How did these Islamic religious scholars, imams and teachers miss all the passages in the Qur'an about love for and peaceful coexistence as equals with the Infidels? So many misunderstanders of Islam -- it's on ongoing puzzle! "Bulgarian radical Islam trial hears witnesses amid nationalist demo," from AFP, October 29 (thanks to Maxwell):
PAZARDZHIK, Bulgaria — A trial against 13 Bulgarian Muslim religious leaders for preaching a radical form of Islam heard key witnesses Monday, while nationalists demonstrated at the court in the southern town of Pazardzhik to protest "Muslim pressure" on its work.The 12 men and one woman -- imams, mufti Islamic scholars and teachers -- have been charged with founding a local branch of the extremist Al Waqf-Al Islami group in the southern regions of Smolyan, Blagoevgrad and Pazardzhik.
The Netherlands-based but Saudi-funded organisation is suspected of links to Al-Qaeda.
The 13 were charged with preaching a radical anti-democratic ideology based on hardline Salafist teachings during prayers at mosques, lectures, sermons and cafe meetings between March 2008 and October 2010 and with seeking to impose a caliphate state.
All defendants have pleaded not guilty and several witnesses have so far refused to confirm their initial written testimony.
Another key witness, who once worked for the Al Waqf-Al Islami foundation also rejected his testimony on Monday. Muafak al-Assad, a Syrian national who once studied in Bulgaria, also said he was pressured by state security agents to refuse an interpreter and not to appear at the trial at all....
About 300 nationalists meanwhile demonstrated at the court with Bulgarian flags and signs reading "Bulgaria is a secular state" to protest what they said was "Muslim pressure" over the court during its previous hearings.
A crowd of long-bearded men and women wearing long black dresses had then gathered outside the courtroom to support their religious leaders but their outfit, which is not traditional for Bulgaria's Muslim minority, sparked a controversy. They were absent on Monday, however.
"We want to avoid conflicts," Bulgaria's deputy chief mufti Birali Birali, who was present at the hearing, said.
Bulgaria, whose population of 7.4 million is 80-percent Christian Orthodox, also has the highest percentage of native Muslims in the European Union, at about 13 percent.
They include Turks, Muslim Roma and Pomaks, like the accused, whose Christian ancestors were forced to convert to Islam during the country's Ottoman domination between the 14th and 19th century. The Pomaks are the most devout of the three subgroups, minority experts said.
Most experts also warned that, regardless of its outcome, the trial risks raising tensions between Bulgaria's Christian majority and the Muslim minority, who have lived together quietly since the fall of communism in 1989.
Yes, the trial will raise tensions. Thirteen Muslim leaders preaching hatred of the Infidels and the need to subjugate them under Islamic rule -- that doesn't raise tensions. Only trying them does.
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Sensible Bulgarian non-Muslims remember the absolute *horror* of the centuries that they spent as despised, abused, ruthlessly exploited and frequently mass-murdered dhimmis under Turkish Muslim imperial rule.
Just see here, for example:
http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/macgahan.php
The Turkish Atrocities in Bulgaria: Horrible Scenes at Batak
J. A. MacGahan (The Daily News, August 22, 1876), pp.5-6
Excerpt:
"As we approached Batak out attention was drawn to some dogs on a slope overlooking the town. We turned aside from the road, and passing over the debris of two or three walls and through several gardens, urged our horses up the ascent toward the dogs.
"They barked at us in an angry manner, and then ran off into the adjoining fields. I observed nothing peculiar as we mounted until my horse stumbled, when looking down I perceived he had stepped on a human skull partly hid among the grass.
" It was quite hard and dry, and might, to all appearances, have been there two or three years, so well had the dogs done their work.
" A few steps further there was another and part of a skeleton, likewise, white and dry.
"As we ascended, bones, skulls, and skeletons became more frequent, but here they had not been picked so clean, for there were fragments of half dry, half putrid flesh attached to them.
"At last we came to a little plateau or shelf on the hillside, where the ground was nearly level, with the exception of a little indentation, where the head of a hollow broke through.
"We rode toward this with the intention of crossing it, but all suddenly drew reign with an exclamation of horror, for right before us, almost beneath our horses' feet, was a sight that made us shudder.
" It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting, clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odour, like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them.
"In the midst of this heap, I could distinguish the slight skeleton form, still enclosed in a chemise, the skull wrapped about with a coloured handkerchief, and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered footless stockings worn by Bulgarian girls...
"We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and we observed that they were all small and that the articles of clothing intermingled with them and lying about were all women's apparel.
"These, then, were all women and girls. From my saddle I counted about a hundred skulls, not including those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly all separated from the rest of the bones - the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded. "...
"Now, as regards the insurrection, there was a weak attempt at an insurrection in three or four villages, but none whatever in Batak, and it does not appear that a single Turk was killed here.
"The Turkish authorities did not even pretend that there was any Turk killed here, or that the inhabitants offered any resistance whatever when Achmet-Agha, who commanded the massacres, came with the Basha-Bazouks..".
.."They would seize a woman, strip her carefully to her chemise, laying aside articles of clothing that wore valuable, with any ornaments and jewels she might have about her.
"Then as many of them as cared would violate her, and the last man would kill her or not as the humour took him...".
"...On the other side of the way were the skeletons of two children lying side by side, partly covered with stones, and with frightful, sabre cuts in their little skulls.
"The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous.
"They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kui, on the points of bayonets.
"The reason is simple.
"When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise , no matter what his sins may be.
" Mahomet probably in tended that only armed men should count, but the ordinary Mussulman takes the precept in its broader acceptation, and counts women and children as well.
"The advantage of killing children is that it can be done without danger, and that a child counts for as much as an armed man.
"Here in Batak the Bashi-Bazouks, in order to swell the count, ripped open pregnant women, and killed the unborn infants...".
T"he people who committed this wholesale slaughter were not Circassians, as has been supposed, but the Turks [that is, the Turkish Muslims - dda] of the neighbouring villages, led by Achmed Agha, already spoken of.
"The [Bulgarian Christian - dda] village of Batak was comparatively rich and prosperous; it had excited the envy and jealousy of its Turkish neighbours, and the opportunities of plunder to the Turks which, combined with their religious fanaticism and the pretext of an insurrection another part of the country, was more than they could resist.
"The man, Achmed Agha, who commanded the slaughter, has not been punished, and will not be, but, on the contrary, he has been promoted to the rank of Yuz-bashi, and decorated."
"We were told that any number of children and young girls had been carried off; that it was known in what Turkish villages they were kept, and that the Turks simply refused to restore them to their parents.
"Mr. Schuyler afterwards obtained a list, with the names and ages of eighty-seven girls and boys that had been carried off, with the name of the village in which each was kept..".
"We asked about the skulls and bones we had seen up on the hill upon first arriving in the village where the dogs had barked at us.
"These we were told were the bones of about two hundred young girls, who had first been captured and particularly reserved for a worse fate than death.
"They had been kept till the last; they had been in the hands of their captors for several days — for the burning and the pillaging had not all been accomplished in a single day — and during this time they had suffered all it was possible that poor weak trembling girls could suffer at the hands of brutal savages.
"Then, when the town had been pillaged and burnt, when all their friends had been slaughtered, these poor young things, whose very wrongs should have insured them safety, whoso very outrages should have insured them protection, were taken, in the broad light of day, beneath the smiling canopy of heaven, coolly beheaded, then thrown in a heap there, and left to rot."
**That** is the sort of thing that the Turkish Muslims did to the Bulgarian dhimmi Christians.
**That** is what happened in *just one* village.
Now think of the centuries of Muslim rule. Think of things like that happening, not necessarily all at once, but over and over, at intervals, in different parts of the territory.
The same sorts of atrocities are found in accounts of Muslim jihad - and of Muslim pogroms against declared-to-be-uppity dhimmi communities - throughout the entirety of the dar al Islam, throughout the entirety of the regions invaded and laid waste by Islam.
Were the Bulgarians to drive out of Bulgaria into Turkey every single last Muslim from off of Bulgarian soil, as a precaution against this sort of horror ever happening again, I would not blame them in the least.