Muslims from North Caucasus Signing Up for Haj from Other Russian Regions to End Run Republic Quotas

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 – Every year, the Saudi government as guardian of Islam’s holiest places sets a quota for every country on the basis of one slot for every 1,000 Muslims thought to live there. Then the Muslim authorities in these countries assign quotas to each of the regions in their respective states.

            The Saudi quota for the Russian Federation is now 25,000, even though both the Muslim authorities in the Russian Federation and the Russian government have long pressed to have that figure raised, arguing that many Muslims from Russia weren’t able to make the pilgrimage in Soviet times and that that should be taken into consideration.

            So far, the Saudis have not backed down from their standard arrangement. Within Russia, the MSDs working with the Russian government have set quotas for the various federal subjects. But a similar problem arises: in some areas, the number of Muslims who want to make the haj is far larger than in others.

            The North Caucasus and especially the heavily Muslim republics of Ingushetia, Chechnya and Daghestan quickly fill their quotas, leaving many unhappy. But Muslims from these republics have found a workaround that allows far more of them to make the haj than the official figures might suggest.

            Many of them, wait listed in their own republics, apply to go from others where the demand is less or where the number of Muslims may be less than the figures the authorities use in coming up with the quotas. As a result, the actual figures for North Caucasus hajis are larger than the official data suggest.

            There has been anecdotal evidence and complaints about this since Soviet times, but now officials religious and civil, are going public about it, something that likely to exacerbate tensions not only between Muslim regions and Moscow but also between the North Caucasus where religiosity is higher and other places where it is less.

            This year, officials in Ingushetia reported that they had been given a quota of 1300 haj slots despite seeking 200 more. But they also said that many of the 200 who couldn’t go of the Ingush quota have managed to go by using slots assigned to other regions and republics (fortanga.org/2023/06/chislo-otpravivshihsya-na-hadzh-prevysilo-kvotu-dlya-ingushetii/ and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/390052).

            Such use of slots outside of the North Caucasus by Muslims from there should be kept in mind in evaluating demand for pilgrimage rights not only in that region but elsewhere as well, lest the religiosity of Muslims in the North Caucasus be understated or that of Muslims elsewhere in the Russian Federation be exaggerated.