News & Comment
Mufti of Russia: 30% of the Population will be Muslim

News

The number of Muslims in Russia will grow in the coming years and decades. The head of the Council of Muftis of Russia Ravil Gainutdin mentioned this during the scientific conference “The History of Islam in Russia: Traditions of Patriotism and Coexistence”, that was held in the Russian parliament recently.

“According to the forecasts of specialists in whose competence we have no doubt, in fifteen years from now about 30% of Russian population will be Muslims. Such forecasts are generally confirmed by practice. For example, in 2018 on the day of Eid al-Adha according to official information more than 320 thousands of Muslims came to prayer only in the Moscow region. And these records are updated every year" - said Gainutdin, immediately explaining the reason of mentioning such a grandiose numbers. He said: “Using the words of the head of our state (Putin), the strategic goals have long been defined, but there is simply no time left for the buildup. We need dozens of new mosques corresponding to the cultural and educational infrastructure in the largest cities of Russia. It is necessary to ensure a minimum social package for the Muslim clergy, especially the young, to strengthen theological centers located not in the suburbs, but in the capitals, close to the major centers of academic science”.

Comment

According only to official information, more than 20 million of Muslims live in the Russian Federation now, which is about 15% of the total population of the country. This number includes both the primordially Muslim regions of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia and the Caucasus, that were occupied by Russia since the middle of the 16th century, and the Russian regions, filled with labor migrants from Central Asia. And taking into account the process of extinction of the Russian population and the permanent demographic boom experienced by Muslim peoples, the numbers cited by the mufti look rather realistic.

Of course, the increase of the number of Muslims can not but rejoice, especially their proportion to non-Muslims. But, is the fact of the increase of the number of Muslims - a positive phenomenon as it is? Not at all, especially considering the fact that the Kremlin is not sitting idly and is making significant efforts to ensure that the colonized Muslim peoples become loyal to Russia, and not to Islam and the Ummah. Unfortunately, including thanks to people like Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, Russia's efforts were not unsuccessful: for the last 20 years the political and religious consciousness of Muslims was khair (goodness) damaged seriously. Will there be a khair in 40 million Muslims who will serve the colonialist, as Mufti Gainutdin promises to Kremlin?

Mufti Gainutdin without any hesitating cites numbers of the growing number of Muslims only in order to ask the Russian colonizer for more funding to better serve Russian interests. However, he is far from alone in this - almost all muftiats, muftis and official religious organizations in Russia are engaged in approximately the same kind of activity.

In fact, the correct view on in this theme is that Muslims do not need from Russia any harmful mosques (مساجد ضرار), nor the corrupt pro-Russian imams, nor religious schools teaching pseudo-Islam and kufr. The Muslims of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia and the Caucasus today need an awareness of the situation in which they find themselves, an awareness of their path and mission to which their religion obliges them and which their ancestors carried through centuries of history.

And, praise be to Allah, we can see in all these Muslim regions now a tendency of revival of religious and Ummah identity, discussions of the fate of Muslims within Russia are increased more and more often. It can also be noticed the slow awareness by Muslim people the Russian colonial yoke and the need of the unity of Muslims. So, that is the process on which all sincere Islamic forces in Russia, independent da'wa carriers and people of knowledge should focus today. After all, it depends on this what role the Muslims of this region will be able to play in the history of Islam at the crucial moment for the Ummah.

Allah Almighty said:

(وَلَن يَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لِلْكَافِرِينَ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ سَبِيلًا)

“And never will Allah give the disbelievers over the believers a way” [4:141].

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Muhammad Mansour