What role do Muslims play in Russian history – Kazan (example of autonomous republic)

Wikipedia:

It is estimated that Russia is home to somewhere between 7 and 20 million Muslims. Most Muslims live in the Volga-Ural region, as well as in the North Caucasus, Moscow,Saint Petersburg and western Siberia.

History of Islam in Russia

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 period from the conquest of Kazan in 1552 to the ascension of Catherine the Great in 1762, was marked by systematic repression of Muslims through policies of exclusion and discrimination as well as the destruction of Muslim culture by elimination of outward manifestations of Islam such as mosques. The Russians initially demonstrated a willingness in allowing Islam to flourish as Muslim clerics were invited into the various region to preach to the Muslims, particularly the Kazakhs whom the Russians viewed as "savages" and "ignorant" of morals and ethics.[3][4] However, Russian policy shifted toward weakening Islam by introducing pre-Islamic elements of collective consciousness.[5] Such attempts included methods of eulogizing pre-Islamic historical figures and imposing a sense of inferiority by sending Kazakhs to highly elite Russian military institutions.[5] In response, Kazakh religious leaders attempted to bring religious fervor by espousing pan-Turkism, though many were persecuted as a result.[6] Russian soldier menacing a Muslim family.

While total expulsion as in other Christian nations such as Spain, Portugal and Sicily was not feasible to achieve a homogenous Russian Orthodox population, other policies such as land grants and the promotion of migration by other Russian and non-Muslim populations into Muslim lands displaced many Muslims making them minorities in places such as some parts of the South Ural region to other parts such as the Ottoman Turkey, and almost annihilating the Circassians, Crimean Tatars, and various Muslims of the Caucasus. The Russian army rounded up people, driving Muslims from their villages to ports on the Black Sea, where they awaited ships provided by the neighboring Ottoman Empire. The explicit Russian goal was to expel the groups in question from their lands. They were given a choice as to where to be resettled: in the Ottoman Empire or in Russia far from their old lands. Only a small percentage (the numbers are unknown) accepted resettlement within the Russian Empire. The trend of Russification has continued at different paces in the rest of Tsarist and Soviet periods, so that today there are more Tatars living outside the Republic of Tatarstan than inside it.

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. During Stalin's reign, Crimean Tatar Muslims were victims of mass deportation. The deportation had begun on 17 May 1944 in all Crimean inhabited localities. More than 32,000 NKVD troops participated in this action. 193,865 Crimean Tatars were deported, 151,136 of them to Uzbek SSR, 8,597 to Mari ASSR, 4,286 to Kazakh SSR, the rest 29,846 to the various oblasts of RSFSR.

From May to November 10,105 Crimean Tatars died of starvation in Uzbekistan (7% of deported to Uzbek SSR). Nearly 30,000 (20%) died in exile during the year and a half by the NKVD data and nearly 46% by the data of the Crimean Tatar activists. According to Soviet dissident information, many Crimean Tatars were made to work in the large-scale projects conducted by the Soviet GULAG system.

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. 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.

Demographics and conversion

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.

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. 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.

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. 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. While various Muslim sources claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion in Russia and that ethnic Russians are converting to Islam in large numbers, Roman Silantyev, the executive secretary of the Interreligious Council of Russia denounces this as a myth.

Silantyev states that in recent years more than two million people from various ethnic Muslim backgrounds including Tatar, Azeri, Ingush, Kazakh, etc have converted from Islam to Orthodox Christianity in Russia, while the number of ethnic Russians who have converted to Islam is between two thousand and five thousand. Silantyev stated most of the converts are Muslims by birth who were non-practicing, while Muslims who regularly attend mosque rarely convert. He said that the conversions happen not so much due to proselytization, but instead due to the influence of the dominant Russian culture, which is Orthodox Christian. Silantyev also claimed that that as confirmed by many sources including Muslim sources, after every major terrorist incident conducted by Islamic extremists in Russia, thousands, or possibly even tens of thousands of Muslims convert to Christianity. For example, Silantyev noted that after the Beslan School Massacre in North Ossetia, the proportion of Muslims in North Ossetia decreased by 30%, while in Beslan itself, where Muslims had comprised between 30 to 40% of the population, their number has decreased at least by half.

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’. Saint Petersburg Mosque

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. 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." However, 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.

At the same time, there is a small but growing number of Russian converts to Islam some of whom have engaged in hostilities against Russian forces in Chechnya. Notable Russian converts to Islam include Vladimir Khodov and Alexander Litvinenko who was a former spy who converted on his deathbed.

Rise in hate crimes

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.

In August 2007 a video of 2 ethnic Russian neo-Nazis beheading two Muslim men, including one Tajik, appeared on the internet. In February 2004, a nine-year old Tajik girl was stabbed to death in Saint Petersburg by suspected far-right skinheads. In December 2008 an email, containing a picture of the severed head of a man identified as Salekh Azizov , was sent to the Moscow Human Rights Bureau. It was sent by a group called Russian Nationalists' Combat Group and has led to protests from the Tajik Government.

Hajj

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

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. This problem is evident even within in Tatarstan itself where Tatars constitute an overwhelming majority.