Islam On The Rise

The red-and-white brick minaret that rises above the banks of the Sura River here is only 2 years old and as modest as the mosque below, which is being restored in a wood-frame building that had been converted into communal apartments during Soviet times.

The young imam who presides here is not so unassuming. Sitting on a small prayer rug slung over his office chair, Abdulrauf Zabirov ticks off the recent signs of reviving Islamic life here in the Volga region, southeast of Moscow: dozens of mosques and prayer houses opened in nearby villages; classes offered on Islam and Arabic, the language of Muslim scripture; plans to someday start a college.

Zabirov's vision of an expanding and observant Islamic community draws suspicion from ethnic Russians here, who find their roots in Russian Orthodox Christianity. And it finds critics even among some fellow Muslims who see what they call fundamentalism in anything from his thick dark beard to his preaching of strict adherence to Islamic principles.

The 31-year-old Zabirov is dismissive. "Maybe they don't like seeing a crescent moon, and not a cross," he said.

In many parts of predominantly Orthodox Russia, the religious consciousness of a large and growing Muslim minority is being reborn, complicating this country's religious self-image and putting a new set of challenges to its rulers.

Russia has long had a large Muslim population, whose roots here reach back more than a thousand years. Estimates of its size vary, but even conservative figures of 13 million to 15 million make it only slightly smaller than Syria's population and roughly 10 percent of Russia's.

Yet any Islamic identity was kept in check, often brutally, by Russia's expansionism in the 19th century, and by Soviet efforts to erase ethnic and religious differences in the 20th century. Christians in Russia - mostly Slavic - have firmly held power over the lands they share with Muslims - many of them ethnic Tatars - since Czar Ivan the Terrible defeated the Tatars more than 400 years ago. Along the way, Russian forces crushed numerous rebellions.

Now, more than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union freed Russians to practice religion openly, Muslims are fiercely debating what form their faith should take in Russia. And the evolution of Islam presents Russian officials with a potentially dangerous problem: How to harmoniously incorporate a changing Muslim community into the larger Russian state.

Older Muslims, many of whom mastered assimilation in the Soviet era, are finding their habits and attitudes confronted by a generation of younger men who have traveled or studied in countries where Muslims are the majority and where the religion is followed more strictly.

"We are being split into traditionalists and fundamentalists," said Hafiz Akchurin, a 74-year-old ethnic Tatar who lives in Penza, goes by the very Russian nickname of Sasha and still wears a hammer-and-sickle pin he won for service to the Soviet Union during World War II.

Evidence of the Muslim revival is visible in Penza's central market. There, Gyuljigan Murakayeva, a Tatar, sells beef prepared in accordance with Islamic dietary strictures for her Muslim customers. Also, the market is heavily patrolled by security guards, one of whom explains that they are there out of concern that militant Muslim terrorists from the mainly Muslim territory of Chechnya might attack the market in retaliation for the hundreds of men from Penza who perform military service there.

Chechnya is about 650 miles south of Penza, and represents the worst of Russia's troubles with its Muslim minorities. Chechens, who had long chafed actively against Russian rule, declared their war for independence largely on nationalist and economic grounds, but the revolt has taken a militant Islamist tinge in recent years, including alleged links to al-Qaida.

But Chechnya may not be the only place in Russia that has bred Muslim extremism. Three Russian citizens are among the prisoners taken during the Afghan conflict who are being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, according to a Russian official. Two are Tatars, from cities east of Penza, and one is an ethnic Balkar, from the north Caucasus region, the official said.

The broad revival of Islamic culture, and the hints of militancy, have Russian officials concerned about the Volga region. Many Russian Muslims live elsewhere, in seven districts where Muslims are a majority or a plurality, but many others live along the Volga River.

"In the Volga region, and in Russia in general, there are cells ... that are plugged into the global Islamist movement. They all claim they have another idea of world order," said Sergei Gradirovsky, an aide to former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko, who is now President Vladimir Putin's representative in the region. "Some people consider them a threat, and some think we can ignore the problem. ... We prefer to say that the problem exists and that it needs to be resolved without violence."

Even some Muslims acknowledge a danger of fomenting a movement of what one called "Russian Taliban."

"There aren't that many Muslims in Russia, comparatively. But if we have 30,000 to 50,000 fanatics running uncontrolled through the country, there are lots of things that can happen," said Ali Vyacheslav Polosin, a former Orthodox priest who converted to Islam and is now a Moscow-based adviser to a key Muslim spiritual leader. "It's not one step away, but maybe more like three steps. But three steps can be taken quickly."

Extremism is currently rare in Russia, according to Polosin and others. The main struggle is among competing factions of Muslim religious leaders who are seeking to control the hierarchy and networks of local mosques.

In Penza, tension appeared connected with elections for governor of the region, home to about 1.5 million people. Muslims comprise roughly 10 percent of the population, and Igor Shesternin, a railway worker, said he has heard other people make critical references to Tatars recently.

"I've heard only general phrases like, 'There are too many Tatars around,'" said Shesternin, an Orthodox Christian who indicated he personally favors the religious diversity

Despite a long history of conflicts between Christians and Muslims in the Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia, most Penzans, Russian and Tatar, describe a local ethnic landscape unblemished by conflict. Friendships are common. Intermarriages are not unheard of. Though she considers it better to marry within one's faith, Dilara Khairova, a Tatar, said her two daughters will be free to wed whomever they wish.

"The young are more interested in religion now, because it's more open," said Khairova, as she sat in the office of her restaurant. But, she added, "We don't need any strictness here."

Khairova praised Zabirov, the ambitious young mullah, for his knowledge of Islam. But, she added, "He should be simpler with simple people."

For his part, Zabirov said he is a fundamentalist only in the sense that he follows the fundamental rules of Islam, and added of criticisms leveled against him, "We have no time to spend on this dirt. We have to build mosques."