Handled with care

The minarets of Kazan's Al-Marjani Mosque have towered above the city for more than a century, even during the communist era. PHOTO: Daniel Evans

On a quiet Kazan street stands a building, whose very name signals a new era of religious freedom: the Russian Islamic University. Inside, the sound of Arabic words from the Quran pours into the long corridors.

In one airy, white-walled classroom, a bearded teacher, Sahib Nazar Nour Ali, chants verses with the command of a soloist who knows his piece by heart. His six male students repeat after him, first in unison and then in separate paces sounding like a rapidly assembled amateur choir until Ali helps them get on track.

On the back wall of the room, a map of the Islamic world is flanked by posters spelling out-- in Arabic-- the words "God" and "Muhammad," the prophet of Islam.

In university classrooms, Islamic schools, or homes, some Tatars in this semiautonomous Russian republic are struggling to rediscover an Islamic heritage, which has been frozen during 74 years of unforgiving communism.

It's not always easy. More than a decade after the 1991 collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union, Tatarstan's Muslims are still grappling-- under watchful, and some say suspicious, government eyes-- to shape their modern-day version of Islam. As they do, some Muslim clergy worry that this largely religiously-illiterate people may provide fertile soil for Islamic fundamentalism.

Kazan, capital of Tatarstan where Muslims make up at least half of the population, is a glaring juxtaposition of the heavenly and the worldly. Prayer rugs and beads are as readily available in shops and kiosks as vodka and magazines with cover photos of bare-breasted women. The Muslim call for prayer blares from mosques' loudspeakers, while American pop songs blast from stereos on the streets. Some women cover their bodies with flowing robes and their hair with scarves; others perform in two-piece belly dancing costumes in restaurants and clubs or treat their customers to hot stripteases.

Islam came to Tatarstan from Central Asia in the ninth century and became the official religion of the region a century later. In 1552, Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan, after which Tatar Islam suffered under some Russian rulers but flourished under others. A small minority of Tatars converted to Christianity, but most remained Muslim. Tatar culture and Muslim faith bloomed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries until the 1917 October Revolution put all religious life in Russia on hold for decades. Then and now, Islam remained intertwined with the national identity, traditions and culture of Tatars, devout or not.

To judge by the numbers, the ongoing Islamic revival has been powerful. In the late 1980's, Tatarstan had just 17 functioning mosques, of which only one was open in Kazan. Today, the republic houses more than 1,000 mosques, 50 in Kazan, plus an Islamic university and at least eight madrasas, or Islamic schools. But as these religious institutions sprouted, fears grew that a lack of qualified clergy and teachers could open the door to imported, and sometimes extremist, interpretations of Islam.

Tatarstan, an oil-rich region of about 3.7 million people perched in the center of the Russian Federation, where the Volga and the Kama rivers meet, is widely regarded as a promoter of a liberal Islam that preaches tolerance, democracy, and co-existence. The Kazan Kremlin, built in 1556, testifies to that. A Soviet-era star atop a white tower, leading into the Kremlin compound, greets visitors. Inside, golden crosses and crescents, rising from a church's turquoise domes and a mosque's towering minarets, slice into the sky. Intermarriages are common among the republic's Tatars, who make up 48.5 percent of the population, and Russians, who account for 43.3 percent. Small ethnic groups make up the rest of Tatarstan's inhabitants.

Ali's classroom at the Russian Islamic University, open only to Muslims, reflects some of that diversity. Students with fair complexions and light eyes sit along side those with darker skins and Central Asian features. Clean-shaven, sporting a fashionable goatee, or a traditional Muslim beard; their feet peering from open-toed slippers or hidden by shoes, the men read from their copies of the Quran and repeat after Ali. Following the group chanting, the room buzzes with muffled humming and the rustle of turning pages as the students quietly study the chapter once more. Ali then calls individual names, asking each man to read aloud, interrupting every now and then to emphasize a syllable or to correct vocalization.

When they graduate, some of Ali's students may teach at this university, as four of 14 did last year in the first graduating class. Others may study further in Arab or Muslim countries, a path that raises fears that Tatarstan's open-minded Islam may yield to more fundamentalist and austere variants.

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At Kazan's Al-Marjani mosque, Valiulla M. Iakoupov, first deputy mufti of Tatarstan, tells visitors about what the Russian government and some clergy like himself see as a threat. "In the early 90's, we were drunk with freedom," he says through a translator. "Hundreds of young people went to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and Malaysia. When they returned, we were having a problem with a difference in theological schools, especially that in Saudi Arabia; they teach what we call Wahhabism," he adds in Russian.

Wahhabism, the puritanical form of Islam adopted in Saudi Arabia, is a despised word in Russia, sometimes even a slur and a euphemism for terrorism and radicalism. That Wahhabism gained ground among some Chechen separatists fighting the Russian government didn't help its image in the country.

Those who study in Saudi Arabia are educated in a virtually all-Muslim society by teachers removed from Russia's diversity, says Farid Asadullin, a deputy to Moscow's grand mufti. "So people come back with ideas that don't fit with the Russian reality. The Muslims who live in Russia are used to co-existing with Christians and Jews since birth," he adds. Russia's Muslim minority is estimated at 20 million.

Whether they come from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Turkey, all groups preaching ideas deemed fundamentalist are a threat, Iakoupov argues. "They're the same danger for us. They don't like each other and they also have a bad relation with us," he says, adding that Russia's security services work to keep out such "recruiters."

In 1998, Tatarstan's local government supported the founding of the Russian Islamic University in part to spread the local understanding of Islam and battle imported religious ideas. Today, with 170 students, the university no longer takes money from foreign governments with agendas, although it still accepts copies of the Quran as gifts from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, Iakoupov says.

But some of the effects of the 1990's study-abroad programs and of having visiting Muslim missionaries still linger, Iakoupov says. He estimates that foreign Islamic groups have about 1,000 followers in Tatartsan.

Fundamentalism found audience in industrial towns that attract young workers, Iakoupov says. He points to Naberezhnye Chelny, an eastern town that grew rapidly in the 1970s with the building of a truck factory. The town houses an Islamic school, whose license was revoked in response to reports that some of its graduates were going to fight against Russia in Chechnya; it is also home to at least two Muslim men held in Guantanamo Bay on accusations of going to Afghanistan to fight with the now-ousted Taliban regime. Iakoupov fears that wars like the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, seen by many Muslims as attacks on them, may further fuel radicalism.

Not everyone shares the same concern. Zolfat Abdullah, a social worker and teacher at the Muhamadiya Islamic school, sees no future for fundamentalists in Tatarstan. He says those spreading radicalism lack credibility. They tell men to grow their beards, following the tradition of Prophet Muhammad, but they shave their own to escape government scrutiny. They preach faith but, contrary to Islamic teachings, call their parents atheists for not adhering to their extremist religious interpretations. "People don't even understand their preaching," he adds. Clean-shaven and broad-shouldered, Abdullah wears a silver wedding ring in adherence to the Islamic tradition of men shunning gold jewelry.

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Whether the fear of fundamentalism is real or imaginary, Russia's federal government seems to have decided to take no chance. It closely watches its Muslims as they revive their faith. Too closely, some argue.

"Muslims are still the second-rate citizens," argues Hyder Gemal, a Muslim activist in Moscow. Gemal speaks of state animosity and opposition to Islam. He claims that he knows of Muslim youths in different Russians republics who have been arrested on accusations of adhering to Wahhabism, when in fact they don't even know how to pray, and of others who were detained just for visiting Chechnya. Islamic education is also scrutinized. Government employees monitor classes in Islamic schools and inspect the curricula, Abdullah, the Muhamadiya teacher, says.

Sitting behind his desk, Abdullah reads a hadith, or narration about the prophet's life, to about 40 students crammed in a green-walled room. He explains the verses to his class of veiled women of various ages and white-haired men, seated next to teens young enough to be their grandchildren. The students fervently take notes. Simple Arabic words like "God," "work," and "Satan" appear in a graceful hardwiring on a blackboard. One wall bears the inscription: "In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful."

Graduates of the Muhamadiya and other Islamic educational institution do not get state-issued diplomas when they finish school, despite repeated appeals by Muslim leaders.

In Tatarstan and elsewhere, Russia's fight with Muslim Chechen rebels in the federation and the ambition of the country's Orthodox church to regain its pre-communism dominance over other religions and denominations complicate the state's relations with its Muslim citizens, some experts say.

Some Muslims feel that tension in Moscow. In his office's safe, Anatoly Pchelinstev, a lawyer and co-chair of a Moscow non-profit religious rights organization, keeps an Islamic book that, the government argues, incites hatred toward Christians and Jews. The government charge is based on a sentence taken out of context, claims Pchelinstev, who is defending the publisher, who faces imprisonment if found guilty. Pchelinstev, whose clients follow different faiths and denominations, is considering whether or not to defend a Moscow branch of a Kuwaiti Muslim charity organization that the government accuses of sponsoring terrorism.

"They are afraid," Iakoupov says of the federal government's position toward its Muslims. He notes that the state is trying to shape an acceptable form of "Russian Islam." "They are in the process of looking for this model; they're searching," he says.

As it conducts this search, the government has angered some, like Tatarstan's veiled women, now barred from having their internal passport photos taken with their headscarves on. Fur hats and form-fitting coats are much more common apparel on Kazan's streets than Islamic veils. But insulted by the government's decision, some veiled women contested the ban in court. They lost, but are taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

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Laisan Khobbieva is one of the veiled women of Kazan, who do not want to take off their scarves to pose for a passport photo. Covering her hair is not a political statement; it's her way of exercising a religious right and guarding her modesty, she says. With a wine-colored scarf framing her clear face with its prominent cheek bones and brown eyes, Khobbieva is a product of the moderate Islamic revival. To her, faith provides refuge from what she calls promiscuous surroundings.

Only four years ago, Khobbieva, like many Tatars, knew nothing about Islam except that she was Muslim by birth. Her sister's marriage to a practicing Muslim introduced Khobbieva, 23, to a world she instantly embraced. "I don't like the way guys and girls deal with each other in a non-religious society. There are so many problems…. I don't like the corrupt society that drinks alcohol and turns to crimes," she says. "I found the truth in Islam."

Khobbieva studies Arabic and religion at the Muhamadiya school in addition to her economics studies at a secular university. She walks Kazan's pot-holed and muddied streets to pray in the mosque, tells her girlfriends about Islam, and peppers her conversations with references to "Allah," Arabic for "God."
She's a minority in a sea of Tatars who know little about their religion. Iakoupov estimates that 90 percent of Tatars don't pray five times a day as Muslims should, a fact he wields to argue that political Islam cannot gain momentum in Tatarstan.

"Most people say they are Muslims, but don't fast, don't pray, don't give alms and don't do pilgrimage," laments Almaz bin Abbas, a boyish-looking 24-year-old deputy imam at Kazan's Al-Marjani mosque. "Here in Russia, they drink lots of vodka and eat pork. That's a big problem….They have to study."

At the Muhamadiya, visitors see a different world. Students receive the call for prayer with the kind of excitement that greets hearing the dismissal bell in other schools. As soon as a wiry man raises his hands to his ears and chants the words "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the school's narrow hallways flow with energy. Students fling their classroom doors open, take off their shoes, do the ritualistic washing to purify themselves before praying, then men and women head to separate halls. "Allahu Akbar," the prayer's leader calls again. They form orderly lines, bow, and kneel in unison.

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