Radicalisation of Russia’s Muslim Community
Radicalisation of Russia’s Muslim Community

Author(s): Alexei Malashenko, Akhmet Yarlykapov
Subject(s): Politics and religion, Studies in violence and power, Inter-Ethnic Relations, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: CEPS Centre for European Policy Studies
Keywords: Radicalisation; Russia; Muslim communities; ethno-political conflicts;
Summary/Abstract: The phenomenon of ‘Islamic radicalism’ is an extremely significant one for Russia because of at least two circumstances: a) there areabout 20 million Muslims living in Russia (including 3.5 to 4 million migrant Muslims), and b) in the 15 years since the collapse of the USSR,Russia has been shaken by ethno-political conflicts with an apparent confessional component. Russia’s Muslim community is not uniform. Singled out in it may be two socio-cultural realms, the Northern Caucasian and the Tatar-Bashkir (for simplicity we call it Tatar), which, as a consequence of increased migrations, have recently been in active contact with each other alongside the direct participation of a third force – Central Asian Muslims. Without touching upon the differences between them, we note one characteristic: in the Northern Caucasus, radical tendencies and sentiments are stronger than in the rest of Russia. This characteristic sometimes makes it necessary separately to describe processes and situations related to Islamic radicalism.

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