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."