Islamist movement banned in Bulgaria

SOFIA. A Bulgarian court has banned an Islamic association from operating in the country, accusing it of fanning religious hatred, it was announced yesterday.

The association Charitable Projects, which has been active in Bulgaria since the mid-1990s, was banned for “propagating religious hatred against the majority Christian Orthodox Bulgarians and the traditionally Hanif Muslims in the country”, the State Agency for National Security (DANS) said in a statement.

The ruling was made by a court in the eastern city of Burgas.
The agency added that Charitable Projects was an offspring of the Lebanese Sunni Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, known as the Habashi Movement.

Habashi military structures participated in the 1980s civil war in Lebanon, while its members are reported to have been among the attackers of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, when he was assassinated in 2005, the DANS statement said.

The Bulgarian branch of the association was “fully targeted towards conducting religious and education activities among the Roma population”.

It organised secret prayer services in homes in the central cities of Plovdiv and Pazardzhik as well as in an illegally built mosque in Burgas, the statement added.

“The activity of the association sparked conflicts in the Muslim Roma communities in the above mentioned cities,” DANS said.
The Burgas regional court took the (...)