Muslims and Christians in the Bulgarian Rhodopes.

8 Christian Perceptions of Pomak Religious Life

This chapter focuses on Christian perceptions of the religious life of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. I choose the phrase “religious life” rather than “Islam” because my Christian respondents did not always identify the religious practices of their Muslim neighbours as Islamic; instead, they tended to view them as part of a broader spectrum interconnected with their own rituals and observances. By and large, my Christian respondents were not interested in Islam per se; in structural terms, they had no narratives about Islam comparable to narratives about Christianity as shared by my Muslim respondents (see previous chapters). Perhaps this is because the local Christians treat Pomak religious life as ...