Russia 20% Muslim by 2020

ONE of the sights that a first-time visitor to Moscow will see is the many domed buildings. You would have thought there would be many Muslims living among Moscow's 12 million residents. But the domed buildings are not mosques. That they do not have the crescent moon and star but show Russian Orthodox crosses and therefore are actually churches. If churches are domed then what would mosques look like?

Officially there are four mosques in the city of Moscow. All but one were built quite recently. One was built only in the last decade at Moscow's Victory Park. It looks like a modern mosque — without domes.

But the most important one is a domed one and was built more than a hundred years ago. It was built in 1904 according the design of architect Nikolay Zhukov. Now tucked in the shadow of Moscow's 1980 Olympic Stadium and surrounded by drab Soviet era-apartments and office buildings, its bright blue green turquoise colour stands out and attracts Moscow's Muslims. The Sobornoya Mosque (translated as the Cathedral Mosque) calls Muslims to prayers every day.

Islam came to Russia (the North Caucasus) at the end of the 7th century. Preachers sent by the Baghdad caliphate brought Islam to Russia's Volga Area in 921 and to Siberia around the 13th century.

The largest Muslim community is that of Tatars who began to settle in Moscow in the early 15th century. Even though prayer houses were built in those times, officially according to historical documents, the first wooden mosque in Moscow was built in 1782. In 1812, Tatar and Bashkir regiments fought for the Russian army in the war against Napoleon and a historical mosque was built in downtown Russia to commemorate that victory. Over time that mosque became too small.

The Tatar community asked for permission to build another mosque in 1894 but it was not until 1902 that their petition was approved and construction of the new mosque was financed by Saleh Yerzin, a Tatar merchant.

It was June 25, 1904 that the construction of a concrete mosque with semi-basements and a choir chamber in the ground floor finally began. By November, the first imam of the mosque, Badriddin Alimov, led the first prayers.

The Sobornoya Mosque was the only mosque that remained open in Moscow during the Communism era. During those times, houses of worships were converted into factories and prisons and Muslim Imams were executed along with other religious leaders and Muslims were exiled to Siberia and other places.

But the mosque survived and, at the beginning of the 1990s, it stood alone as the main place of Muslim worships in Moscow. It was by and large mostly empty then, filling up only with the occasional large foreign delegation visits to Moscow from Islamic countries. However, the fact that it was allowed to stay open is a testament to the mosque in itself.

The other mosques are not as large as the Sobornoya Mosque, which became the centre for modern Islamic life in Moscow. Its carpeted halls are always full of people. During the Friday and Eid prayers, the worshipping crowd spills into the courtyard outside despite the cold.

Outside, the blue green turquoise colour makes the mosque looks bright and cheerful. The entrance is a small doorway going up one flight to the main prayer hall. Inside, the many windows light up the prayer hall inside the mosque. The mosque has a "choir chamber" as the basement as well as an upper floor for additional places of prayer.

The Sobornoya Mosque complex is made up of the the mosque together with another building of the same colour. The complex has a little bit of everything. It houses a university, an Islamic center, a Halal shop as well as a place of worship.

Today the mosque is not only a spiritual but also a public and political center where the headquarters of the Council of Muftis of Russia, headed by the Mufti of Moscow, is located.

Under the aegis of the Sobornoya Mosque, the Moscow Islamic University conducted, among others, special courses for learning Arabic and the basics of Islam for adults and children.

It is indeed a thriving center of modern Islamic life hosting a diverse spectrum of Muslim beliefs practiced today in Russia. The worshippers include Central Asian Muslims, Azerbaijani Shiites and Tatar Sunnis.

The current mosque is certainly unable to cater to all of Moscow's growing Muslim population. Russia's overall population is dropping at a rate of 700,000 people a year, due to the short life spans and low birth rates — the national census shows that the national fertility rate is 1.5 children per woman, with the rate in Moscow about 1.1, far below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain the country's population of about 143 million.

But Russia's Muslims population is growing at a much faster rate. Tatars living in Moscow, average six children per woman, while the Chechen and Ingush communities are averaging 10 children per woman. And hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have been flocking to Russia in search of work. Since 1989, Russia's Muslim population has increased by 40 percent to about 25 million and by 2020 will make up a fifth of the population.

The winds of change have started to blow even in Moscow. In the windswept field, next to the Sobornoya Mosque, is to be the location of the city's largest Muslim temple, with a capacity for 5,000 worshipers.

The new mosque is set to open in September 2008 and will be the second largest in Russia (after a mosque in Makhachkala, Daghistan), and Islam's headquarters in one of the largest countries in the world.

The Brunei Times