Religion
The Tatars are Sunni Muslims. For them religion is an important, but not a main ethnic marker because it is identical to that of the Turks. Islam is seen as a basis of the community of all Muslims. Informants from the Tatar, as well as from other groups, tend to regard religion in general as a consolidating factor: "Tatars, Turks, Bulgarians - all are children of God".
The Tatars consider themselves good Muslims. The better educated and younger Tatars regard the Turks as fanatics and themselves as moderates - which they believe is an advantage. Respondents distinguish the two communities by the Islam-based segregation of women in the case of the Turks and the absence of such discrimination among the Tatars, as well as by the attitude to the Christians and the Alevites. The Tatars are tolerant towards the Alevites (Shias) while the Turks (who are Sunni) are not.
The other communities do not consider religion as a main distinctive feature of Tatar identity either, but rather as something that associates the Tatars with the Turks: "(they are) Muslims like the Turks". The Tatar Muslim community (where it is large enough) has its own institutional and ritual practices independent of the Turks. The Tatars celebrate religious holidays in their own esoteric circle and worship God in their own mosques. The Tatars built mosques of their own even right after they settled on Bulgarian territory, and this institution has survived in the population centres with larger Tatar communities. The "Tatar mosque" (for instance, in Vetovo) is a natural centre not only of religious, but also of socio-political life, a place for social contacts and internal demonstration of ethnicity. A map of the Crimea, the Tatar national flag arid photos of prominent Tatars usually hang on the walls; there are books too.
Read more about this topic: Crimean Tatars In Bulgaria
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religionor a new form of Christianitybased on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“You sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)