Bulgarian Muslims

The Bulgarian Muslims or Muslim Bulgarians (Bulgarian: българи-мохамедани, as of recently also българи-мюсюлмани; locally called pomak, ahryan, poganets, marvak, poturnak) are Bulgarians of the Islamic faith. They are generally thought to be the descendents of the local Slavs who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule (just as the Bosniaks in the western Balkan regions). Most scholars have agreed that the Muslim Bulgarians are a religious group of Slav Bulgarians who speak Bulgarian as their mother tongue and do not understand Turkish, but whose religion and customs are Islamic. Muslim Bulgarians live mostly in the Rhodopes – Smolyan Province, the southern part of the Pazardzhik and Kardzhali Provinces and the eastern part of the Blagoevgrad Province in Southern Bulgaria. They also live in a group of villages in the Lovech Province in Northern Bulgaria. The name Pomak is pejorative in Bulgarian and is resented by most members of the community, especially by non-practising Muslims. The name adopted and used instead of Pomak is Bulgarian Muslims.

Bulgarian Muslims do not represent a homogenous community and have a multitude of ethnic and religious identities. A clear majority of them (127,350 according to the latest census in 2001) declare themselves to be ethnic Bulgarians of Muslim faith. However, a significant percentage, in particular in the Central and Eastern Rhodopes (the Smolyan and Kardzhali Province), are not religious or choose to disassociate themselves from Islam. Thus, the Smolyan Province, which is largely populated by Muslim Bulgarians (approximately 117,000 or 71% of the population according to the Ministry of Interior in 1989), has the highest number of people who did not declare any religion in the 2001 Census - 39,003 or 27.8% of the population of the province - compared to a national average of only 3.6%. Considering the insignificant change in the number of Christian Bulgarians (from approximately 47,000 in 1989 to 41,792 in 2001), the total number of ethnic Bulgarians in the province (122,806 or 87.7%) and that only 58,758 people or 41.9% of the population of the province declared to profess Islam in 2001, the vast majority of the undeclared must be of Muslim Bulgarian extraction.

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Wikipedia