Abstract
Over the last fifteen years, the ethnic make-up of Moscow’s mosques has undergone significant change, while the number of practicing Muslims has grown manifold. These quantitative changes are connected with both the internal migration of people from the North Caucasian republics (a migration that had already begun in the early 1990s) and the external migration of natives of Central Asian states, primarily Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kirgizia (a mass migration dating from the 2000s). This paper is dedicated to two phenomena of contemporary Moscow Muslim life – the loud dhikr of the Kunta Hajji wird of the Qadiri tariqa, practiced by Chechens and Ingush; and the religious practices of the Central Asian “uninstitutionalized” mullas. Both spiritual practices are popular and have great significance for a considerable proportion of Moscow Muslims, including those who do not directly participate in them. What both practices have in common is also found in their marginal nature with regard both to institutionalized Moscow Islam and to the fundamentalist trend which is now gathering steam here. This is an attempt to identify some specific features of contemporary Moscow Islam through the analysis of certain practices.
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Notes
I would like to comment on the particular terms “official” / “institutionalized” mulla and “unofficial” / “unistitutionalized” mulla used in this paper. These terms have nothing in common with Soviet religious history and the classical Soviet dichotomy of private or family-based unofficial Islam and the restricted official Muslim sphere. “Official mulla/imam” denotes a person employed in the mosque, whereas the “unofficial” or, more precisely, “uninstitutionalized mulla” defines a person who is not officially connected to the mosque but who performs rituals within a mosque and is considered by believers to be a mulla. Within the Moscow context, these “unofficial” mullas are mostly respected Central Asian migrants who have a profound knowledge of Islam, the Koran and the ritual sphere. Of course, these terms are not terms taken from popular usage – they are simply used here in this paper for the sake of clarity. People call the unofficial or uninstitutionalized mulla a “folk mulla” or just “mulla”. They call the official mulla/imam “imam” or just use their names. There are clear differences between so-called folk mullas and official imams. These differences are obvious for my informants. But I admit that these differences are not specifically expressed in language, specifically Russian in this case.
Virtually all “official” imams in Moscow mosques are Tatars.
Each mosque has its on-duty imams («dezurny imam» in Rus.), who receive the congregation. They are able to read prayers, conduct ceremonies, and simply give advice. An on-duty imam sits in a special room every day to receive members of the congregation according to a queue system. Each mosque has several imams who perform this duty regularly.
This is the customary name by which the Cathedral Mosque is known among Muscovites. Although the mosque is found at a distance of some 200 m from Prospekt Mira itself, on the crossroads of Vypolzov Pereulok and Ulitsa Durova, it stands in close proximity to the Prospekt Mira Metro station.
Moscow imams occasionally encounter such unorthodox requests as to read the Koran over water and foodstuffs, or during the rite of the bleeding out of a cockerel, by which Uzbeks mark the moving of a family or group of countrymen to a new home.
Here I use this term to define a Muslim community – a separate and self-sustained group of the believers united by the practice, ethnic/regional/language background or any other common ideology.
According to the Hanafi madhhab, it is only obligatory to visit the mosque on Fridays. Women do not have to come to the mosque at all.
Ayats 17:110; 62:1, 9, and 10.
The term is used in this instance in the sense of task or assignment.
It had been shut down in 1937, and was transferred to the Muslim community in 1990, with reconstruction work being realized with Saudi funding.
Under the term religious practice, I refer not to the reading of the namaz, but to a collective spiritual practice requiring the immediate interaction of its participants.
In the Cathedral Mosque, small Koran study groups emerge chaotically, their leaders becoming either “folk mullas” or alims.
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Acknowledgements
This study was carried out as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE). Translation into English was done by the author and Benjamin Lee McGarr. I am grateful to my informants and reviewers. I wish to thank Ekaterina Demintseva, Akhmet Yarlykapov, Igor Savin, Vladimir Bobrovnikov for their intellectual guidance.
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Oparin, D.A. Migration and contemporary Muslim space in Moscow. Contextualizing North Caucasian loud Dhikr and the religious practices of Central Asian Folk Mullas . Cont Islam 11, 61–80 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-017-0383-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-017-0383-9