
Umar Idrisov, head of the Muslim Religious Directorate in the Nizhniy Novgorod region, was asked whether a future President of the Russian Federation could be Muslim. He replied, “I may not live long enough to witness the wonderful miracle but I hope that, sooner or later, it will happen. Russia emerged from two civilizations – the Turkish and the Slavic, Islamic and Christian. The first state religion in the area of Russia was Islam, so why couldn’t Russia have a Muslim president?”
There is growing hostility towards Muslims as people begin to realise how Russian society is changing.
Here are some statistics gleaned from the report.
- There are 20 million Muslims out of a total population of 142 million. Figures from 2002 show that about 60% of Russians are Russian Orthodox, and 10-15% are Muslim. Between 5 and 30% declare that they are atheists.
- In 1991 there were about 300 mosques in Russia; now there are nearly 8,000. Half of the new mosques have been built with foreign donations, mainly from Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
- In 1991 there were no Islamic schools in the Russian Federation. Now there are approximately 60 madrassas, with 50,000 students.
- Overall, Russia’s population is falling by 400,000 a year, yet the population in 15 Russian regions with sizeable Muslim populations increased in 2005.
- The life expectancy among Muslim males is far greater than that of ethnic Russians.
- The majority of Russian military recruits could be Muslims in 2015.
- If current demographic trends continue, by 2020, 20 percent of Russians will be Muslims. By 2040, a majority of Russians will be Muslims.
This is hardly news, although the consequences of a declining ethnic Russian population have only hit the newspapers recently. A couple of years ago, Paul Goble, an expert on Islam in Russia and a research associate at the University of Tartu in Estonia, predicted major changes.
"Russia is going through a religious transformation that will be of even
greater consequence for the international community than the collapse of the
Soviet Union."
"Russia is going through a religious transformation that will be of even
greater consequence for the international community than the collapse of the
Soviet Union."