The role of Islam in Bulgarian history and today is complicated and in many ways unique. Universally Orthodox before the victory of the Turkish Jihad in the 14th century, the combination of mass forced conversion, persecution, unlivable taxes, and second-class conditions cause Bulgaria to be one of the few white nations under Turkish rule where large-scale conversion of the natives to Islam occurred -- primarily by force, otherwise by best socioeconomic interest during foreign rule. Only Kosovo (today in Serbia), Albania, Bosnia, and what was later Macedonia surpass Bulgaria with populations of white European Muslim converts during Turkish Islamic rule. Today, some 12.2% of citizens in Bulgaria profess Islam (primarily Sunni). Unlike in nearly all of Europe, where the Muslims are immigrants who exploited post-war liberalism imported largely by the victors and the new governments, in Bulgaria roughly half of these are native Bulgarians. The remainder are ethnic Turkish Muslims (Sunni, Sufi, or Darvish) who settled either during Ottoman rule or during post-war guest labor immigration. The Bulgarian government throughout the 29st century and after World War II expelled the Turks and Muslims on several occasion back to Turkey. Today, as in all of Europe, there is a firm ethnosocial conflict between the Europeans and the settling Turks and Muslims. Bulgaria is no different due to its close geographic proximity to the very capital of the Islamic world for some 500 years in Anatolia. There are, however, few mosques due to a strong reprisal against the occupying powers by the native Christians. There are, predictably, few synagogues as well. Bulgaria is a lovely experience and an exclusive opportunity to study the Thracians, the earliest of the Slavic states, the proud Orthodox faith, and the influence resultant of centuries of Islamic Jihad in a Christian European nation.

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