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Article Excerpt
ACCORDING TO THE 2002 CENSUS, THE MUSLIM POPULATION OF RUSSIA was 14.5 million people. By 2008, the number of Muslim citizens exceeded 15 million, not taking into account legal or illegal migration. If we add Azerbaijanis to this count--"by most modest estimates 1.5" million (Sadovskaya, 2005: 38) or possibly more than 2 million Central Asian expatriates--we get about 20 million, the number cited by Muslim leaders (Bychkov, 2005) and to which former President Vladimir Putin has referred. Generally speaking, the size of the Muslim population fluctuates in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 million (Verhovsld, 2007). Discussion about the number of Muslim people in Russia is ubiquitous but fruitless, since a change of 2 to 3 million in either direction does not affect the analysis of the problems of Russian Islam. In the twentieth century the ratio between Russia's Orthodox Christian and Muslim populations changed in favor of the latter: if in 1925 it was 16:1, then in 1999 it became 10:1 (Kurbatova, Pobedonostseva, and Svezhinsld, 2002: 155).
Who can be considered Muslim? If we define Muslims only as people who regularly follow the rites and prohibitions dictated by Islam, then according to various estimates there are only between 8 and 9 million--some estimates even make it as few as 2 to 3 million (Modestov, 2003: 130). Yet, according to the Muslim press, 90 percent of people who consider themselves Muslims do not attend mosques (Sovremennaya mysl, 2005: 5). What is important is not the rigorous adherence to religious forms but rather self-identification and the religious environment in which an individual was raised.
The Russian Muslim community comes from two main areas: Tataro-Bashkir and the North Caucasus. Tatars, the largest Muslim group (5.5 million), generally reside in compact communities in Tatarstan and Bashkiria as well as some regions along the Volga River and in the Southern Urals, Siberia, and Moscow, but they can be found throughout the country. The second-largest ethnic group is the Bashkir, who number 1.6 million, although it is possible that the second largest group is in fact the Azerbaijanis. In some regions of the North, Northwest, and Far East, they comprise between 25 and 40 percent of all Muslims.
The Chechens comprise the largest group of Muslims in the North Caucasus. There are 1.3 million Chechens and, according to unofficial sources, 800,000 of them live in the republic of Chechnya itself. The total Muslim population in the North Caucasus numbers approximately 7 million.
Muslims are a majority in seven territories of the Russian Federation: Ingushetia (98 percent), Chechnya (96 percent), Dagestan (94 percent), Kabardino Balkariya (70 percent), Karachaevo Cherkesiya (63 percent), Bashkortostan (54.5 percent), and Tatarstan (54 percent). Significant numbers reside in Adygeya (21 percent), Astrakhan province (16.7 percent), North Ossetia (21 percent), Orenburg province (16.7 percent), Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region (15 percent), Ulyanovsk province (13 percent), Chelyabinsk province (12 percent), Tyumen province (10.5 percent), and Kalmykiya (10 percent) (Silantyev, 2005: 149).
During the past decade, the idea of a Muslim demographic "threat" has spread, discussed most often by politicians with nationalist views, along with journalists and some writers. It is true that the Muslim population is growing in absolute numbers as well as in terms of percentage--all taking place against the background of an annual population decline of about 900,000 (Perevedentsev, 2004: 35). The largest increase occurred between 1989 and 2003 among the people of the Caucasus: Ingush (91 percent), Kumyk (52 percent), Dargin (44 percent), Avar (39 percent), and Kabardin (34 percent). However, even the largest ethnic groups in the Caucasus number only in the hundreds of thousands; for example, this period saw the Tatar population increase only by only 36,000 (according to the 2002 Russian population census; see also Tishkov, 2003). Therefore, demographic indicators do not support arguments of an impending Islamization of Russia.
However, if we take into account streams of migration from the North Caucasus to such regions as the Greater Moscow, Astrakhan and Volgograd provinces, and the Stavropol and Krasnodar territories, the proportion of Muslims is growing relatively quickly. Larisa Khoperskaya, a political scientist from Rostov, maintains that in the past 10 years about 1 million migrants arrived in Kuban, and the number of people coming from Central Asia and the Caucasus is growing rapidly (2003: 56). According to unofficial statistics (which in the case of Russia are always more accurate than the official data), there are 200,000 migrants in Novosibirsk and 300,000 in Orenburg (Novokhatski, 2006: 160).
The Russian Muslim population is multiethnic (Islam is the faith of 38 native peoples of Russia) and multicultural. Each of the two large groups mentioned earlier, the Tartars and the Bashkir, has its own religious traditions, history, and historically different relations with the center (Moscow and the Kremlin). According to Ravil Gainutdin, chief imam of the Moscow Cathedral Mosque and chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia (CMR), Russia's Muslims can be divided into three groups depending on the region of their residence. The first region, Siberia and the Far East, is remote from the center; the second is in central regions along the Volga River, the Urals, and Moscow; the third is the North Caucasus (Gainutdin, 2005).
Rather than one united Muslim community in Russia, there are two relatively weakly connected communities. Tatar imams do not enjoy authority in the North Caucasus; similarly, Muslim clergymen from the North Caucasus do not speak in Tatar mosques. Coordination between spiritual leaders is mainly visible during implementation of general tasks set for Muslims by secular authorities. This suits clergymen of both communities rather well. Religious solidarity is limited, as was made clear during the first and even more so during the second Chechen war.
In terms of religious structure, both groups lack organizational unity. Disintegration in 1992-1994 of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims in the European part of Russia and Siberia (SAMES), which existed under Soviet rule and united the Tatar and Bashkir communities, led to the creation in 1990s of 40 mufti administrations--that is, one in practically every territory of the Federation with a more or less visible Muslim community.
A rivalry developed between the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims (CRAM), which considers itself a legal successor of the SAMES, and the Council of Muftis of Russia, with the two groups struggling for influence over the congregation and for the right to represent Muslims before the central authorities and the president of the country. In the end the Council of Muftis of Russia, which according to its own data unifies 80 percent of 6,000 communities of the faithful (this number includes registered as well as unregistered communities), prevailed. Although in the past two to three years the majority of Tatar and Bashkir muftis have managed to agree among themselves, the trend toward integration is not likely to lead to the establishment of a unified structure in the foreseeable future.
In the North Caucasus, the clergymen of the republics defer to the local secular authorities, even though the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus (CCMNC) was established in 1998. With the exception of Dagestan, national muftis are not powerful enough to oppose the secular authorities and make independent decisions.
DEVELOPMENTS THAT BEGAN IN THE MUSLIM SPHERES AT THE TIME OF the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first decade of the new Russia are referred to as the "revival of Islam" by many experts, myself included (Malashenko, 1998). Sometimes the term "re-Islamization" is used. Some imams, theologians, and ideologues of Russian Islam disagree, arguing instead that it is more correct to talk about a restoration of the role of Islam in society or a "legalization of Islam" (Gainutdin, 2004a). These differences in interpretation and terminology all seek to name the same phenomena, which can be described as the restoration of the "adequate role" of Islam.
What comprises the revival/legalization of Islam? First of all, it includes changes in the consciousness of Muslim people, such that the religious component is increasingly more important. Even by the 1990s, 67 percent of Tatars residing in different parts of Russia considered themselves Muslims, and in 1999, more than 70 percent of young Tatars identified themselves as believers (Musina and Shumilova, 2003: 144). The indicators are even higher in the North Caucasus: in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya they approach 100 percent.
According to data from the North Caucasus Center of the Institute of Social and Political Studies, when asked "What role should a religion play in society?." 60 percent of Chechens, 41 percent of Ingush, 30 percent of Dargin, 27 percent of Avar, 20 percent of Kumyk, 30 percent of Karachaev, and 48 percent of Balkar answered that "it should define all spheres of social life." In comparison, 21 percent of Chechen, 31 percent of Ingush, 13 percent of Dargin, 33 percent of Avar, 43 percent of Kumyk, 34 percent of Karachaev, and 48 percent of Balkar answered that "religion should have a substantial influence on social life (Krivitski, 1997: 45)."
Does the feeling of belonging to Islam dominate the religious consciousness of Russian Muslims in general, or is it that Islam is seen within the context of ethnic culture or even fused with it? Surveys conducted in the eastern parts of the North Caucasus showed that 56 percent of Avar, 50 percent of Dargin, 43 percent of Chechen, 41 percent of Ingush, and 48 percent of Lezgin consider themselves Muslims "in general," paying little attention to affiliation with a particular Muslim group. For the rest it was more important to belong specifically to the Islam of the Caucasus, either to the Hanafi or Shaft mazhabs (religious juridical schools) or one of the Sufi tariqats (brotherhoods). In the western parts of the North Caucasus, 88 percent of the Adyg, 94 percent of Cherkess, 86 percent of Kabardin, and 80 percent of Karachaev consider themselves Muslims in "general" (42).
With respect to Tatarstan, according to the data from the mid1990s, 44.6 percent of the Tatar rural population and 33.5 percent of urban believers report that "religion connects one to one's people" and 41 percent of urban Tatars consider Islamic holidays national holidays (Musina, 2001: 301).
Another component of the revival is an increase in the number of Muslim communities and mosques. In 2004, there were 3,537 Muslim communities registered in Russia (unofficially, this number is considerably higher), which is 16.3 percent of the total number of religious communities (21,664), according to data from the register of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as of January 1, 2004. However, this number is still far from the 12,000 that existed in the territory of the current Russian Federation before 1917.
It is not possible to accurately calculate the exact number of mosques in Russia. Differences in the existing estimates are due to the fact that in some instances people refer to the number of registered mosques and at other times to the number of existing mosques, including prayer places where Muslims come to perform Friday prayer and listen to an imam's sermon.
For example, in 2000, Vladimir Zorin, the Minister of National Policy of the Russian Federation, said that 7,000 mosques had been opened in the country (Otechestvenniye zapiski, 2003: 75). The same year, Ramazan Abdulatipov, the former deputy to the chairman of the Russian Duma, asserted that...
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