Let us accept that radical Islam does not necessarily translate into terrorism.

Other major religions have adherents who subscribe to interpretations of their scriptures that depart from the mainstream in their beliefs and observances. The question, in treating of any variety of a “fundamentalist” interpretation of a religion must be whether its teachings include an endorsement of encouragement to violence. Even then, few mainstream commentators would describe Christians or Jews who historically have invoked God in conducting wars, or even described their campaigns as holy wars, as “terrorists”.

Yet, while some Muslims may limit the living out of their fundamentalist beliefs to their individual lifestyles while doing no violence to anyone, there are certain common threads in regard to groups widely described as terrorist organisations. One is the Wahhabi belief system. Investigators and Western intelligence services probing contemporary terrorism committed in the name of Islam tend to find links with Wahhabi. Again, this is not to suggest that where Wahhabi is found, a terrorist link is inevitable. It does mean that those being taught Wahhabi tend to be the subject of teaching that condemns the West, Christianity, Judaism, Israel, the United States, contemporary European and American culture and values, and for that matter, non-Wahhabi Muslims. At least some Wahhabi proponents have advocated jihad, meaning holy war, against this list of enemies.

There is evidence to suggest that Wahhabi has been taught in Bulgaria for more than a decade.

Given that radical Islam is a trans-national phenomenon, there are certain particular factors that have contributed to attempts to spread Wahhabi in Bulgaria. One is a group of organisations operating in the West, but apparently funded from sources in Saudi Arabia and Syria, among others. Second, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, including in Bosnia, has made South Eastern Europe a focus for radical Islamists.

The accepted mainstream view is that by far the most of Bulgaria’s about a million Muslims adhere to conventional Sunni beliefs. There has been no terrorist attack here. The country has not even seen vocal public protests in solidarity with Palestine. When ultra-nationalist group Ataka mounted a campaign in 2006 against loudspeakers at mosques broadcasting calls to the faithful to prayer, the response from the Muslim community was moderate and muted. Overarching all of this is the much-vaunted “Bulgarian model” of ethnic and religious tolerance.

Some seek to change this. Very large sums of money, sourced from outside the country, have been spent in Bulgaria since the mid-1990s on the building of mosques and what may be called “teaching centres” to spread Wahhabi.

Assessing the gravity of the situation must take into account that at least some of the allegations emanate from rival factions in the Muslim community that have been struggling for years for the leadership of the community and control of its mosques and other properties.

However, it is incontrovertible that in 1993, an organisation called Al-Waqf Al-Islami was registered in Bulgaria. Its Eindhoeven headquarters have been the subject of monitoring by Western intelligence services. A 2002 report by the Netherlands intelligence service report alleged that Al-Waqf Al-Islam was linked to the propagation of radical Islam. It has financed many of the more than 150 mosques built in Bulgaria in recent years. In 1999, its representative in Bulgaria, Abdulrahim Taha, was expelled from Bulgaria for reasons of national security. The following year, there was another expulsion, of Jordanian-born Ahmad Mussa, reportedly for seeking to set up a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Born in Egypt and dating from the 1920s, the Muslim Brotherhood has long history of turbulent relations with the Cairo government, which banned it for some years. With strong Wahhabi ties, it presents itself as moderate and has rejected Al-Qaeda. It is a disputed question whether any links continue between the Muslim Brotherhood and breakaway organisations that do endorse violent action against, among others, Israel and the West. Like Al-Waqf Al-Islami, it flatly rejects any allegations of links to terrorist individuals and organisations.

In August 2000, Bulgarian news agency BTA reported former chief mufti Nedim Gendzhev as saying that in spite of Mussa’s expulsion, there were members of the Muslim Brothers organisation still working in Bulgaria. Their aim, so Gendzhev alleged, was to create a “fundamentalist triangle” formed by Bosnia, Macedonia and Bulgaria’s Western Rhodope mountains. He said that radical Islam was being preached in the southern Bulgarian cities of Plovdiv, Kazanluk and Velingrad, and in Razgrad, north-eastern Bulgaria.

It was in 2002 in Bulgaria that new rounds of allegations linked to Al-Waqf Al-Islami surfaced. In that year, because of the new system of registration for religious groups introduced by the Religious Denominations Act, a major rift erupted in the Muslim community. A key player in the dispute, former chief mufti Gendzhev, alleged that rivals such as his successor Fikri Sali had connections to terrorist groups through Al-Waqf Al-Islami. Sali has repeatedly denied such allegations, although both him and the organisation have confirmed to journalists that Sali visited Saudi Arabia in July 2005 as part of a group of Bulgarian Muslims whose trip was organised and paid for by Al-Waqf Al-Islami.

In Bulgaria, while Al-Waqf Al-Islami has been de-registered by authorities, another organisation was set up in 2002, called just Al-Waqf and headed by Syrian-born Muafak Al Asaad. By that year, also well known as providing funds in Bulgaria for mosques and “schools” teaching Wahhabi was Saudi-born Sheikh Abdullah Abdul Aziz Soreya. Bulgarian investigative journalists, in reports in 2004 and 2005, alleged that he was a conduit for Al-Waqf Al-Islami funds into Bulgaria.

Activities in Eindhoeven by Al-Waqf Al-Islami were of particular interest in 2003. In April that year, two men who had been participants in a “seminar” held by the organisation in the Dutch city were killed in armed clashes with police in India. Also in April, intelligence reports alleged that Ahmad Al Hussaini, a director of Al-Waqf Al-Islami, was a supporter of Al-Qaeda. As noted, the organisation denies that it and any of its members endorse Al-Qaeda in particular or terrorism in general. The same year, the organisation brought several young men into the Netherlands for what was billed as a diving rescue course, in the inland city. Dutch intelligence services reportedly referred to those involved as the “Al-Qaeda diving team”.

Between September and November 2003, Bulgarian authorities shut down a number of Islamic centres. Confirming the shutdowns some months later, military intelligence head General Plamen Stoudenkov told Bulgarian newspaper Dnevnik that there were religious centres in Bulgaria that belonged to Islamic groups financed mainly by Saudi Arabian groups that possibly had links to “radical organisations” like the Muslim Brothers in Egypt. Stoudenkov said that the centres had been in southern and south-eastern Bulgaria where some people allegedly had links with similar organisations in Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia. He said that the centres were shut down to prevent terrorists getting a foothold in Bulgaria.

March 2004 saw the terrorist bombings in Madrid, Spain. A name linked to investigations has been that of Tony Radev Milenov, aka Tony Radev Kafedsev, aka Tundjai Ramadan Rashid aka Tundjai Ramadan Myumyun. At the request of Spanish investigators, Bulgaria held Milenov for questioning but he was released. Milenov had attended a school in Surnitsa named in several Bulgarian media investigations into radical Islam. When he re-enrolled, he was expelled for giving a bad name to the school, which denies being anything but an institution for religious study and denies any preaching of jihad.

Surnitsa is but one school that turns up in all investigations into the subject of radical Islam in Bulgaria. Others are in the towns and villages of Delchevo, Oustina and Bilka. An investigation by journalists from Bulgarian-language weekly Kapital in 2005 found that some schools had plaques noting that they had been funded by Al-Waqf Al-Islami.

In October 2004, General Atanas Atanasov, formerly the head of Bulgaria’s secret services, said that there were people in Bulgaria financially dependent on Saudi benefactors.

In early 2005, two imams from a mosque in the Netherlands run by Al-Waqf Al-Islami were expelled by the Dutch government on the advice of security services.

Around the same time, media reports in Bulgaria said that “radical Islamists” had paid for new mosques built in Kazanluk, Chirpan, Nova Zagora and Karlovo. Separate reports have suggested that many of the new mosques built after the 1989 beginning of Bulgaria’s transition to democracy have been similarly funded.

As concern grew about radical Islam and its trans-national nature, including in Europe in the light of the Madrid and London bombings, in April 2006 US assistant secretary of state for European affairs Daniel Fried testified before the US senate foreign relations committee sub-committee on European affairs. According to a verbatim record of his statement on “the challenge of Islamist extremism in Europe” Fried said that the vast number of Muslims in Europe had no radical agenda.

He noted that the number of Muslims in Europe had tripled in the past 30 years and was expected to double again by 2025.

Extremists comprised a very small minority. “A variety of transnational groups seek to spread extremism across Europe by claiming to be non-violent and moderate, while appealing to the idealism of socially alienated and/or spiritually hungry Muslims in Europe,” Fried said. Other groups operating in Western Europe more actively blurred the distinction between non-violent extremism and terrorism. Of Al-Qaeda, Fried said there were some small, non-aligned groups operating in Europe.

On extremist recruitment, he said that there was no real structure or process for enlisting recruits in a conventional military sense. “Often, prospective terrorists undergo a process of ‘self-radicalisation’ by seeking out extremist mentorship among friends and acquaintances, or over the internet. Much of the recruitment also occurs in mosques. Self-selected radicals begin by attending a radical mosque, eventually find each other, and start forming friendships among small groups.” However, Fried said, mosques were becoming less popular venues for recruitment because extremists suspected that mosques were being closely monitored after the September 11 and European attacks.

Another site of extremist recruitment was the European prison system. In France, half of the prison population was believed to be Muslim. “Shoe bomber” Richard Reid converted to Islam while in a London jail, Fried said.

He said that the European and US response included attempts to integrate Muslim communities into the secular mainstream, through economic development, job creation and improved social services.

The US had launched pilot projects with several bi-national Fulbright Commissions to build bridges to Muslim communities, and was increasing the number of Muslim participants in its International Visitor Leadership Programme which brings emerging leaders to the US for several weeks.

“Active and innovative outreach by our European embassies also helps to build bridges among Americans, European minorities, and European governments,” Fried said. US missions were encouraging Europeans to treat Islam as a co-equal religion. “Our embassies sponsor Iftar dinner and inter-faith dialogue,” Fried said.

It may be noted that the US embassy in Sofia has hosted Iftar dinners and US ambassador John Beyrle has participated in outreach to Muslim pupils.

Whatever the nature of the battle for hearts and minds, there was a considerable media hubbub in February 2007 when a former mufti of Sofia, Ali Kheiriddine, was arrested along with three others for allegedly being behind Bulgarian-based websites reportedly calling for, among other things, the replacement of the country’s constitutional system by one based on Sharia law, and for holy war against unbelievers. According to statements by law enforcement authorities at the time, he allegedly had links to Mussa, the Jordanian expelled from Bulgaria in 1999 for attempting to set up a Bulgarian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The websites were shut down but the charges did not stick under current law. The episode, however, did lead to media reports in Bulgarian newspapers saying that recruiting for radical Islam was proceeding, supposedly including payments being made to women to adopt dress acceptable to Wahhabi practice.

Bulgaria’s Focus news agency, at the time of the February 2007 arrests, sought opinions as the extent of radical Islam in Bulgaria. The agency quoted Alex Alexiev, adviser on national security with the Pentagon and the CIA and a vice president for research with the Center for Security Policy as saying that Bulgarian Muslims had always been moderate, but recently there were two trends that gave him reason for concern. One was the increasing presence in Bulgaria of radical Wahhabi groups like Al-Waqf Al-Islami, and the other was what Alexiev was quoted as calling the “rapid Islamisation of Turkey under the government of Erdogan”.

Academic Simeon Evstatiev, an Arabic specialist, said that radical Islam had no foundation in Bulgaria, but as a member of the European Union, the country would face increasing problems as Bulgaria’s Muslims became part of a global, trans-national network of ties, not only with the Muslims of the Middle East but also with European Muslims. “That’s why the mufti’s administration should strengthen its power among Muslims to prevent them from such radical trends,” Evstatiev said.

In the end, it should be emphasised that at least some of the allegations of attempts to spread radical Islam in Bulgaria emanate from quarters with an axe to grind because of the long-standing disputes among Muslims in Bulgaria. In the current climate, the easiest and most effective scarecrow to put up is that someone has ties to terrorism, and some, including in the media, may rush to judgment without demanding proof. More than two years ago, human rights watchdog the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee said that some media reporting amounted to promoting Islamaphobia. Nor need it be forgotten that some of the scare stories may have emanated in ultra-nationalist circles. At the time of its protest against the Sofia mosque’s loudspeakers, Ataka alleged that the place of worship was a venue for the preaching of jihad, an allegation rejected by mosque authorities.

Nonetheless, some things are clear. The post-Yugoslavian wars seem genuinely to have contributed to radicalisation of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Radicalised groups could seek to spread their convictions among their co-religionists in the region. Further, it is clear that there are organisations in certain Middle Eastern and European countries acting as sources and conduits for the propagation of varieties of radical Islam, and that this campaign is trans-national. Given that it has a substantial Muslim community, it is stretching credibility to imagine that Bulgaria would not be among the targets for the spreading of Wahhabi and related beliefs.