Excerpt from Islam in the Balkans,  by H. T. Norris 

Pomaks (pl. Pomaci). Muslim Bulgars who principally reside in Southern Bulgaria in Rhodope near the Greek border and who are now reckoned to number some 270,000. This number is reduced from the former Muslim total in Bulgaria. The following account by Midhat Pasha, published in La Revue Scientifique de la France et de l’Etranger, Revue des Cours Scientifigues (2^nd serious, 7/49, 8 June 1878, p. 1152 (transl. As The Nineteenth Century [n.d.]), is an impression of the deeply-rooted nature of Islam in Bulgaria at that time. In its treatment it is also prophetic of the perennial dilemma of the Slav Muslims, including those caught up in the human tragedy in Bosnia today:

First of all, one must take into consideration that amongst the Bulgars, for whom one observers such a lively interest, there are more than a million Muslims. Neither the Tatars, nor the Circassians, are included in this number. These Muslims have not come from Asia to establish themselves in Bulgaria, as is commonly believed. They are the descendants of those Bulgars who were converted to Islam at the time of the conquest and during the years that followed. They are children of the same country and of a similar race and are descendants of the same stock. No other tongue but Bulgarian is spoken amongst them. To wish to uproot this community of one million inhabitants from their homes, and to force them to be expelled from their country constitutes, in my eyes, the most inhuman act that one can commit.

On the strength of what right, in the name of which religion could we act thus? I do not believe that the Christian religion allows it and I know that civilization has its code and that humanity has its laws for which the nineteenth century professes great respect. Besides, we are no longer living in a time when one could say to Muslims, ‘Become Christians in you wish to remain in Europe.’

It is also pertinent to remark that the Bulgars, in respect to the level of their intellect, are very backward. That which I have remarked about in regard to the progress attained by the Christian races does not apply to them. It is the lot of the Greeks, the Armenians and others.

Amongst the Bulgars one recons fifty out of one hundred labourers and no less than forty out of one hundred shepherds, herders, hay makers and the like. As for the Muslim Bulgars, thanks to the tuition drawn from religious teaching and due to experience resulting from a long experience of government, they have acquired a more distinct development of their intellectual faculties which makes them superior to others. The Bulgars themselves recognise this.

To wish today that those who were in charge for four centuries should be governed by those where obedient to the yesterday, when those later are their inferiors in their intelligence, is plainly to seek to create in the Balkan peninsula a state of affairs to that during a further generation Europe will, as a consequence, be in trouble; for the Muslim Bulgars, before leaving their country, and before giving up their property and their estate, will engage in bloody combat. This has already begun and it will continue, but, were it to be stifled, would be born again from its ashes in order to trouble Europe and Asia.