REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

Iliyana GANCHEVA: State Intervention in the Personal and Cultural Life… 219
all Muslim nations have the same beginning, i.e. they are descendants of Ibrahim and
Ismail. By bringing the Arab-Turkish ancestry of the first righteous men who were
circumcised, Ibrahim and Ismail, they aim to provide circumcision for specific, individual
rite of their religion: "Circumcision belongs to Islam. It is a sign of the Islamic religion. A
Muslim and one who isn’t Muslim are different because of this trait. So if you find a
circumcised dead body among uncircumcised bodies, the circumcised person is
considered Muslim, a prayer is organized for his funeral and the body is buried in a
Muslim cemetery". So circumcision as "behest of the Prophet," inspired by Allah to
maintain personal hygiene of the faithful along with the rinsing of the mouth and teeth
brushing, shaving, shearing, nails cutting, depilation of the underarms and genital areas, is
"enough" in further the Islamic theology to insists that there isn’t more elevated and purer
religion than the Islam [13].
An important reason for establishing the circumcision as a household ritual is a
ceremony marking the passage of the child in the group of adults (i.e. Initiation). The
ritual is a dedication of the young Muslim in faith and community, starting magical and
symbolic link to it. The meaning of this act precisely as scarring is encoded and in
preserved ritual practice of placing item on the forehead of the child by blood, which may
have a protective effect [4]. The circumcision of the children in Bulgarian Muslim
families is one of the biggest holidays in infancy. It is honored like a child's wedding. In
some areas, the festival continues for one week. In the villages a Dyulsaybiya is
determined who organizes the party. Wealthy people who also have children for
circumcision help him. He invites the chefs and the drummers. Children who have to be
circumcised should be taken on horses and form a procession, like a wedding - go ahead
standard-bearer with a flag of red print and stuck to it a bunch and a cloth. The procession
goes to yard of the Dyulsaybiyata. There the man who circumcises begins first with the
child of the householder, then everyone else. The wound of circumcision is covered with
dust from the skin burned by the previous syunnet. During this time in the yard and the
street play zourias, drums and whistles [12].
Led by "humanitarian" reasons - to protect the health and lives of children, the people's
government took certain measures to circumcision. Originally it banned the practicing of
circumcision by persons who did not have special permission from the health authorities
in the country. Permits were issued only to those people who have more practice and
some health education, enabling them to prevent serious damage to health and lives of the
Muslim children [5]. Subsequently, the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare decided to
eliminate the harmful practice, namely the circumcision to be performed by incompetent
people - instances of people who performed circumcision. The issuance of a special
district (from the 30 th of December 1959) banned all activities of those people in the
country, for which severe penalties were provided, concluding that circumcision of boys
is done in a very primitive and unhygienic manner that is unnecessary and harmful and
often led to complications. To them were taken away their issued permits and was ruled:
"The health authorities to prosecute offenders and hand them to the judicial authorities for
seeking criminal liability." [4]. It is envisaged that circumcision should be performed only
by qualified physicians with appropriate training, and necessarily in a hospital
environment. After that, the children had to be hospitalized for 2-3 days. Thus the
Ministry of Public Health sought the circumcision to be performed in all required health
conditions that ensure the health and lives of children circumcised [5].
On the one hand, the normative act sought to "modernize" this practice and turned it
into an operation in the medical sense by limiting the possibilities for complications and
infections. On the other hand, the considerations of the district were not only medical and