Far North Rapidly Becoming ‘Third Islamic Macro-Region of Russia,’ Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 5 – Because unemployed young men from the Caucasus and Central Asia have flocked to oil and gas sites in Russia’s Far North, that region is quickly becoming “the third Islamic macro-region of Russia after the Caucasus and the Middle Volga,” with Muslims already forming 15 to 20 percent of the population in cities like Vorkuta and Novoy Urengoy.

            That is the conclusion of participants in a seminar last week organized by the Institute of Social Policy of the Higher School of Economics on the basis of research published earlier in the West by Russian and American scholars (https://isp.hse.ru/migrissled reported by Irina Yarovaya et al. at vz.ru/society/2021/2/5/1083527.html).

            Muslims began arriving in the region already in Soviet times, but their numbers increased dramatically after 1991, the scholars say. And they have formed their own communities. In Tyumen Oblast, for example, there are now 94 officially registered Islamic organizations, “more than in Chechnya,” Vzglyad notes. Members of local nationalities like the Nentsy are converting.

            Local conditions have forced the Muslims to adapt. The permafrost requires that Muslims be buried in a casket and not just in a shroud, and the long winter nights mean that they have to follow times for prayer as established in more southernly Russian cities.

            One interesting aspect of this community is that the process of adaptation to the broader community follows ethnic lines, Akhmet Yarlykapov, a participant in the seminar told Vzglyad. “As a rule, those from Central Asia integrate into local life via representatives from the Caucasus regions,” with Tajiks interacting most of all with people from Daghestan.

            Interethnic relations are relatively good, with few clashes and general acceptance, the Moscow expert on Islam continues, even though “under conditions of the Far North, we are observing the phenomenon of re-Islamization” as these communities have increased in number and organization.

            Makhmudapanli Magomedov, a Daghestani native who is imam of the Vorkuta mosque, says that about 10,000 of that city’s 60,000 residents are “ethnic Muslims” and that they are well-integrated with the remaining residents. But mixed marriages are “a rarity.” Muslims marry within their own communities and go home to find brides if they can’t find them locally.

            At the same time, however, he considers the suggestion by the Higher School of Economics that Muslims in his region are about to become “a third Islamic macro-region” something of an exaggeration. In recent years, Magomedov says, “the North is rather becoming ‘a little Ukraine,’” with people from there and the Donbass arriving in large numbers.