Islam in the Russian Federation

The Defence Academy of the United Kingdom have released a fascinating paper [PDF] on the state of Islam and Muslims in the Russian Federation.

According to this study, Muslims have a much higher birthrate than the Slavic component of the society, with Russia set to become increasingly “Islamic” over the coming decades. Although there is no “Muslim lobby” in Russian politics, the demographic shifts will almost certainly lead to an increased Islamic or Muslim influence on Russian society and politics (including foreign policy). This will, the report warns, lead to increased tensions between Slavs and Muslims; tensions which are already becoming evident.

The entire report is worth reading, but part of the first section on demographics paints an interesting picture:

In the last USSR census of 1989, Moslems in the Russian Federation were reckoned to be 12 million, or 8 per cent of the Russian Federation population. The 2002 Russian Federation census reveals that the Moslem component of the Russian Federation is 14.5 million (out of a total population of 144 million).3 However this is claimed in some quarters to be an underestimate. Ravil Gaynutdin, head of the Council of Muftis of Russia, announced in August 2005 that Russia’s population contains 23 million ethnic Moslems.4 The Moslem population has been boosted by the influx of immigrants from Moslem parts of the former Soviet Union. An estimated 3-4 million Moslems are migrants from former Soviet regions, including 2 million Azeris, 1 million Kazakhs, and several hundred thousand Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz. Moreover, the growth rate of the Moslem population is faster than that of the Slavic population of the Russian Federation. Although the total Russian population dropped by 400,000 in the first half of 2005, it increased in 15 regions, such as the Moslem republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. The birth rate is 1.8 children per woman in Dagestan, versus 1.3 for Russia as a whole. Male life expectancy is 68 in Dagestan, versus 58 for Russia overall.

Russia had about 300 mosques in 1991 and now there are at least 8,000 (more than in Egypt, which has a population of 75 million), about half of which were built with money from abroad, especially from Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. There were no Islamic religious schools in 1991 and today there are between 50 and 60, teaching as many as 50,000 students. There are 3098 registered Moslem communities. The number of Russians going on the hajj each year has increased from 40 in 1991 to 13,500 in 2005.