Quran Contest Winners Honored in Bulgaria
According to the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization (ICRO), Bulgaria’s grand Mufti, a number of other religious figures and guests from Iranian and Turkish embassies attended the program.
The competition was organized in the categories of memorization and recitation of the Holy Quran by the Iranian Cultural Center in cooperation with the European country’s Muftiat Center.
A number of Bulgarian Quran experts, including Qadir Mustafa, an instructor at Sofia Islamic College, Hussein Ibrahim Khalil, a memorizer of the Quran, and Ihan Mustafa, the prayer leader of the Sofia Mosque were members of the competition’s panel of judges.
Bulgaria is a Balkan nation in southeast Europe. Among all the EU countries, it has the largest percentage of Muslims compared to its total population.
Islam in Bulgaria is a minority religion and the largest religion after Christianity.
According to Pew Research Center’s latest mapping of Muslim populations from 2015, the 1.02 million Muslims in Bulgaria form 13.7 per cent of the country’s population.
Most of these Muslims belong to the country’s largest minority, the ethnic Turks. They have a long history of peaceful coexistence with different religious traditions, including Orthodox and Armenian Christians and Jews.
