Grand Mufti’s Office took part in OSCE Conference in Vienna

The Organizaiton for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) organized its annual Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting in Vienna on 22^nd and 23^rd of June on the topic of “Freedom of Religion or Belief: Issues, Opportunities, and the Specific Challenges of Combating Anti-Semitism and Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, Muslims, and Members of Other Religions”. A representative of the Muslim Denomination in Bulgaria presented in one of the sessions the current problems and challenges of the Muslim community in Bulgaria during the last months.

In a special report were described the current violations of the religious rights and freedoms of the Muslims, related to the legislative amendments which the nationalists submitted to the Parliament for voting and namely the criminalization of Islam in the form of “radical Islam” in the Criminal Code; termination the financing of the Denomination from the interim government and initiating a sale by auction of property of Grand Mufti’s Office in Sofia. The report also includes the discriminatory policies that are carried out, as well as the anti-Muslim hatred crimes which remain unsanctioned and the police is not able to solve them. (The entire report can be seen here:http://www.osce.org/odihr/shdm_1_2017 ).The representative of the Denomination made constructive criticism and proposed also specific recommendations to the Bulgarian government and to the Organization for solving the issues related to the religious rights and freedoms and expressed the readiness of Grand Mufti’s Office to assist the government and the institutions in their work.

The forum was attended by the permanent missions of the 57 participating states and representatives of NGOs and religious denominations from OSCE region. This was the interim conference of the Organization and the annual Human Dimension Conference is foreseen to be held in September in Warsaw.