Social Remittances in Religion: Muslim Migrants in Russia and Transformation of Islamic Practices// Problems of Post-Communism (original) (raw)
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This edited volume is the product of an online workshop that took place virtually at the George Washington University in October 2020. The workshop was part of a three-year project, "Islam in Russia, Russia in the Islamic World," itself part of the Central Eurasia-Religion in International Affairs (CERIA) initiative. Launched in summer 2014 by GW's Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) and its Central Asia Program (CAP), CERIA inscribes itself in a broader effort at the Elliott School of International Affairs to bring greater academic and policy attention to the place of religion in international affairs. Generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, CERIA has since amplified synergies with existing programs at the Elliott School, in particular the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) and the MA in Islamic Studies, and deepened interdisciplinary discussions within the faculty, as well as with several university partners in the DC area. Islam remains a gaping hole in many discussions of today's Russia. The Russian authorities' incessant promotion of the Russian Orthodox Church, Orthodox symbols, and supposed "Orthodox cultural values" tends to hide the presence of significant Muslim minorities. Of the country's more than 146 million inhabitants (including two million in Crimea), about 15 million people are nominally Muslim, in the sense that they belong to an ethnic group whose cultural background refers primarily to Islam. To these nominally Muslim citizens should be added between 3 and 5 million labor migrants from the formerly Soviet and culturally Muslim countries (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan); they work in Russia and stay there for different periods of time, but many of them plan to integrate into Russian society. Russia already has the largest Muslim minority in Europe, and Moscow, with at least 2 million Muslim inhabitants, now hosts the largest Muslim population of any European city. Thus, Islam is a growing identity marker for many Russian citizens, yet it is still usually excluded from Western perspectives on Russia. The Russian Constitution's preamble acknowledges Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism as inseparable parts of the country's historical heritage, while emphasizing the "special contribution" of Orthodoxy to the country's history and to the development of its spirituality and
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