Bulgarian Muslims condemn Islamophobic attacks

Bulgaria’s Muslim community has called on the police to investigate attacks on a mosque and the Grand Mufti’s Office in Sofia as hate crimes.

Bulgaria’s Muslim community has called on the police to investigate attacks on a mosque and the Grand Mufti’s Office in Sofia as hate crimes.

Bulgaria’s Grand Mufti’s Office called on the police on Friday to investigate an attack on its office in the capital, Sofia, as a “hate crime”.

The windows of the building in central Sofia were smashed with stones by an unknown person on Thursday, three days after swastikas and other hate symbols were scratched onto a mosque in the central town of Karlovo on July 2.

“This is a typical hate crime. Unfortunately in Bulgaria no one is being convicted of such crimes. They are always declared as [the work of] drunks or hooligans,” Jelal Faik, spokesperson of the Grand Mufti’s office, told BIRN.

He added that the attack was recorded by security cameras, which showed the perpetrator taking stones out of a bag and throwing them at the window, which he said was a “clear sign that this was a planned and deliberate act”.

Faik said the presence of the nationalist United Patriots union in the GERB-lead coalition government, had encouraged anti-Muslim attitudes among some people.

“If we neglect this act, it means that we are closing our eyes to far more serious national phenomena where everyone different can be targeted”, he said, recalling that the synagogue in Sofia also was attacked with stones in January.