Islam and Muslims in Contemporary Ukraine: Common Backgrounds, Different Images

Abstract

Islam in Ukraine has its roots in the Middle Ages and is mostly associated with the Crimean Tatars. Muslims were repressed in the Soviet period, when most of the Tatars were deported from their homeland to Central Asia. Ukrainian independence opened a new era in the development of Islam; the last two decades (1989–2009) were the formative period for Muslim religious institutions. On the basis of the most recent sources, I argue that the Ukrainian part of the Islamic umma has been influenced by various foreign religious organisations. Using all possible forms of Islamic activism, various groups (like Hizb ut-Tahrir ) have been formulating what they call an Islamic social and political position in relation to the main issues in Ukrainian society today. Their efforts have led to heated discussion among Ukrainian Muslim activists, scholars and politicians. We observe a politicisation of Islamic activism and an ideological clash between traditional institutions and newly founded Islamic communities.

Notes

1 There have been many published studies on Gaspirali; for the major English sources and related bibliography see Fisher (1988) and Lazzerini (1988).

2 In Ukrainian law a religious community (hromada) is any group of believers with a leader, whether or not they have a regular place for meeting. A religious community can be registered or unregistered.

3 The total number of votes for this party reached 52,613 (Partiia, 2009).

4 They have a Russian-language website: http://www.baitalzahra.org/

5 According to the Ukrainian census of 2001, 67.5 per cent of the population said Ukrainian was their mother tongue.