ABSTRACT
The full independence of the Republic of Latvia in August 1991 marked the beginning of a new era in the country’s history, not only for ethnic Latvians but also for ethnic and religious minorities living within its borders. The Latvian Parliament passed a new law that guaranteed all permanent residents equal rights, including religious and ethnic freedom. The numerically insignificant Muslim community, which has had a long presence in the country, could for the first time in many decades start working in a democratic setting. Events before Latvian independence and the new opportunities after the restoration of the country contributed to the development of totally new circumstances for the Muslims. In contrast to the Nordic countries, in which encounters with Muslim immigrants are quite recent, Muslim “Tatars” have been living in the eastern Baltic rim for centuries. The present Tatar population in the eastern rim of the Baltic region can be divided into two major groups: the group that arrived in the area in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and served in the Polish army, and the other that came as itinerant traders during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The former group has become linguistically assimilated with their Slavic and Baltic neighbours and is distributed across Belarus, Poland and Lithuania, while the latter constitutes the core of small Muslim minorities currently living in Finland, Estonia and Latvia.1
