Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, & The Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria by Kristen Ghodsee. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010. 204 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-13955-5. Reviewed by Sandra King-Savić.

Transforming religious practices within Bulgaria’s Pomak community in and around Madan are the focus in Kristina Ghodsee’s Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, & The Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria. Ghodsee inquires as to why Bulgarian Islamic traditions in this community have altered considerably since the fall of the Iron Curtain while religious practices in cities and/or villages around Madan retained their relatively lax habits cultivated following the demise of the Ottoman Empire and throughout the existence of Bulgaria’s socialist period. The implosion of the socialist system, resulting poverty, political and interdenominational infighting as well as faulty and/or the failed transition from socialism to capitalism serve as factors that explain changing religious habits in Bulgaria. Ghodsee traces how the traditionally lax Islamic traditions altered through six chapters starting with The Changing Face of Islam in Bulgaria, Names to be Buried with, Men and Mines, The Have-nots and the Have-nots, Divide and Be Conquered, Islamic Aid and ending with The Miniskirt and the Veil. The author stays true to her title and explains how gender and ethnic relations changed in Eastern Europe following the post socialist transformation whereby Islam may serve as a vehicle with which social justice – reminiscent of socialist values – is preserved.

Ghodsee opens her work by explaining how Madanchanis lived during the socialist era whereby one learns that people seemed to have had all necessary modern amenities, money – and above all, work. Men as well as women were employed in, or worked for the mines as well as for the greater good of the entire society. With the coming of democracy and capitalism, however, corruption and unemployment have become rampant, leading one of Ghodsee’s interlocutors to state that “I will tell you a hundred times…communism is better than democracy…For poor people, a hundred times”.[1] In fact, social inequality and poverty – economic as well as societal – may be the driving factors explaining the growing piety among Madan’s Muslims.

In contrast, the campaign by which Turkish/Muslim names were to be changed to Slavic ones, as well as the prohibition to practice religion for the duration of the socialist regime, created an aversion toward previously leading apparachiks and the socialist past . As a result, Muslims now freely embrace their faith.

Beyond the immediate connection to Bulgaria’s post socialist regime, however, Ghodsee also examines the interdenominational infighting regarding whom was to lead the Islamic Community and the resulting split between the “old and new ways” of Islamic practices. The author traces the origin of monetary aid and how such assistance – in the form of constructing mosques, providing scholarships for Islamic education in Jordan or Saudi Arabia and youth clubs, for instance, - deepens the rift between traditional and “foreign” Islamic practices.

Ghodsee’s book reads as a keenly researched work that is sensitive to the complex post socialist reality of Bulgaria’s Muslim community. This book is a must read for undergraduates who are eager to gain knowledge on post socialist Muslim communities in Eastern Europe, as well as for graduate students working on projects related to anthropological questions of gender and ethnicity in post socialist Muslim communities.

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[1] Ghodsee, Kristen. Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, & The Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria. New Jersey: Princeton University (2010). 97.