[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Islam in Russia
Oct. 31st, 2005 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe Financial Times has noted that Islam is a religion that seems to be doing quite well in post-Soviet Russia.
The enthusiastic revival of Islamic traditions and Muslim practice that began in the Gorbachev era of the Soviet Union has continued to the present. Tatarstan, arguably the centre of Russian Islam, is becoming a modern and progressive proto-nation-state within the Russian Federation, while most of the other Muslim subpopulations in Russia are growing in number, whether through high fertility rates or via immigration from the former Soviet south. It's quite open to question how religious Russian Muslims actually are--myself, I suspect that Russian Muslims are more likely to be secular than not--but Islam is going to be a major force.
Unfortunately, things seem to be getting nasty. Gordon M. Hahn observed back in 2002 that excessive interference by the central Russian state in Muslim affairs could provoke a backlash by Muslims. Recently, ethnographer Emil Pain has warned that repressive state measures, aimed ostensibly against "Wahhabis" but in actual fact indiscriminately against practising Muslims, risk destabilizing interethnic relations in Russia altogether. Already, some Russian authorities are warning of a religious war in the religiously mixed Volga region, in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
Much depends on whether a local clash of civilizations can be avoided. A Russia torn by multiple localized ethnic and religious civil wars is not going to be a Russia capable of acting constructively, for its good and for the good of the world. Here's hoping.
Ravil Gainutdin, chairman of the Russian Council of Muftis, says the country has 23m-24m Muslims in a population of 143m. That includes 20m native inhabitants and 3m-4m immigrants from Muslim former Soviet states.
Most live in Russia's seven north Caucasus republics, or Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in the Urals. But there are Muslim communities in central Russia and as far north as Arkhangelsk and Murmansk inside the Arctic Circle.
Mr Gainutdin acknowledges that his numbers exceed official statistics - Russia's 2002 census identified 14.5m Muslims - but believes his figures, compiled from within communities, are correct.
Either way, Russia has Europe's biggest Muslim minority - 16 per cent if the Mufti is right, compared with France's 7-8 per cent, Germany's 4 per cent and 3 per cent in the UK. Russia had only 150 mosques when the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. Now there are 6,000. Russian Islam, says Mr Gainutdin, has undergone a spiritual and cultural renaissance.
The enthusiastic revival of Islamic traditions and Muslim practice that began in the Gorbachev era of the Soviet Union has continued to the present. Tatarstan, arguably the centre of Russian Islam, is becoming a modern and progressive proto-nation-state within the Russian Federation, while most of the other Muslim subpopulations in Russia are growing in number, whether through high fertility rates or via immigration from the former Soviet south. It's quite open to question how religious Russian Muslims actually are--myself, I suspect that Russian Muslims are more likely to be secular than not--but Islam is going to be a major force.
Unfortunately, things seem to be getting nasty. Gordon M. Hahn observed back in 2002 that excessive interference by the central Russian state in Muslim affairs could provoke a backlash by Muslims. Recently, ethnographer Emil Pain has warned that repressive state measures, aimed ostensibly against "Wahhabis" but in actual fact indiscriminately against practising Muslims, risk destabilizing interethnic relations in Russia altogether. Already, some Russian authorities are warning of a religious war in the religiously mixed Volga region, in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
Much depends on whether a local clash of civilizations can be avoided. A Russia torn by multiple localized ethnic and religious civil wars is not going to be a Russia capable of acting constructively, for its good and for the good of the world. Here's hoping.
