Discussions about indigenous, national and transnational Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Transnational Islam is increasingly presented in the Russian political rhetoric as a security threat. Therefore, Russian politicians and authorities attempt to support indigenous or national forms of Islam. Similar policies are implemented in several western European countries. Yet they tend to disregard the heterogeneity of the Muslim community, they create exclusions and they are often conceived as imposing outside evaluations and interpretations on Islam. This contribution analyses initiatives intended to develop a national Islam in post-Soviet Russia. While the aims, methods and problems in different countries are often quite similar, the values and norms underlying these initiatives vary and reflect the societies from which they emerge. This contribution argues that since the 1990s, the changes in the political line of the Kremlin have impacted the project for a ‘national’ Islam by placing less emphasis on liberal values and more emphasis on adherence to loyalism and political conservatism.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam
• Russia
• governance of Islam
• religious minorities
• transnational religious identities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For example, the ROC is more sympathetic towards the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims in Russia than towards the Council of Muftis of Russia.

2. Ethnic Russians who convert to Islam are regularly presented as particularly vulnerable to religious radicalisation in public discussions. Since the ROC also strongly objects to any proselytising by Islam among ethnic Russians, the decision of the MRBRT was widely seen as a concession.

3. The preference for using Russian terminology in order to create the feeling of unity with Orthodox Christians, noted by Kemper (2012), manifests itself, for example, in recommending the use of the word ‘scarf’ (platok) instead of hijab (khidzhab) ‘so that it would not seem that something alien and secret is imposed on us from outside’ (2017).

4. The word ‘Rossiiskii refers to Russians as citizens while russkii means Russian ethnic identity. Therefore the term russkii islam is associated with the Islam of ethnic Russians converts.

5. The idea of ‘Euro-Islam’ has also been developed in western Europe by Muslim thinkers, who seem to seldom know Khakimov. The diversity of different conceptualisations of Euro-Islam or European Islam reveal the difficulty in demarcating Europe. See (Hashas 2018; Nielsen 2007).

6. The participants from abroad included scholars from Egypt, some of whom stated later that they were not participating in writing or signing of the Fatwa.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The ‘Choices of Russian Modernisation’ Finnish Centre of Excellence.

Notes on contributors

Kaarina Aitamurto

Kaarina Aitamurto is senior researcher at Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. Her study focuses on Muslim minorities and the rise of Islamophobia in Russia. She is the author of numerous articles and the co-editor of Migrant Workers in Russia: Global Challenges of the Shadow Economy in Societal Transformation.