Islam's Rise in the Middle Volga Major Defense of Tatar Ethnic Identity, Kazan Scholars Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 19 – Over the last decade, surveys show, ever more Tatars and especially those who are younger have become practicing Muslims; but the rest, who are still in the majority among the Tatar community who have not become more Muslim have been more subject to assimilation into a non-religious “neo-Soviet people.”

            What that means, the Tatar-Bashkir service suggests in a survey of these polls published so far only in Tatar, is that the survival of the Tatar nation likely depends on whether more Tatars turn to Islam fast enough to counter the assimilatory pressures that Moscow hopes will reduce the salience of nationality for them (azatliq.org/a/33030820.html).

            While the article did not discuss whether this pattern holds in other non-Russian nations that historically have professed Islam, the likelihood is high that it does. And that helps to explain what Ruslan Aysin says is Moscow’s decision to try to solve its ethnic problems by portraying Islam as extremist (idelreal.org/a/vystroennaya-strategiya-borby-so-vsem-nerusskim-musulmanskim-ruslan-aysin-o-sobytiyah-poslednih-mesyatsev/33042598.html).

            The Tatar analyst describes how Moscow propagandists in recent weeks have played up a statement by a Kazan Muslim leader saying that men have the right to beat their wives. While that isn’t anathema to Putin and his traditional values, it is something likely to alienate those on the fence in the Muslim republics.

            If Aysin is correct in his analysis, Russia is likely to see a new campaign against Islam featuring any statements by Muslim leaders that Moscow propagandists and other officials can present as extremist in the hope that many nominal Muslims will decide not to become more Islamic and thus remove one of the chief props that has been holding up their ethnic identities.