Religion, politics and the internet formed a potent mixture following the expressed desire of the Chief Mufti's Office in Bulgaria to build a second mosque in Sofia. The idea that Muslims in Sofia would have a second place of worship was first mooted on November 17 at a meeting between Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov and a delegation of the Chief Mufti's Office (CMO).

At the  meeting the Chief Mufti Mustafa Alish Hadji presented Borissov with his plans to build a mosque in Sofia's Malinova Dolina neighbourhood. Probably the issue would not have triggered such a furore if that had been the whole story. According to Hadji's plans the mosque "that would be five storeys high" would be part of a larger complex of buildings forming a Muslim cultural, educational and social centre that would work for the purposes of the CMO, mainly providing training to imams. This training, Hadji hastened to add, would have its programmes sanctioned by the Education Ministry.

Mindful of the political consequences, Borissov at the time did not address Hadji's plea for permission to build the centre. Borissov merely said that, as with all construction in Sofia, the proposal should be addressed to city hall chief architect Petar Dikov. Caught in front of TV cameras, however, Borissov, was `forced' to comment on whether Sofia needed a second Muslim place of worship.

Just a week before the November 17 meeting Borissov had been involved in another controversy regarding Bulgarian Muslims when he said he saw nothing untoward in the former communist regime's policy of forcibly changing Bulgarian Muslims' names into Christian ones in the 1980s.

Now he found himself under renewed scrutiny regarding his attitude towards Muslims in Bulgaria less than nine months before the country's next general elections. He commented that it was better for Bulgaria to know where and who trains Muslim religious leaders rather than be left in the dark. The CMO, on the other hand, showed that they had planned their actions very carefully. At the same November 17 meeting Hadji said that they had already bought the land plot in Malinova Dolina. When permits were issued they would begin building. Money for the land and the construction had come from the Organisation of The Islamic Conference, Hadji said.       

The reasons
When asked to explain why Sofia needed a second mosque Hadji told reporters that the growing influx of Muslim Bulgarians into the city - in line with the general trend of increased worker migration to Sofia - had rendered the current mosque unfit for purpose. He refused to be drawn on why, besides the additional mosque, an entire complex of buildings dedicated to Islam was needed.

But he did reveal the number of mosques in Bulgaria, the first time such data had been released. According to the Chief Mufti's Office there were a total of 1457 Muslim places of worship in th country. Of these, 1217 were mosques. Most of these mosques are in areas traditionally populated by Muslim Bulgarians. Sofia, he added, had never been one of those places. This may explain the reaction to the Chief Mufti's plan in th first place.

Reactions
The ambitious plans of the CMO, perhaps unsurprisingly, provoked the reaction of the ultra-nationalist Ataka party. Party leader Volen Siderov has already protested several times about noise levels emanating from Sofia mosque services and demanded that the speakers be turned down. Now he was the first to protest against the planned second mosque. The internet was also flooded with comments and petitions calling on people to take action against the proposed new mosque and the Muslim centre.

Pouring oil onto the fire a national daily published a story saying that Borissov had already agreed to the mosque construction. However, he quickly denied this and instead transferred the decision to Dikov. On December 2 Siderov met Dikov to discuss the issue and asked for verification of the documentation of the CMO's project since bureaucratic constraints could be one way to stop the project. It seems to have worked because Dikov told reporters that he would indeed investigate the documentation. If nothing else this means that the CMO may have to wait a little longer before winning approval.