The history of Islam and Russia encompasses periods of conflict between the Muslim minority and the Orthodox majority, as well as periods of collaboration and mutual support. Robert Crews's study of Muslims living under the Tsar indicates that "the mass of Muslims" was loyal to that regime after Catherine, and sided with it over the Ottoman Empire.[7] After the Russian Empire fell, the Soviet Union introduced a policy of state atheism, which impeded the practice of Islam and other religions and led to the execution and suppression of various Muslim leaders. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam regained a legally recognized space in Russian politics. Despite having made Islamophobic comments during the Second Chechen War, President Vladimir Putin has since subsidized mosques and Islamic education, which he called an "integral part of Russia's cultural code",[8][9] and encouraged immigration from Muslim-majority former Soviet states.
In the mid-7th century AD, as part of the Muslim conquest of Persia, Islam was introduced to the Caucasus region, parts of which were later permanently incorporated by Russia.[12] The first people to become Muslims within current Russian territory, the Dagestani people (region of Derbent), converted after the Arab conquest of the region in the 8th century. The first Muslim state in the future Russian lands was Volga Bulgaria[13] (922). The Tatars of the Khanate of Kazan inherited the population of believers from that state. Later most of the European and Caucasian Turkic peoples also became followers of Islam.[14] The Mongol rulers of the Golden Horde were Muslims from 1313. By the 1330s, three of the four major khanates of the Mongol Empire had become Muslim.
From the early 16th century up to and including the 19th century, all of Transcaucasia and southern Dagestan was ruled by various successive Iranian empires (the Safavids, Afsharids, and the Qajars), and their geopolitical and ideological neighboring arch-rivals, on the other hand, the Ottoman Turks. In the respective areas they ruled, in both the North Caucasus and South Caucasus, Shia Islam and Sunni Islam spread, resulting in a fast and steady conversion of many more ethnic Caucasian peoples in adjacent territories.
The period from the Russian conquest of Kazan in 1552 by Ivan the Terrible to the ascension of Catherine the Great in 1762 featured systematic Russian repression of Muslims through policies of exclusion and discrimination - as well as the destruction of Muslim culture by the elimination of outward manifestations of Islam such as mosques.[17] The Russians initially demonstrated a willingness in allowing Islam to flourish as Muslim clerics were invited into the various regions to preach to the Muslims, particularly the Kazakhs, whom the Russians viewed with contempt.[18][19] However, Russian policy shifted toward weakening Islam by introducing pre-Islamic elements of collective consciousness.[20] Such attempts included methods of eulogizing pre-Islamic historical figures and imposing a sense of inferiority by sending Kazakhs to highly élite Russian military institutions.[20] In response, Kazakh religious leaders attempted to bring religious fervor by espousing pan-Turkism, though many[quantify] were persecuted as a result.[21] The government of Russia paid Islamic scholars from the Ural-Volga area working among the Kazakhs[22]
The Crimean Khan's Palace in Bakhchysarai in 1857. Crimea was conquered by the Russian Empire in 1783.
Islamic slavery did not have racial restrictions. Russian girls were legally allowed to be sold in Russian-controlled Novgorod to Tatars from Kazan in the 1600s by Russian law. Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians were allowed to be sold to Crimean Tatars in Moscow. In 1665, Tatars were allowed to buy Polish and Lithuanian slaves from the Russians. Before 1649, Russians could be sold to Muslims under Russian law in Moscow. This contrasted with other places in Europe outside Russia where Muslims were not allowed to own Christians.[23]
Bashkirs and Kalmyks in the Imperial Russian Army fought against Napoleon's Grande Armée during the French invasion of Russia.[30][31] They were judged suitable for inundating opponents but not intense fighting.[32] They were in a non-standard capacity in the military.[33] Arrows, bows, and melee combat weapons were wielded by the Muslim Bashkirs. Bashkir women fought among the regiments.[34]Denis Davidov mentioned the arrows and bows wielded by the Bashkirs.[35][36] Napoleon's forces faced off against Kalmyks on horseback.[37] Napoleon faced light mounted Bashkir forces.[38] Mounted Kalmyks and Bashkirs numbering 100 were available to Russian commandants during the war against Napoleon.[39] Kalmyks and Bashkirs served in the Russian army in France.[40] A nachalnik was present in every one of the 11 cantons of the Bashkir host which was created by Russia after the Pugachev Rebellion.[41] Bashkirs had the military statute of 1874 applied to them.[42] Muslims were exempt from military conscription during World War I.[43]
While total expulsion (as practiced in other Christian nations such as Spain, Portugal and Sicily) was not feasible to achieve a homogeneous 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 and encouraging emigration to other parts such as the Ottoman Empire and neighboring Persia, 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 involved expelling the groups in question from their lands.[44] They were given a choice as to where to be resettled: in the Ottoman Empire, in Persia, or Russia far from their old lands. The Russo-Circassian War ended with the signing of loyalty oaths by Circassian leaders on 2 June [O.S. 21 May] 1864. Afterward, the Ottoman Empire offered to harbor the Circassians who did not wish to accept the rule of a Christian monarch, and many emigrated to Anatolia (the heart of the Ottoman Empire) and ended up in modern Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, and Kosovo. Many other Caucasian Muslims ended up in neighboring Iran - sizeable numbers of Shia Lezgins, Azerbaijanis, Muslim Georgians, Kabardins, and Laks.[45] Various Russian, Caucasus, and Western historians agree on the figure of c. 500,000 inhabitants of the highland Caucasus being deported by Russia in the 1860s. A large proportion of them died in transit from disease. Those that remained loyal to Russia were settled into the lowlands, on the left bank of the Kuban' River. The trend of Russification has continued at different paces in the rest of Tsarist and Soviet periods, so that [citation needed]as of 2014[update] more Tatars lived outside the Republic of Tatarstan than inside it.[14]
Students and staff of the Erivan Russian-Muslim School for Girls, 1902
A policy of deliberately enforcing anti-modern, traditional, ancient conservative Islamic education in schools and Islamic ideology was enforced by the Russians in order to deliberately hamper and destroy opposition to their rule by keeping them in a state of torpor to and prevent foreign ideologies from penetrating in.[46][47]
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 1991.[49] 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 lingering misconceptions of Islam among non-Muslim Russians. The Union of Muslims of Russia is the direct successor to the pre-World War IUnion of Muslims, which had its own faction in the Russian Duma. The post-Communist union 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. 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 few magazines in Russian, namely: "Ислам" (transliteration: Islam), "Эхо Кавказа" (Ekho Kavkaza) and "Исламский вестник" (Islamsky Vestnik), and the Russian-language newspaper "Ассалам" (Assalam), and "Нуруль Ислам" (Nurul Islam), which are published in Makhachkala, Dagestan.
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 Islamic University in Kazan, Tatarstan. Education is in Russian and Tatar. In Dagestan there are number of Islamic universities and madrassas, notable among them are: Dagestan Islamic University, Institute of Theology and International Relations, whose rector Maksud Sadikov was assassinated on 8 June 2011.[50]
Talgat Tadzhuddin was the Chief Mufti of Russia. Since Soviet times, the Russian government has divided Russia into a number of Muslim Spiritual Directorates. In 1980, Tazhuddin was made Mufti of the European USSR and Siberia Division. Since 1992, he has headed the central or combined Muslim Spiritual Directorate of all of Russia.
A chain e-mail spread a hoax speech attributed to Putin which called for tough assimilation policies on immigrants, no evidence of any such speech can be found in Russian media or Duma archives.[56][57][58][59]
Russian Muslim soldiers killed in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The ethnically non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation suffered heavy losses in the war in Ukraine.[60]
Islam has been expanding under Putin's rule.[61] Tatar Muslims are engaging in a revival under Putin.[62]
After a Quran burning incident that happened in Sweden during Eid al-Adha,[67] Russian president Vladimir Putin defended the Quran by stating that It's a crime in Russia to disrespect the Quran and other holy books.[68]
Islam in the North Caucasus
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Northern Caucasus experienced an Islamic (as well as a national) renaissance. Also radical and extremist streams of Islam started taking root, initially in western (upland) Dagestan.[69]
In 1991, Chechnya declared independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russian Army forces were commanded into Grozny in 1994, but, after two years of intense fighting, the Russian troops eventually withdrew from Chechnya under the Khasavyurt Accord. Chechnya preserved its de facto independence until 1999. However, the Chechen government's grip on Chechnya was weak, especially outside the ruined capital Grozny. The areas controlled by separatist groups grew larger and the country became increasingly lawless.[70]Aslan Maskhadov's government was unable to rebuild the region or to prevent a number of warlords from taking effective control. The relationship between the government and radicals deteriorated. In March 1999, Maskhadov closed down the Chechen parliament and introduced aspects of Sharia. Despite this concession, extremists such as Shamil Basayev and the Saudi-born Islamist Ibn Al-Khattab continued to undermine the Maskhadov government. In April 1998, the group publicly declared that its long-term aim was the creation of a union of Chechnya and Dagestan under Islamic rule and the expulsion of Russians from the entire Caucasian Region.[71] This eventually led to the invasion of militants in Dagestan and the start of the Second Chechen War in 1999. The Chechen separatists were internally divided between the Islamic extremists, the more moderate pro-independent Muslim Chechens and the traditional Islamic authorities with various positions towards Chechen independence. An interim Russian-controlled administration was imposed in Chechnya in 2000, headed by the ex-Mufti and, therefore, religious leader of Sufism, Akhmad Kadyrov. Encouraged by the Russian strategy of using the traditional Islamic structures and leaders against the Islamic extremists, there was a process of religious radicalisation in Chechnya and other Northern Caucasus regions.[72]
At the end of the Second Chechen War, in 2005, Chechen rebel leader, Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, decreed the formation of a Caucasus Front against Russia, among Islamic believers in the North Caucasus, in an attempt to widen Chechnya's conflict with Russia. After his death, his successor, Dokka Umarov, declared continuing jihad to establish an Islamic fundamentalist Caucasus Emirate in the North Caucasus and beyond. Insurgency in the North Caucasus continued until 2017. The police and the FSB carried out mass arrests and used harsh interrogation techniques. Some of those who closely followed the teachings of Islam have lost their jobs; mosques have also been closed.[69]
Russian president Vladimir Putin has allowed the de facto implementation of Sharia law in Chechnya by Ramzan Kadyrov, including polygamy and enforced veiling.[73]
There was large anger from mostly Muslims from the Caucasus against the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in France.[74] Putin is believed to have backed protests by Muslims in Russia against Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the West.[75]
Demographics and Branches
Chechen World War II veterans during celebrations on the 66th anniversary of victory in the Second World War.
About 10%, or more than two million, are Shia Muslims, mostly of Twelver Shi'ism branch.[77] At first, they are the Azeris, who 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. In addition to them, some of the indigenous peoples of Dagestan, such as the Lezgins (a minority) and the Tats (a majority), are Shias too.[2]Nizari Isma'ili Muslims—another Shia branch—are represented only by the Pamiris, migrants from Tajikistan.[78]
In 2021, Putin announced that some 20% of Russian aviation industry employees are Muslims.[80]
Conversions
Most Muslims in Russia belong to ethnic minorities but in the recent years there have been conversions among the Russian majority as well, one of the country's main Islamic institutions, the Moscow-based Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Russian Federation (DUM RF) estimating the ethnic Russian converts to number into the "tens of thousands" while some converts themselves give numbers between 50,000 and 70,000.[81]
Hajj
A record 18,000 Russian Muslim pilgrims from all over the country attended the Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 2006.[82] In 2010, at least 20,000 Russian Muslim pilgrims attended the Hajj, as Russian Muslim leaders sent letters to the King of Saudi Arabia requesting that the Saudi visa quota be raised to at least 25,000–28,000 visas for Muslims.[citation needed] Due to overwhelming demand from Russian Muslims, on 5 July 2011, Muftis requested President Dmitry Medvedev's assistance in increasing the allocated by Saudi Arabia pilgrimage quota in Vladikavkaz.[83] The III International Conference on Hajj Management attended by some 170 delegates from 12 counties was held in Kazan from 7 – 9 July 2011.[84]
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.[85][86] This problem is evident even within Tatarstan itself, where Tatars constitute a majority.[87]
Public perception of Muslims
A survey published in 2019 by the Pew Research Center found that 76% of Russians had a favourable view of Muslims in their country, whereas 19% had an unfavourable view.[88]
According to the 2010 Russian census, Moscow has less than 300,000 permanent residents of Muslim background, while some estimates suggest that Moscow has around 1 million Muslim residents and up to 1.5 million more Muslim migrant workers.[89] The city has permitted the existence of four mosques.[90] The mayor of Moscow claims that four mosques are sufficient for the population.[91] The city's economy "could not manage without them," he said. There are currently four mosques in Moscow,[92] and 8,000 in the whole of Russia.[93] Muslim migrants from Central Asia have had an impact on the culture with Samsa becoming one of the most popular take away foods in the city.[94]
Chechnya, officially the Chechen Republic, is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, between the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The republic forms a part of the North Caucasian Federal District, and shares land borders with Georgia to its south; with the Russian republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia–Alania to its east, north, and west; and with Stavropol Krai to its northwest.
The Tatars, formerly also spelled Tartars, is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar" across Eastern Europe and Asia.
Tatarstan, officially the Republic of Tatarstan, sometimes also called Tataria, is a republic of Russia located in Eastern Europe. It is a part of the Volga Federal District; and its capital and largest city is Kazan, an important cultural centre in Russia. The region's main source of wealth is oil with a strong petrochemical industry.
The history of Chechnya may refer to the history of the Chechens, of their land Chechnya, or of the land of Ichkeria.
The Khanate of Kazan was a Tatar state that occupied the territory of the former Volga Bulgaria between 1438 and 1552. The khanate covered contemporary Tatarstan, Mari El, Chuvashia, Mordovia, and parts of Udmurtia and Bashkortostan; its capital was the city of Kazan. It was one of the successor states of the Golden Horde (Mongol state), and it came to an end when it was conquered by the Tsardom of Russia.
The Chechens, historically also known as Kisti and Durdzuks, are a Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples native to the North Caucasus. They are the largest ethnic group in the region and refer to themselves as Nokhchiy. The vast majority of Chechens are Muslims and live in Chechnya, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.
The Caucasian Imamate, also known as the NorthCaucasus Imamate, was a state established by the imams in Dagestan and Chechnya during the early-to-mid 19th century in the North Caucasus, to fight against the Russian Empire during the Caucasian War, where Russia sought to conquer the Caucasus in order to secure communications with its new territories south of the mountains.
The Nogai Horde was a confederation founded by the Nogais that occupied the Pontic–Caspian steppe from about 1500 until they were pushed west by the Kalmyks and south by the Russians in the 17th century. The Mongol tribe called the Manghuds constituted a core of the Nogai Horde.
The territory of Tatarstan, a republic of the Russian Federation, was inhabited by different groups during the prehistoric period. The state of Volga Bulgaria grew during the Middle Ages and for a time was subject to the Khazars. The Volga Bulgars became Muslim and incorporated various Turkic peoples to form the modern Volga Tatar ethnic group.
Nağaybäks are an indigenous Turkic people in Russia recognized as a separate people under Russian legislation. Most Nağaybäks live in the Nagaybaksky and Chebarkulsky Districts of the Chelyabinsk Oblast. They speak a sub-dialect of the Tatar language's middle dialect known as the Nagaibak dialect. Russian and Tatar historians usually treat the Nağaybäks as an integral part of Volga Tatars; a minority considers Nağaybäks a separate ethnicity in their own right. In the 1989 Russian census, 11,200 people identified themselves as Nağaybäks, falling to 9,600 in 2002.
The Caucasian War or the Caucasus War was a 19th-century military conflict between the Russian Empire and various peoples of the North Caucasus who resisted subjugation during the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. It consisted of a series of military actions waged by the Russian Imperial Army and Cossack settlers against the native inhabitants such as the Adyghe, Abaza-Abkhazians, Ubykhs, Chechens, and Dagestanis as the Tsars sought to expand.
The Volga Tatars or simply Tatars, and occasionally by the historical Turko-Tatars, are a Kipchak-Bulgar Turkic ethnic group native to the Volga-Ural region of western Russia. They are subdivided into various subgroups. Volga Tatars are the second-largest ethnic group in Russia after ethnic Russians. Most of them live in the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Their native language is Tatar, a language of the Turkic language family. The predominant religion is Sunni Islam, followed by Orthodox Christianity.
After it was established on most of the territory of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union remained the world's largest country until it was dissolved in 1991. It covered a large part of Eastern Europe while also spanning the entirety of the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Northern Asia. During this time, Islam was the country's second-largest religion; 90% of Muslims in the Soviet Union were adherents of Sunni Islam, with only around 10% adhering to Shia Islam. Excluding the Azerbaijan SSR, which had a Shia-majority population, all of the Muslim-majority Union Republics had Sunni-majority populations. In total, six Union Republics had Muslim-majority populations: the Azerbaijan SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Kyrgyz SSR, the Tajik SSR, the Turkmen SSR, and the Uzbek SSR. There was also a large Muslim population across Volga–Ural and in the northern Caucasian regions of the Russian SFSR. Across Siberia, Muslims accounted for a significant proportion of the population, predominantly through the presence of Tatars. Many autonomous republics like the Karakalpak ASSR, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, the Bashkir ASSR and others also had Muslim majorities.
The 1999 war in Dagestan, also known as the Dagestan incursions, was an armed conflict that began when the Chechen-based Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (IIPB), an Islamist group led by Shamil Basayev, Ibn al-Khattab, Ramzan Akhmadov and Arbi Barayev, invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan on 7 August 1999, in support of the Shura of Dagestan separatist rebels. The war ended with a major victory for the Russian Federation and Republic of Dagestan and the retreat of the IIPB. The invasion of Dagestan alongside a series of apartment bombings in September 1999 served as the main casus belli for the Second Chechen War.
The Imperial Russian Army or Russian Imperial Army was the armed land force of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of regular troops and two forces that served on separate regulations: the Cossack troops and the Muslim troops.
The Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly was a state-controlled religious administration in the Russian Empire that had jurisdiction over certain aspects of Islamic activity in Siberia, the Volga-Ural region, and parts of Central Asia, including the Kazakh steppe. It was established in 1788 by order of Russian Empress Catherine II.
Islam in Tatarstan existed prior to the tenth century, but it began major growth in 922, when Bulgar ruler Almış converted to Islam. This was followed by an increase in missionary activity in Volga Bulgaria. Islam remained the dominant religion through the Mongol invasion and subsequent Khanate of Kazan. In 1552, the region was finally conquered by Russia, bringing the Volga Tatars and Bashkirs on the Middle Volga into the tsardom. Under Russian rule, Islam was suppressed for many years, first during the Tsardom and Empire and later during the Soviet era. Today, Islam is a major faith in Tatarstan, adhered to by 47.8–55 percent of the estimated 3.8 million population, making it one of the two dominant religions in the region, the other being Orthodox Christianity.
The Chechen–Russian conflict was the centuries-long ethnic and political conflict, often armed, between the Russian, Soviet and Imperial Russian governments and various Chechen forces. The recent phase of the conflict started after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and ended with the oppression of Chechen separatist leaders and crushing of the separatist movement in the republic proper in 2017.
The Mishar Tatars, previously known as the Meshcheryaki (мещеряки), are the second largest subgroup of the Volga Tatars, after the Kazan Tatars. Traditionally, they have inhabited the middle and western side of Volga, including the nowadays Mordovia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Ryazan, Penza, Ulyanovsk, Orenburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara regions of Russia. Many have since relocated to Moscow. Mishars also comprise the majority of Finnish Tatars and Tatars living in other Nordic and Baltic countries.
Tatar nationalism is the belief that Tatars should constitute an independent nation. Finding historical basis in the Khanate of Kazan and Russian–Tatar enmities, Tatar nationalism has often synthesised Islam as a national aspect. Tatar nationalism has historically manifested itself as the Idel-Ural State, as well as the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Tatarstan and the country's period of de facto independence from Russia in the early 1990s.
↑ Azamatov, Danil D. (1998), "The Muftis of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly in the 18th and 19th Centuries: The Struggle for Power in Russia's Muslim Institution", in Anke von Kugelgen; Michael Kemper; Allen J. Frank, Muslim culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, vol. 2: Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, pp. 355–384,
↑ Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, pp. 299-300 (Harvard, 2006)
↑ Hunter, Shireen; etal. (2004). Islam in Russia: The Politics of Identity and Security. M.E. Sharpe. p.3. (..) It is difficult to establish exactly when Islam first appeared in Russia because the lands that Islam invaded early in its expansion were not part of Russia at the time, but were later incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire. In the middle of the seventh century, Islam reached the Caucasus region as part of the Arab conquest of the Iranian Sassanian Empire.
↑ Frank, Allen J. Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910. Vol. 35. Brill, 2001.
↑ Khodarkovsky, Michael. Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800, pg. 39.
↑ Ember, Carol R. and Melvin Ember. Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World's Cultures, pg. 572
1 2 Hunter, Shireen. "Islam in Russia: The Politics of Identity and Security", pg. 14
↑ Farah, Caesar E. Islam: Beliefs and Observances, pg. 304
↑ Richard Sakwa, ed. (2005). "Mike Bowker: Western Views of the Chechen Conflict". Chechnya: From Past to Future. Anthem Press. pp.223–318. ISBN978-1-84331-164-5.
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