Ufa, Russia - Nestled in the quieter part of the city center, Ufa’s main mosque is an unassuming building, partly concealed behind an ornate wooden fence, with only a lone slender minaret announcing the presence of a place of worship. The modestly sized mosque is full to the brim for Friday prayers, and the makeup of the congregation says a lot about the changing face of Islam in the capital of Bashkortostan. Most of the worshippers are in their twenties or thirties or even younger, and dressed in casual secular clothes. The atmosphere is receptive and tranquil, without even a hint of apprehension or security precautions.
Lyalya-Tyulpan mosque and madrassa in UfaThe upsurge of religious devotion in the republic has been gathering speed in this landlocked region close to the Urals. The history of Islam here goes back more than 1,000 years, and for two centuries, Ufa was the administrative and geographical center of Muslim life in Russia. “The revival of Islam throughout the 1990s should more properly be described as the restoration of its accepted place in this society,” says Aislu Yunusova, one of the foremost specialists on Bashkir Islam and the director of Ufa’s Museum of Archeology and Ethnography.
“Religious convictions were preserved in people’s lives, although they were rarely made public, instead expressed mostly in a private family setting,” she added. “This applies in equal measure to Muslims and Christians. People always paid religion its due, and the only difference is that now the manifestation of these beliefs is more public.”
The republic’s population of just over 4 million people is split evenly between Christian and Muslim confessions, with each comprising almost 40 percent of the total. Bashkirs are only the third largest ethnic group after Russians and Tatars. There are 792 mosques operating in Bashkortostan today, a drastic change from 1986, when less than 20 were functioning in the region. At least 10 percent of the republic’s current population is made up of immigrants from Central Asia, mostly descendants of Tatar and Bashkir settlers there. According to local experts, the influx of these immigrants accounts for a degree of radicalization in religious practice and activity.
In December 2004, a series of arrests in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, Moscow and Tyumen detained a number of alleged members of the extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir group, which Russia’s Supreme Court banned and declared a terrorist organization in 2003. As many as 18 people were captured with weapons and extremist literature in six Bashkir towns. Despite their lawyers’ claims that the organization constituted a nonviolent movement, the Bashkir Supreme Court convicted nine individuals for conspiring to commit terrorist acts, possession of firearms and explosives, and the incitement of religious hatred.
“There were attempts to form radical organizations in the republic, and it was really a trend seen across Russia,” said Vyacheslav Pyatkov, who heads the Bashkir government’s Council of Religious Affairs. “These were thwarted by security services, but the operation did not amount to any repression of religious freedoms. When grenades, automatic rifles, and explosives are seized from people who declare they want to build a caliphate, Islam serves merely as a cover for other purposes.”
The pull of Islam is especially apparent among disaffected young people, with the increasing involvement of ethnic Russians. Yunusova said that Islamist propaganda and radio broadcasts were once conducted exclusively in Bashkir and Tatar languages, but a switch has been made in recent years to Russian-language programs, directed broadly at the entire Russian-speaking population.
“It’s clear that the radical network found here can be traced to Central Asia, especially to Uzbekistan,” Yunusova said. “These groups target young people in urban centers, exploiting social instability and disorganization.”
Another searing controversy within Bashkortostan’s religious establishment has been the split among the republic’s clerical elite. The Spiritual Board of Muslims of the European part of Russia and Siberia (DUMES), the central Muslim governing body that was based in Ufa during the Soviet period, started to break into regional directorates in 1992. In Bashkortostan, the situation was exacerbated by a rivalry between Bashkir and Tatar imams. A separate Bashkir administrative structure, the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Republic of Bashkortostan (DUMRB) first founded in 1917, was reestablished in 1992, headed by Nurmukhamet Nigmatullin.
DUMES was renamed as the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims of Russia and the European Countries of the CIS (-TsDUM). It is a successor to the body established in 1789 by Catherine the Great, a rough equivalent of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate system. It is still directed by Talgat Tadjuddin, who has been in charge since 1980. A gifted speaker and an eminent Muslim scholar, he has occasionally made provocative public statements, but maintains considerable respect in Bashkortostan as a spiritual leader. The two governing boards divide their influence in the region, each controlling just over 200 parishes, although DUMRB is numerically more significant.
“The rift among the clergy proceeded not along the lines of some doctrinal disagreement over the Koran or any other spiritual issues, but was part of an elementary struggle for power, based on competing claims over resources and influence within the highest spheres of the religious establishment,” Yunusova said. “The split deeply affected religious life in the region because, for a long time, everyone was preoccupied with the conflict, fixated on advancing their own ambitions and interests. Although perceived at first as part of the overall process of democratization, the break raised a host of additional problems.”
The new divide was detrimental to the political authorities and their effort to establish an effective dialogue with the religious community. In addition to complicating the relations with the regional government, the breakdown of the strict hierarchy hampered the inner workings of the Muslim establishment and caused ever more discord within its ranks. Just this February, Tadjuddin attempted to dismiss Mukhammedgali Khuzin, the mufti of Perm, who in turn refused to step down, citing the autonomy and the prerogatives of his own structure.
The clerical intrigues and the perils of radical Islam have limited bearing on the principal challenges facing the renewal of religious life in Bashkortostan. The disrupted practice of rigorous and thorough schooling of imams has deprived the communities of competent leadership, while the basic knowledge of Islam among ordinary people remains incomplete at best. The task of educating the new generation of clerics and ordinary believers is the foremost concern for those engaged in recovering the area’s spiritual traditions.
“We try to promote religious education among Muslims as well as to advance knowledge of Islam among non-Muslims,” said Ildar Malakhov, the head of the Mariam Sultanova Madrassa in Ufa. “There is no age limit for those enrolled in our madrassa, and we are expanding our weekend class offerings, which are open to everyone. Among the more successful younger students, some are selected to be sent to study in Egypt.”
Al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the Muslim world’s chief places of learning, apportions 15 slots for Bashkir students, filled by graduates of religious institutions from across the republic. Malakhov says this option is used mostly because of insufficient opportunities for advanced religious training in Russia itself. Issues have arisen, however, with alumni of foreign schools returning home with an assertive and uncompromising attitude that comes into conflict with eclectic local practices that seem to contravene the teachings of Islam elsewhere.
“There was a time when people sent abroad had insufficient religious background,” said Malakhov. “Not having appropriate prior training, they formed a world view that may have been unsuitable for our circumstances. Islam is whole and indivisible, but local customs invariably mingle with religious practice, and knowledge of such added norms is vital before continuing to perfect one’s understanding of Islam through the prism of this experience. We try to address the situation by not sending raw and genuinely unprepared students abroad.”
The madrassa occupies a former private residence, which was converted into a vocational school during the Soviet era. It is still undergoing reconstruction, with makeshift metallic cupolas installed atop the brick complex. It is not functioning at full capacity, but the plan is to expand teaching facilities and provide full accommodation for students, most of whom come from rural areas.
While it operates as a strictly religious institution at present, most people involved in the educational process concede the urgent need to develop coursework in secular subjects as well. In the past, the madrassas provided a more diverse range of subjects and served as a training ground for the region’s cultural and social elite. They also trained imams who were qualified scholars as well as competent community leaders, aКcombination of skills that is sorely lacking among present-day clerics in Russia.
In one continuing and persistent trend, former collective farm managers and local Communist party functionaries assume the role of imams in rural mosques. They are assigned the new functions as proven and trusted heads of communities, who continue to manage local affairs as well as to officiate at religious services. The quality of their religious qualifications, however, is less certain. “The training of new imams lags behind, and their average age today is almost 65,” Pyatkov said. “We are still trying to make up for years of lost time, when the educational process broke down completely, but the younger generation promises to be both more competent and more accustomed to dealing with contemporary issues.”
Bridging secular and religious education is the avowed goal both of the regional administration and local religious schools. The ruling strategy of the regional government straddles Bashkortostan’s multiconfessional makeup, balancing the concerns of different claimants and communities. In fact, local observers maintain that the government’s more assertive stance during the crisis within the Muslim clergy could have mitigated some of the schism’s more negative consequences. Although the administration of President Murtaza Rakhimov is regularly criticized for repressive political practices and corrupt business ties, it has long conducted an alert and sensible religious policy.
“To a degree unusual in today’s Russia, President Rakhimov is one of the few statesmen not demonstratively flaunting his religiosity,” Yunusova said. “When it comes to relations between the religious establishment and the state, he champions the primacy of the constitution and the law, and doesn’t allow spiritual leaders to play an unwarranted role in secular affairs. Indeed, it’s an expression of a distinctive Bashkir attitude to religion, which stresses tolerance and acceptance above all.”