I will put it straight – though I wouldn’t like to scare anyone reading this: there are serious fans of Islamic State in Bulgaria. One can say that even after a cursory glance at different Internet sites. The hint is so obvious that even there, where things are quite delicately put, the fact that something is wrong transpires.

The era of the crescent, which started back in the 1990s in the Balkans, somewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Albania /not to mention Kosovo – a new Muslim state amidst the Orthodox Christian world/, successfully survived the Islamic expansion, moving forward through Iraq, in order to reach Syria today. That expansion against the Christian world and the countries with non-radical Islam is visible, no matter whether these are states with authoritative regime or those from Central Asia.

The representatives of Islamic State have nothing to do with the Islamic religion and their actions are nothing else but forceful and terrorist acts.

The You Tube videos with Roma people from the town of Pazardjik shouting Allahu Akbar are all but harmless. Hence the beginning of this article: at the moment Islamic State is in Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia. The Bulgarian authorities somehow didn’t oppose too seriously the accommodation of fans of that terrorist organization on this country’s territory as well.

Obviously, there are Bulgarian citizens – Muslims that have been propagating over the past weeks the jihadist symbols of Islamic State across the social networks, which call for terrorism and violence. There used to be a video on Facebook till recently, showing minority citizens gathered and openly supporting the Islamic State through militant slogans.

The Muslim people are nice ones as a whole, of course if they don’t live in closed communities, where their entire life is focused around a mosque with a radical priest – imam, who tends to control his congregation and may make contacts with radical Islamic countries or groups. The latter may turn into yet another source of funding for such a religious clerk.

Suicide – shahids tend to appear in the Republic of Kosovo. Different Balkan information tools claim that Belgrade has a list of at least 20 Albanian warriors, specially trained for suicidal missions of the Islamic State, the Russian website topwar.ru writes, citing a report of the military intelligence. It is marked that “terrorists from the organization are in a constant contact with their allies in Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia with instructions to prepare for actions”.

Islamic State has no problems to obtain arms – missiles, grenades, tank destroyers, bullet-proof vests and tools for communication from Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Ukraine. There is an ongoing flow of jihadist warriors to Islamic State from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria. On September 1 the Croatian intelligence service said that jihadism, now rooted in Southeastern Europe was one of the biggest dangers for the security of these countries.

There are about 500,000 Muslims in Greece. These are Illegal immigrants, who have crossed the Turkish border. Their presence creates serious tension in the country, which on the other hand, still suffers the economic crisis. The citizens of Athens protested actively against the attempts for building a mosque in the Greek capital city.

The Muslims from East Europe are mainly the cherishing population from those times, when the Balkans and the neighboring European regions were part of the Ottoman Empire. There are about 15,000 of them in Hungary, more than 50,000 can be found in Romania and over 60,000 – in Slovenia. There are 400,000 Muslims in Serbia. In Bulgaria their number is around 1 million, or 12 percent of the population, most of those being Bulgarian Turks.

So, Israel is not the only state, having troubles with radical Islamists. Though it looks like the newly established on the crossroad of Syria and Iraq Islamist quasi-state, headed in the summer of 2014 by the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadihas made the western donors and partners of the radicals reassess the situation. However, isn’t it too late now, as the ghost is out of the bottle and the next problem is how to push it back again…

*The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of this media

English version: Zhivko Stanchev