Soviet Anti-Religious Policies Opened Way for Islamist Radicalism in Russia, New Book Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 5 – Soviet anti-religious policies led to the destruction of the network of mosques in the country and the extermination of almost all the traditional Muslim leaders, a new book argues; and that created a vacuum which radical preachers were able to fill and thus spark the rise of Islamist radicalism in Russia today. 

            For this, the author of The History of Islam in Russia: Making Sense of the Past with a View to the Future (in Russian, Moscow, 2019) says, Russians and the world can say a big “thank you” to Joseph Stalin who took the lead in this mistaken effort, one that has proved dangerously counterproductive (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/332537/).

            The author, Damir Mukhetdinov, deputy rector of the Moscow Islamic Institute, presented his conclusions to a Duma conference on Islam in Russia, conclusions based on the proposition that “the history of Muslims of Russia today is an inseparable part of the Russian state.”

            Mukhetdinov argues that “Islam on the territory of Russia has had a state-forming status,” having arrived in what is now the Daghestani city of Derbet with the forces of the companions of the Prophet in 642 CE. And they point out that until the taking of Kazan, “a large part of Eastern Europe was part of the Islamic world.”

            In the 1980s, Mukhetdinov says, there were “about 120 mosques” in the Russian Federation; today there are “about 8,000. But that number is down from the more than 11,000 which exited in the 1920s before the Soviet authorities launched their attack on Islam, destroying mosques and killing mullahs and imams.

            That created the organizational and intellectual vacuum which opened the way for radical Islamist preachers after 1991.  The Soviets set the stage for this in two other ways, Alikber Alibeerkov, the deputy director of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, said in a comment about Mukhetdinov’s presentation. 

            On the one hand, by destroying so many of those who were part of the vibrant intellectual life of Islam in Russia in the 19^th century, Moscow effectively “levelled” the differences among various trends in Islam, thus making it far easier for those in one camp to shift to another. In all too many cases, those involved did not know either trend well.

            And on the other, Moscow’s transparent use of Islam for political goals, especially at the dawn and near the end of Soviet power, had the effect of reinforcing the idea among Muslims that Islam is called upon to play a political role, an idea that radicals have picked up on with remarkable success since 1991.