Appropriating and contesting ‘traditional Islam’: Central Asian students at the Russian Islamic University in Tatarstan

ABSTRACT

Based on an ethnographic case study of an Islamic university in Russia, I examine how the state-implemented and bureaucratized traditionalization of Islam in Russia affects the everyday life of Central Asian students and how this project ‘from above’ is entangled with their coping strategies. I show how religious education has become a resource for the state as well as for young students and their parents. The Russian state uses these official religious institutions to control the Muslim population by creating and promoting a state-approved version of ‘traditional Islam’ and producing official religious specialists. For the young Muslim students, however, Islamic education provides, in addition to religious knowledge, access to networks, social security and new economic opportunities. It thereby offers a way to cope with the uncertainty caused by high unemployment rates and other socio-economic difficulties among young people.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam in Russia
• Islamic education
• bureaucracy
• migration
• coping strategies
• religious authority

Acknowledgements

This article is based on ethnographic research carried out from 2012 to 2014 in Kazan (Tatarstan, Russian Federation) and financed by the University of Zurich, Switzerland. The author thanks Judith Beyer, Peter Finke, Johannes Quack, Emanuel Schaeublin, Mascha Schulz, Clémence Jullien, Sandra Bärnreuther, Anne Breubeck, Brian Donahoe and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and Rafik Mukhametshin, Ibrahim Shaykhabzalov, Danis Garaev, Guzel Suleymanova-Valeeva and Dilyara Suleymanova for their support during the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This process is similar to what Hobsbawm and Ranger (2010 [1983]) described as the ‘invention of tradition’. As Beyer and Finke scrutinize the debate on the ‘invention of tradition’ in the scope of this special issue, I will not further elaborate on it here.

2 Because the university is still usually referred to as the Russian Islamic University in the scientific literature, I will continue to use this name.

3 Beyer (2016) elaborates on ‘the force of custom’ in the context of Kyrgyzstan.

4 These different modes or understandings of ‘being a Muslim’ have been analysed by McBrien (2017).

5 The RIU does offer Tatar language courses.

6 Ismoil referred to the Tajik government’s campaign, initiated by Emomali Rahmon in 2011, to bring Tajik students who are studying at Islamic universities abroad back to Tajikistan and to implement other laws restricting religious practices.