Bulgarian Chief Mufti condemns vandalising of Muslim graves in Dobrich
The office of the Chief Mufti, spiritual leader of Bulgaria’s Muslims, has strongly condemned the vandalising of more than 40 Muslim graves in the northern town of Dobrich and has called on law enforcement to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The desecration of the graves took place on the night of September 6, marked in Bulgaria as Unification Day, commemorating the accession of Eastern Roumelia to Bulgaria in 1885.
The Chief Mufti’s office said that photos of the desecrated tombstones had been found on social networks and the vandalism had taken place in spite of 24-hour security in the graveyard.
It said that Islamophobia had become a fad and unfortunately, even the last resting places of the deceased were encroached on, the result of “serious mental and sick complexes”.
“State institutions must take adequate and immediate action to detain and punish the perpetrators of this act of vandalism,” the Chief Mufti’s office said on September 10.
It said that over the past two years, several draft bills on religious denominations had been tabled in the National Assembly “but unfortunately none of them is constructive and none serves the needs of the believer.
“All these restrictive bills have one purpose – to ‘indulge’ the pseudopatriotic feelings of little souls in order to extract political dividends,” the Chief Mufti’s office said.
It blamed those behind such politics for the “sick person” who commits such acts of vandalism in cemeteries “considering it patriotic at the peak of national holidays”.
“We need to think seriously about the profound meaning of the inscription above the main entrance to the National Assembly, ‘United We Stand Strong,’ by which we presented ourselves to the world during the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union,” the Chief Mufti’s office said.
