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Russian Muslims
Olga Kravets
Thousands of ethnic Russians convert to Islam annually, according to the members of the Mufti Council of Russia. Concerned with the idea of protection of the Russian (meaning – Orthodox) identity, the government launched a system of persecution of the converts, branding them as terrorists. Many of them flee, but the Russian secret services try to hunt them down even abroad, and foreign countries treat them with suspicion.
But who are they in reality and why do they convert?
The fact that there are ethnic Russians in Russia who choose to convert to Islam was largely unknown before the killing of Said Buryatsky (born and Alexander Tikhomirov) in Ingushetia in 2010. He was an Islamist militant leader in the Russian North Caucasus, the chief rebel ideologist and the regional counterpart of Osama bin Laden. There was one particularly striking fact about him – he was born to a Buryat Buddhist father and a Russian Christian mother and converted to Islam at the age of 15.
This event gave the basis to think that all of the converts were picked and brainwashed by the terrorists. However, the ethnic Russian Muslim community claims they all had totally different reasons to do so: adopting a spouse’ religion; fashion//trendiness; the opposition of Islam to the system such as current Russian State due to it’s anti-dogmatism; sufism; practicality of Islam, business, bureaucratic or even criminal reasons in predominantly Muslim republics such as Bashkiria and Tatarstan, and finally, adopting Islam while serving as a soldier in Afghanistan or Chechnya.
The current Russian State heavily building upon the religious Orthodox identity, sees the increasing number of Muslims among those who should be Orthodox by blood as a slap in the face – the lists of converts are taken from the imams, the people are summoned to questioning, their fingerprints are taken, they get arrested, and eventually, most of the ideologists and intellectuals have to flee.
In early 2014 a Chechen friend asked me as a journalist to help her Russian Muslim friend in trouble in Turkey. While the only thing I could do is to send out his call for help to the employees of the international human rights organizations, we did start a dialogue with this man and eventually, thanks to my work with Muslims in Chechnya, I was granted access to the wary community of exiles in Turkey.
They chose this country for being European and Muslim at the same time, but there are three problems about it: Turkey doesn’t quite understand who are the “Russian Muslims”, as opposed to Russian Chechen, Tatar and other Muslims. They therefore suspect them of being sent to Turkey as Russia’s intelligence agents under the pretext of exile, so they happily give them back to the Russians once Moscow asks for certain people, even at times when Erdogan and Putin seem to not be getting along well. In a latest development, many get arrested on suspicion of being ISIS members.
While I already have enough material from Turkey, I am seeking to finish the project this year in Russia and Ukraine. I intend to visit four specific places that I picked up after a lengthy research: a village outside of Krasnodar where the vast majority of inhabitants have converted to Islam in a trend started by a local doctor whom all of them respect; in Tyumen where security services are know to be the most harsh on converts; in Astrakhan, where converts are believed to often radicalize; and finally in Crimea. De jure Ukrainian peninsula is vital for this story, because before Russia occupied it, people used to enjoy complete religious freedom under Ukrainian government. Plus many Ukrainians and Russians living there discovered Islam because of Crimean Tatars, Muslim ethnic group.
Telling the story of converts from Russia has a specific value, because Christianity and Islam have coexisted on the country’s territory for more than a thousand years, and historically Islam is second religion in Russia. The arguments like “it is religion of migrants” make no sense here. People have right for religious freedom and right not to be branded as terrorists if they have not committed any crime.
