Growth of Islam in Russia Brings Soviet Response - New York Times

Growth of Islam in Russia Brings Soviet Response - New York Times: " Here in the northern Caucasus, and across all of Russia, Islamic faith is on the rise. So is Islamic militancy, and fear of such militancy, leading to tensions like those felt in Europe, where a flow of immigrants from the Muslim world is straining relations with liberal, secular societies.

And so the government has recreated the Soviet-era system of control over religion with the Muslim Spiritual Department, which oversees the appointment of Islamic leaders.

But the Muslims of Russia are not immigrants and outsiders; they are typically the indigenous people of their regions. "These are Russian citizens, and they have no other motherland," President Vladimir V. Putin said in August, when he met with King Abdullah of Jordan.

In Russia, the struggle over Islam's place is not seen as a question of whether to integrate Muslims into society, but whether the country itself can remain whole. The separatist conflict in Chechnya, more than a decade old, has taken on an Islamic hue. And it is spilling beyond Chechnya's borders in the Caucasus, where Islam has become a rallying force against corruption, brutality and poverty.

On the morning of Oct. 13, scores of men took up arms in Nalchik, the capital of the neighboring republic, Kabardino-Balkariya. They were mostly driven, relatives said, by harassment against men with beards and women with head scarves, and by the closing of six mosques in the city. In two days at least 138 people were killed. In Dagestan and Ingushetia, militants have been blamed for unending bombings and killings.

Followers of a Chechen terrorist leader, Shamil Basayev, have claimed responsibility for the deadliest attacks, including the one in Nalchik, and before that a similar raid in Ingushetia and the school siege in Beslan in September 2004. In Beslan, 331 people were killed, 186 of them children.

All have been part of Mr. Basayev's declared goal to establish an Islamic caliphate, uniting the northern Caucasus in secession from Russia.

That goal has little popular support in the region's other predominantly Muslim republics, but discontent is spreading as the government cracks down. Not all involved in the attacks are hardened fighters of Chechnya's wars. More and more oppose the hard-line stands that the Kremlin takes against anyone who challenges its central authority."

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The number of Muslims is estimated at 14 million to 23 million, 10 percent to 16 percent of Russia's population. They are spread across the country but congregate in several Muslim-majority republics.

Thousands of mosques have been rebuilt and reopened, as have madrasas, including one here in Cherkessk, where 66 young men and women learn the fundamentals of their faith. Among their teachers are four Egyptians. "We could pray on Red Square and no one would care," the imam of Cherkessk's mosque, Kazim Katchiyev, said after evening prayers recently.