Islam in Russia

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Islam is currently the second most widely professed religion in the Russian Federation. According to the most recent estimates by the R&F Agency, there are more than 20 million officially self-identified Muslims in Russia. Muslim communities are concentrated among minority nationalities residing between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea: Adyghe, Balkars, Chechens, Circassians, Ingush, Kabardin, Karachay, and numerous Dagestani peoples. Also, in the middle of the Volga Basin reside populations of Tatars and Bashkirs, the majority of whom are Muslims.

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[edit] History of Islam in Russia

Russian soldier menacing a Muslim family.

The first Muslims within current Russian territory were the Dagestani people (region of Derbent) after the Arab conquests in the 8th century. The first Muslim state in Russia was Volga Bulgaria (922). The Tatars inherited the religion from that state. Later most of the European and Caucasian Turkic peoples also became followers of Islam. Islam in Russia has had a long presence, extending at least as far back as the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan in 1552, which brought the Tatars and Bashkirs on the Middle Volga into Russia. The lower Volga Muslim Astrakhan Khanate was conquered by the Russian empire in 1556. The Siberia Khanate was conquered by the Russian empire in 16th century by defeating the Siberian Tatars which opened Siberia for Russian conquest. The Crimean Khanate was conquered in 1739 by the Russian Empire. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Russian conquests in the North Caucasus brought the Muslim peoples of this region—Dagestanis, Chechens, Ingush, and others—into the Russian state. The conquest of the Circassians and the Ubykhs turned this peoples to muhajirs. Further afield, the independent states of Central Asia and Azerbaijan were brought into the Russian state as part of the same imperialist push that incorporated the North Caucasus. Most Muslims living in Russia were the indigenous people of lands long ago seized by the expanding Russian empire.

Just after the incorporation of the Tatar khanates, the Christianization of the Muslims took place until the reign of Catherine the Great.

The first Qur'an printed in Russia was published in Kazan in 1801.

Another event in the history of Islam in Russia was the Wäisi movement, which began in the turn of the 20th century. The Ittifaq al-Muslimin party represented the Muslim minority in the State Duma.

Under Communist rule, Islam was oppressed and suppressed, as was any other religion. Many mosques—much like their Christian counterparts, the churches—were closed at that time. For example, the Marcani mosque was the only acting mosque in Kazan at that time.

[edit] Today

There was much evidence of official conciliation toward Islam in Russia in the 1990s. The number of Muslims allowed to make pilgrimages to Mecca increased sharply after the embargo of the Soviet era ended in 1990. In 1995 the newly established Union of Muslims of Russia, led by Imam Khatyb Mukaddas of Tatarstan, began organizing a movement aimed at improving inter-ethnic understanding and ending Russians' lingering misconception of Islam. The Union of Muslims of Russia is the direct successor to the pre-World War I Union of Muslims, which had its own faction in the Russian Duma. The post-Communist union has formed a political party, the Nur All-Russia Muslim Public Movement, which acts in close coordination with Muslim imams to defend the political, economic, and cultural rights of Muslims and other minorities. The Islamic Cultural Center of Russia, which includes a madrassa (religious school), opened in Moscow in 1991. In the 1990s, the number of Islamic publications has increased. Among them are two magazines in Russian, "Эхо Кавказа" (transliteration: Ekho Kavkaza) and "Исламский вестник" (Islamsky Vestnik), and the Russian-language newspaper "Исламские новости" (Islamskiye Novosti), which is published in Makhachkala, Dagestan.

Qolşärif mosque - The largest mosque in Russia, Kazan
Saint Petersburg Mosque
Newly constructed mosque in Grozny

Kazan has a large Muslim population (probably the second after Moscow urban group of the Muslims and the biggest indigenous group in Russia) and is home to the Russian Islam University at Tatarstan. Education is in Russian and Tatar.

Copies of the Qur'an are readily available, and many mosques are being built in regions with large Muslim populations.

The majority of Muslims in Russia adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam. About 10% are Shi'a Muslims. In a few areas, notably Chechnya, there is a tradition of Sunni Sufism. The Azeris have also historically and still currently been nominally followers of Shi'a Islam, as their republic split off from the Soviet Union, significant number of Azeris immigrated to Russia in search of work.

Many Muslim citizens, in particular Muslim clerics, often cite instances of arrest and harassment by authorities, as well as occasional confiscation of Islamic educational sources. The problems have been exacerbated by terrorist attacks linked with Islamic extremism and Chechen independence. Many ordinary Muslims in Russia fear that they have become the victims of a violent backlash.[1]

The rise in the Russian Muslim population, terrorist attacks and the steep decline of the ethnic Russian population have given rise to a greater degree of Xenophobia and Islamophobia in Russia. Violent racist attacks by ethnic Russians, particularly Neo-Nazi skinheads, which used to be mainly conducted against Jews, are becoming increasingly frequent towards Muslims. As such, Muslims bear the brunt of the escalating racist violence in Russia. Racist attacks struck 539 people in 2006, a 17 percent rise over 2005, the Sova analytical center said in a report. Nearly half of the 56 people killed in the attacks were from the overwhelmingly Muslim North Caucasus and Central Asia.[2]

General consensus amongst most observers is that Islam is currently the most rapidly growing religion within the borders of Russia. Daniel Pipes in his blog makes note of the increasing scholarly view that Islam is growing more rapidly than Orthodox Christianity. However, he states that this is due to the higher birth rate among Muslims as compared to ethnic Russians, and not because of any mass conversions to Islam. Furthermore, Daniel Pipes highlights that Moscow now has a Muslim population second only to Istanbul amongst European nations.[3]Paul Globe, who served the United States government as a specialist on the Soviet Union, has gone so far as to predict a Muslim majority in Russia by mid century.[4]

The Orthodox Church of Russia is said to be concerned with the growing estimates that Islam is poised to become a rapidly growing minority and potentially a majority by the year 2050.[1]

However, in a BBC interview, Russian demographer, Viktor Perevedentsev, dismisses the notion that Russia could become a majority Muslim nation, and says this is a spectre being deliberately whipped up by politicians with little understanding of demography. He acknowledges that there are very high birth-rates among these population groups, but insists they merely reflect an earlier stage of development and will ultimately fall. In 50 years' time, he says, Muslims will still be a small part of Russia's overall population.[5]

According to an official estimate conducted by the Russian Interreligious Council, approximately 400 Russian Orthodox clergy belong to traditionally Muslim ethnic groups, 20 percent of Tatars are Christian, and 70 percent of interfaith marriages result in the Muslim spouse conversion to Christianity. At the same time, the expert accounts for the small number of ethnic Orthodox people who have adopted Islam since 1990, among other things, by the fact that ‘for some reason Russians seem to be more willing to join sects than Islam’. [6]

In the years since the Beslan tragedy, North Ossetian security officials have sought to close down all independent Muslim organizations there. Towards this end, the Authorities in Beslan and across North Ossetia arrested numerous independent Muslim leaders, sometimes even planting evidence on them and sentencing them to confinement in prison camps. And fearing arrest, other Muslim leaders either stopped preaching in public or fled the republic. [7]

Also, many members of historically Muslim nationalities are having themselves baptized, either as a result of their horror at what the Islamic terrorists did at the school or more likely, in order to avoid persecution from the state. After the attacks, the general attitude has been that everyone who actively practices Islam is an enemy.

According to the Russian newspaper "Nasha Versiya", "Many children who survived the terrorist act and the parents of those who did not have been baptized, despite the fact that earlier they considered themselves Muslims. And those residents of Beslan who died, including Muslims, have been buried according to Orthodox custom, and none of their relatives has complained." [7]

Moreover, most observers believe that the majority of conversions to Christianity are insincere. Some of those who convert quickly fall away from the faith, and many among these get radicalized and join Islamist organizations.[7]

[edit] Hajj

A record 18,000 Russian Muslim pilgrims from all over the country attended the Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 2006.[8]

[edit] Language controversies

For centuries, the Tatars constituted the only Muslim ethnic group in European Russia, with Tatar language being the only language used in their mosques, a situation which saw rapid change over the course of the 20th century as a large number of Caucasian and central Asian Muslims migrated to central Russian cities, and began attending Tatar-speaking mosques, generating pressure on the Imams of such mosques to begin using Russian.[9][10] This problem is evident even within in Tatarstan itself where Tatars constitute an overwhelming majority.[11]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Russian Muslims allege persecution
  2. ^ Islam's rapid rise giving Russia growing pains
  3. ^ Daniel Pipes blog
  4. ^ Analyst Predicts Muslim Majority in Russia Within 30 Years
  5. ^ Russia faces demographic disaster, BBC News
  6. ^ Cite Error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Silantyev.
  7. ^ a b c Russia: Authorities Seek To Convert Beslan's Muslims
  8. ^ Russian Pilgrims Number Exceeds 18,000, Ministry of Hajj, Saudi Arabia.
  9. ^ The Rebirth of Islam in Russia
  10. ^ (Russian) [1]
  11. ^ (Russian) [2]

[edit] External links

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