Excerpt:
The Mufti Office from the Bulgarian city of Smolyan has demanded that the regional police department allow Muslim women to take their new passport pictures with headscarves on.
The Regional Mufti Nedzhmi Dabov has announced that the requirements for the pictures with biometric data are in conflict with the Islamic canon that the Muslim woman should not display other parts of her body except her face and her hands up to her wrists.
The director of the police department in Smolyan, Kiril Hadzhihristev, said that the demands of the Muslim spiritual leaders cannot be fulfilled because, according to the rules for issuing identity documents, the picture should display the face, ears, and at least 1 cm of the hair of the person.