Bulgarian Muslims wonder what EU entry holds

By Tsvetelia Ilieva

SMOLYAN, Bulgaria (Reuters) - Like most Bulgarians, Salikh Kutsov hopes joining the European Union will bring prosperity to his town. But the Muslim carpenter wonders if his future wife would be happy wearing a headscarf in the EU.

The 27-year-old carpenter has been told accession will cement religious and democratic freedoms that have taken a tenuous hold here since the fall of communism.

But he is also taken aback at hardening attitudes toward his religion's traditions in the wealthy bloc and their effect in Bulgaria, where Christians and Muslims have lived in relative harmony for centuries.

"All my Christian friends here respect me, but as for Europe, I don't know," said Kutsov as he waited to attend Friday prayers in front of a newly painted mosque, one of the three in this gritty town in the south-east corner of Europe.

Bulgaria will be the only EU state where Muslims -- 12 percent of its 7.8 million people -- are not recent immigrants but a centuries-old local community. Mostly ethnic Turkish descendants of the Ottoman Empire's reach into Europe, they live beside Christians in a culture known as "komshuluk", or neighbourly relations.

Recently, however, two Muslim girls were prohibited from wearing headscarves to a state school in the town of Smolyan -- Bulgaria's first glimpse of an issue that has raised tensions between Christians and Muslims in western Europe.

"I hope things change for better and this problem with the headscarves is solved. I want my future wife to be able to wear one without being laughed at," Kutsov said.

Unlike neighbouring former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria avoided clashes between Orthodox Christians and Muslims after the fall of Communism despite a 1984-85 "revival process", launched by Soviet-backed dictator Todor Zhivkov to assimilate Muslims.

According to Amnesty International, at least 100 Muslims died in his four-month campaign to force them to change their names to Bulgarian, which banned the Turkish language in public. It also banned the wearing of headscarves and other Islamic customs such as circumcision and funeral rights.

When Bulgaria opened its border with Turkey in 1989, more than 300,000 Muslims left, although some later returned.

The bans were also lifted and now mosques, along with Muslim schools, are common sights, while the ethnic-Turkish MRF party has become a powerful political force, participating in the last two governments.

IMPORTED FEAR?

Most Muslims here say they do not expect discrimination to come from tolerant-minded Europe, but analysts say that is exactly what is happening.

Following attacks by Islamic fundamentalists in London and Madrid and the arrests of other plotters across Europe, many EU states now shun elements of Muslim culture.

In the Netherlands, once a model state for tolerance, a party won nine seats in parliament last month on a campaign against what it called the "Islamisation" of the country.