ABSTRACT
The ‘revival’ of Islam in the immediate post-Soviet period was characterized by a rapid growth in interest in, and chaotic mass ‘conversion’ to, Islam. By the second half of the 1990s, the boom was over and public interest had begun to wane. Even in the hotbeds of Islamic renaissance such as northern Dagestan, the number of new mosques opening was falling and by May 2000 the proportion of the Dagestani population confessing Islam had fallen to 82 per cent (from 95 per cent in 1997), and only 22 per cent of this number said they observed all the prescribed Islamic rituals (Bobrovnikov 2001: 2). 1 At the same time, the practice of Islam and the mechanisms and methods for its reproduction were becoming institutionalized at both the public and private level. Islamic festivals structured Muslim family life and there was continuing demand for information about the rituals and rules of Islamic culture. In the context of the newly established norm of religious self-determination – exemplified by the fact that young people took for granted their right to pray, attend mosque, receive a religious education and wear the veil – new resources and social and cultural institutions began to be mobilized to secure the transmission of Islamic values. In this chapter we explore, first, the extent to which Islamic rituals and festivals were being observed by Muslims in post-Soviet Tatarstan and Dagestan, acknowledging diversity in the form of their observance both between the two republics and among different social groups within each. Second, we consider the key channels for the transmission of Islamic values – the family, the mass media, Islamic educational courses and institutions, Arabic language tuition and mosques and Islamic clerics – and evaluate the relative roles they have played in reviving Islamic knowledge, ritual and culture in post-Soviet Russia.
