Supreme Muslim Council held a first meeting with Muslim boards of trustees

The central collective body of the Muslim Denomination, the Supreme Muslim Council, held an off-site meeting in the city of Plovdiv on 9^th of March. It took place in the former Mevlevihane which nowadays functions as a restaurant complex in the Old town. Holding the meeting in the spiritual atmosphere of the dervish place is a precedent in the history of the Supreme Muslim Council.

Furthermore for a first time the Supreme Muslim Council held a meeting with the participation of representatives of local Muslim structures from Southern Bulgaria. At the invitation of the Chairman of the collective religious body Vedat S. Ahmed more than 20 chairmen and secretaries of Muslim boards of trustees who are appointed according to Art. 71, para. 4 of the Statute of the Muslim Denomination were guests of the Supreme Muslim Council.

The Chairman thanked them for responding to the invitation and assured them that this practice will continue also in the future because they are the stable foundations of the Denomination. The representatives of the Muslim boards of trustees expressed their satisfaction with the invitation and delivered reports for their activities for year 2016.

Although some of the members of the boards of trustees were from big settlements and others from small, to a certain extent they had the same problems that they face during the implementation of their official duties. Among the expressed main problems were the difficulties in the maintenance of the mosques and the other waqf property, the cumbersome administrative procedures and the prejudices in some institutions, the lack of sufficient number of qualified religious staff, difficulties in the organization of the Qur’an courses.

There was raised the point that in Stara Zagora the mosque “Hamza Bey” has been turned into a museum and the Muslims have to pray in one small house. The Chairman of the Muslim Board of Trustees of Plovdiv highlighted that almost all of their incomes during 2016 are spent on legal battles against fraudulent administrative and judicial operations done with the participation of three former chairmen of the board of trustees.

Despite of the difficulties and the problems which the Muslim boards of trustees face, they expressed their readiness for more diligent work. Regardless of their problems the representatives of the local structures of the Denomination highlighted also a number of positive moments in their work. In many of them as a result of received donations from the Muslim community there are new acquisitions such as real estates, improvement of estates and construction of supplementary buildings, furniture and technical equipment, there were performed number of social activities, financial support of the religious and educational activities and many others.