MeMuRu · Places of Remembrance in Muslim Russia: Islamic Heritage and Moral Landscapes

Places of Remembrance in Muslim Russia: Islamic Heritage and Moral Landscapes

The five million-strong, predominantly Sunni Muslim Volga Tatars are Russia’s largest ethnic minority, inhabiting the Volga-Ural region since the Middle Ages. Islam is Russia’s second most widespread religion, which gives the country an important if awkward place in the broader Muslim world. This project explores the moral and civic life of post-Soviet Muslims in Putin's Russia through an emphasis on the places, practices, and politics of Islam in the Volga-Ural region. Since the fall of the USSR, a fledgling body of literature has emerged on the topic of Islam in the post-Soviet realm. However, few theoretically advanced works specifically concerning Muslim communities in the Russian Federation have been published, and almost none with an ethnographic focus on the Volga Tatars. This is the gap I intend to address with this research project, which lies at the intersection of social anthropology, Islamic and Russian studies, cultural geography, and critical theory. A study of grassroots Islam in Russia is important on a number of levels. In the context of analysing Islam in Europe, the centuries-old Sunni ethnic community of the Volga-Ural region offers a valuable case study for comparison with more recently established Muslim communities further west. Russia’s long and unique history of interconfessional coexistence, marred by colonialism but also characterised by forms of interethnic collaboration, is of considerable interest to audiences worldwide. Furthermore, the post-Soviet Islamic revival finds points of resonance with the global context: the emergence of scripturalist movements has linked Russia's Muslims to the global Muslim Ummah, raising hopes and concerns in the eyes of the Russian state and civil society. Exploring the vicissitudes of Russia’s Muslims can open a unique window into the pulsations of civic life not only in Russia, a particularly urgent task nowadays, but in the global ecumene at large. To this end, this project brings the methodologies and conceptual frameworks of anthropology and neighbouring disciplines to bear on Islamic moral landscapes in the Volga region, exploring key sites of Muslim life: places, such as mosques and memory-laden historical monuments, practices, such as halal consumption and pilgrimage, and political processes, such as the mushrooming of piety milieus, their interactions with state institutions, and the regimentation of remembrance.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз