Tatarstan, Russia

A different Perspective, originally uploaded by kattica_designs.

Islam in Russia

The Economist provides some background:

Russia has more Muslims than any other European state (bar Turkey); and the Muslim share of the population is rising fast. The 2002 census found that Russia's Muslims numbered 14.5m, 10% of its total of 145m. In 2005 the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, put the number of Muslims at 20m. Ravil Gaynutdin, head of Russia's Council of Muftis, talks of 23m, including Azeri and Central Asian migrants.

In Moscow alone, there are an estimated 2.5 million Muslims out of a population of about 10.4 million.

Islam first emerged in what is today Russia as early as the 8th century - before the advent of Christianity in this largely Orthodox country. As the Economist goes on to report:

Aside from the Caucasus [Dagestan, Chechnya, Circassia, and Ingustan], there are now two concentrations of Muslims in Russia. One is in Moscow, swollen by labour migration, where they may number 2m. The other is in the faith's old bastions: Bashkortostan and, above all, Tatarstan (see map).

As the Economist goes on to report, since the collapse of communism in 1991, Islam has resurged in Tatarstan:

For the first time since Ivan the Terrible conquered the place in 1552, the city's Kremlin houses a mosque, its minarets vying with nearby Orthodox Christian onion domes. . . Just 25 years ago, says Gusman Iskhakov, the mufti who heads the Muslim Spiritual Board of Tatarstan, the region had some 20 mosques. Now there are around 1,300.

While most people think that Chechnya defines the situation for Muslims in Russia, according to the Tatar mufti, this picture is distorted. He says Russia's Muslims live better than most Muslims in the Arab world.

Regional president Mintimer Shaimiev, corroborated this view. He reportedly told the Economist that this is because Russia's Muslims are able to live on equal terms with other people, while most Muslims in the Arab world are not.

Other Russian Muslims, according to at least one contributor to Wikipedia, seem to disagree. As one Wikipedia editor wrote:

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."

Moscow, which has an estimated 2.5 million Muslims, only has four mosques. As Wikipedia reports:

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.

Nevertheless, as Wikipedia points out:

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 mid-century.

While much of the growth comes from Central Asian immigrants from former Soviet republics, as Wikipedia writes:

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.