,570, as per Natsionalen statisticheskii institut, 2011; the exact population of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims is not known, but estimates put it at 200,000–300,000 (Todorova 1997, 70–71; Neuburger 2004, 2–3; Zelengora 2013). Problems with statistics on religion in Bulgaria include the fact that there is no category for Pomaks, and that 22% of respondents in the 2011 census chose not to answer the question on religion (see Ivanov 2012).

5 Hard statistics or even estimates of the rates of piety are difficult to collect; among other factors, in most villages women do not regularly attend mosque, so their “active participation” cannot be readily determined without a fair degree of ethnographic experience.

6 Based upon the author’s fieldwork. My fieldwork was conducted primarily with female believers. I spoke to male imams and mosque leaders who gave me a picture of who participates, and I regularly read Internet forums where many men participate. I lack ethnographic observation data on activities, especially informal face-to-face ones, for male believers.

7 Only in-depth listening over time and/or interviews can reveal how the joint enterprise of a community of practice is constantly negotiated; in this case, I did not have this kind of data. The Facebook forum example analyzed further on in this article offers a glimpse of how this might unfold.

8 All names in this paper cited in the form of first name and last initial are pseudonyms.

9 Typical insults on the web aimed at Bulgarian Muslims include that they are uneducated villagers without a profession or future. I cite one such insult: “You will never have a homeland and will dig potatoes and cut hay all day” (Conversation on Facebook page “I love the Rhodopes,” 2 May 2013).

10 In interviews, most pious female informants do not to wish to talk about style and aesthetic choices with an outsider; women commonly say they wear what makes them comfortable. In Internet forum discussions about hijab, style is not typically discussed; the most commonly expressed sentiments are that everyone has the right to wear what she wants and it is important to be authentic and not to wear religious dress if one is not religious.

11 Fatime S., interview with the author, 5 August 2015, Draginovo, Bulgaria.

12 This is true of mainstream media, but particularly nationalist cable television stations such as SKAT and Alfa, which create and publish stories purporting to show evidence of Islamic radicalism. See, for example, Bulgaria News Agency (2009) and Skat (2016). Cf. Sakellariou (2017).

13 An example of a Muslim village named after a Christian figure is Draginovo, formerly Korova, renamed in 1966 after priest Metodii Draginov, the purported author of a seventeenth-century chronicle describing the supposedly forced Islamization of the local population. Draginov’s existence has been shown to have been falsified (for a summary, see Todorova 2004). One explanation of portraits of Christian saints in schools is that the first Slavic alphabet was created by missionaries summoned by the Eastern Church – Saints Cyril and Methodius. These saints are widely celebrated in Bulgaria as founders of Slavic literacy, including in public schools. Prominent portraits and names of Christian saints provide, at the very least, a cultural contrast in Muslim villages; there is no corresponding public celebration of Muslim historical figures.

14 Through an online interview conducted from 21 July to 7 August 2016, I ascertained that the original online commentator was in fact of Bulgarian Orthodox Christian origin and had been a convert to Islam. He has since fallen away from this religion due to his perceived differences with the Muslim community.

15 Perhaps the original commenter’s contact with the West – he was living in London – had influenced him in this regard.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Council for Eurasian and East European Studies, American Council of Teachers of Russian, and various funds at the University of Colorado, Boulder.