Islam in Russia
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According to the United States Department of State, there are an estimated 21-28 million Muslims in Russia, constituting approximately 15-20 percent of the population and forming the largest religious minority.
An estimate, based on a poll held in December 2006 by VTsIOM, Russia's top polling agency, and Izvestiya, a leading daily newspaper, is that 6% of Ethnic Russians are Muslims.[1] The CIA World Fact Book, however, reports that "practicing" Muslims account for 10-15% of the Russian population[2]
Major Islamic communities are concentrated among the minority nationalities residing between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea: the Adyghes, Balkars, Nogais, Chechens, Circassians, Ingush, Kabardin, Karachay, and numerous Dagestani nationalities. In the middle Volga Basin are large populations of Tatars and Bashkirs, most of whom are Muslims. Many Muslims also reside in Perm Krai and Ulyanovsk, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, Tyumen, and Leningrad Oblasts (mostly ethnic Tatars).
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[edit] History of Islam in Russia
The first Muslims at today Russia's territory was Daghestani people (region of Derbent) after the Arab conquests (8th century). The first Muslim state was Volga Bulgaria (922. Tatars inherited the religion from that state. Later the most of European and Caucasian Turkic peoples also became followers of Islam. Islam in Russia has a long presence, extending at least as far back as the conquest of the regions of the Middle Volga in the 16th century, which brought the Tatars and related Turkic peoples on the Middle Volga into the Russian state. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Russian conquests in the North Caucasus brought the Muslim peoples of this region-- Dagestanis, Chechens, Circassians, Ingush, and others--into the Russian state. 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. The lower Volga Muslim Astrakhan Khanate was conquered by Russian empire in 1556. The Khanate of Kazan was conquered in 1552 and Crimean Khanate was conquered in 1739 by Russian empire. The Siberia Khanate was conquered by Russian empire in 16th century by defeating Siberian Tatars which opened whole Siberia for Russian conquest. Most Muslims living in Russia are the indigenous people of lands long ago seized by the expanding imperialist Russian empire.
Kievan Rus also had a chance to be converted to Islam from Volga Bulgarian missionairs, but East Slavs accepted Christianity.
A large part 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 Sufism, a mystical variety of Islam that stresses the individual's search for union with God. Sufi rituals, practiced to give the Chechens spiritual strength to resist foreign oppression, became legendary among Russian troops fighting the Chechens during tsarist times. The Azeris have also historically and still currently been nominally followers of Shia Islam, as their republic split off from the Soviet Union, significant number of Azeris immigrated to Russia in search of work.
The first printed Qur'an was published in Kazan, Russia in 1801.
Another phenomenon was Wäisi movement.
[edit] Islam today
Relations between the Russian government and Muslim elements of the population have been marked by mistrust and suspicion. In 1992, for example, Sheikh Rawil Ghaynetdin, the imam of the Moscow mosque, complained that "our country Russia still retains the ideology of the tsarist empire, which believed that the Orthodox faith alone should be a privileged religion, that is, the state religion." The Russian government, for its part, fears the rise of political Islam of the sort that Russians witnessed in the 1980s firsthand in Afghanistan and secondhand in Iran. Government fears were fueled by a 1992 conference held in Saratov by the Tajikistan-based Islamic Renaissance Party. Representatives attended from several newly independent Central Asian republics, from Azerbaijan, and from several autonomous jurisdictions of Russia, including the secessionist-minded autonomous republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. The meeting's pan-Islamic complexion created concern in Moscow about the possible spread of resurgent Islam into Russia from the newly independent Muslim states along the periphery of the former Soviet Union. For that reason, the Russian government has provided extensive military and political support to secular dictators of the five Central Asian republics, all of whom are publicly opposed to political Islam. By the mid-1990s, the Islamic revival was a standard justification for radical nationalist insistence that Russia regain control of its "near abroad."
The struggle to delineate the respective powers of the federal and local governments in Russia also has influenced Russian relations with the Islamic community. The Russian Federation inherited two of the four spiritual boards, or muftiates, created during the Stalinist era to supervise the religious activities of Islamic groups in various parts of the Soviet Union; the other two are located in Tashkent and Baku. One of the two Russian boards has jurisdiction in European Russia and Siberia, and the other is responsible for the Muslim aread of the North Caucasus and Transcaspian regions. In 1992 several Muslim associations withdrew from the latter muftiate and attempted to establish their own spiritual boards. Later that year, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan withdrew recognition from the muftiate for European Russia and Siberia and created their own muftiate.
There is 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 virtual embargo of the Soviet era ended in 1990. Copies of the Qur'an are readily available, and many mosques are being built in regions with large Muslim populations. In 1995 the newly established Union of Muslims of Russia, led by Imam Khatyb Mukaddas of Tatarstan, began organizing a movement aimed at improving interethnic 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 postcommunist union has formed a political party, the Nur All-Russia Muslim Public Movement, which acts in close coordination with Muslim clergy 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.
The Sobornaya is one of four mosques in the Moscow to serve a Muslim population of over 2.5 million -- the largest of any European city. Today, its pale blue walls cannot contain the hundreds who come to pray. On Fridays and holy days, it overflows with worshipers, leaving many forced to kneel on newspapers outside, their foreheads pressing against the concrete. Muslim leaders say attempts to build more have been blocked by local officials, who fear angering Moscow's ethnic Russian majority. Attacks on mosques have been increasing. In September 2006, an Imam in the southern city of Kislovodsk was shot dead outside his home. During days of rioting in August, mobs chased Muslim Chechens and other migrants from the Caucasus region out of the northwestern town of Kondopoga[1].
Across Russia, Islam is thriving. Experts say the country is undergoing a change and that if current trends continue, nearly one third of Russia's population will be Muslim by the midcentury. The ethnic Russians have lower birth rate and higher mortality rate due to alcoholism while Muslims have higher birth rate and alcohol is considered taboo. There are also millions of Muslims from Caucasus and Central Asia that have settled in Russia. Since 1989, Russia's Muslim population has increased to about 25 million. There has been a growing interest in Islam amongst ethnic Russians as there appears to be a rising number of converts to the faith. More recently, author and ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, embraced Islam before passing away from radiation poisoning.
Kazan has a large Muslim population and is home to the Russian Islam University at Tatarstan. Education is in Russian and Tatar.
[edit] Russian Muslims and the Hajj
A record 18,000 Russian Muslim pilgrims from all over the country attended the Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 2006.[3]
[edit] See also
- Islam by country
- Jadidism
- Famous or Notable Mosques of Russia
- Religion in Russia
- Religion in the Soviet Union
- Islam in Ukraine
- Islam in Belarus
- Islam in Estonia
- Islam in Poland
- Islam in Latvia
- Islam in Lithuania
[edit] References
- This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain.
- ^ Izvestiya 2006-11-23
- ^ Russia, CIA World Factbook, Retrived February 11, 2007
- ^ Ministry of Hajj official site http://www.hajinformation.com/main/y1191.htm
[edit] External links
- Islam in Russia Largest content server about Islam in Russia.
- Chris Kutschera - "The Rebirth of Islam in Tatarstan"
- Russian Islam goes its own way BBC
- Russian Islam Comes Out into the Open The Moscow news
- Russia has a Muslim dilemma Ethnic Russians hostile to Muslims
- Islam in Russia
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